THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND MODERNITY IN CRISIS

On the centenary of the World War I, the Istanbul Film Festival screens two films pertaining to post-war Germany.

CALIGARI- WIE DER HORROR INS KINO KAM (CALIGARI: KORKU SİNEMAYA GELDİĞİNDE), 2014
Germany | DCP, Colour and B&W, 52’ | German
Director: Rüdiger Suchsland
Having served on both the FIPRESCI and the Best First Film juries of the Istanbul Film Festival, German film critic Rüdiger Suchsland’s directorial debut Caligari - When Horror Came into Cinema is about the cinematic reflections of expressionism and the Weimar Republic. Just as celebrated German sociologist Siegfried Kracauer’s cornerstone book on film history From Caligari to Hitler, Suchsland’s film also focuses on Robert Wiene’s expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari while examining the aforementioned era. Claiming that the Weimar Republic’s sentiment is not that distant from today, Suchsland remarks the rise of Expressionism in a post-war world engulfed in fear that madly consumes and on the other hand stricken with economic crisis. While analysing the globally celebrated examples of German Expressionist Cinema taking off from Caligari, he features archival footage from World War I and the Weimar Era, and selected scenes from many classics.

While Suchsland’s documentary emphasises the tension, political paranoia and pessimism in Germany, we see a different Germany in People on Sunday, which was made in the late Weimar Republic era. This 1930 film is not only significant in it that it brings together the master of the future such as Robert Siodmark, Fred Zinnemann, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Billy Wilder, at their early careers, but it also serves a document pertaining to those years as a non-expressionist film with external shoots. Observing five young people on a Sunday and their love relations, the film does not adopt the pessimism of Expressionist Cinema. This masterpiece which displays the daily life in Germany a few years prior to Hitler’s claim of power, and although it does not bring up political tension of the era in its storyline, it cannot be reviewed separately from Nazi Germany due to its cinematic significance because a few years later, the film’s creators had to emigrate to the USA and the free world reflected by People on Sunday had disappeared in 1933. – Engin Ertan

PEOPLE ON SUNDAY (BİR PAZAR GÜNÜ), 1929
Germany | DVD , B&W , 73’ | German
Director: Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer
Cast: Erwin Splettstösser, Wolfgang Von Waltershausen, Christel Ehlers, Brigitte Borchert, Annie Schreyer
While Suchsland’s documentary emphasises the tension, political paranoia and pessimism in Germany, we see a different Germany in People on Sunday, which was made in the late Weimar Republic era. This 1930 film is not only significant in it that it brings together the master of the future such as Robert Siodmark, Fred Zinnemann, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Billy Wilder, at their early careers, but it also serves a document pertaining to those years as a non-expressionist film with external shoots. Observing five young people on a Sunday and their love relations, the film does not adopt the pessimism of Expressionist Cinema. This masterpiece which displays the daily life in Germany a few years prior to Hitler’s claim of power, and although it does not bring up political tension of the era in its storyline, it cannot be reviewed separately from Nazi Germany due to its cinematic significance because a few years later, the film’s creators had to emigrate to the USA and the free world reflected by People on Sunday had disappeared in 1933. – Engin ErtanSPECIAL SCREENING

MANAKI BROTHERS FILMS
The complete restored works of Manaki Brothers, the first filmmakers of the Balkans, are being screened at the festival within the framework of the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Turkish Cinema. Photographer by profession, becoming the court photographers of the Ottoman Sultan in 1911 and of the King of Yugoslavia in 1929, Yanaki and Milton Manaki are regarded as the first cinematographers and therefore the first filmmakers of the Balkans. The two brothers made their first shoots with a 300 model Bioskop film camera that Yanaki bought from England. Recording local events and traditions, the Manaki Brothers cinematographed their films between 1905 and 1926 on 35 mm, black-and-white, nitrate film. In 1921, they started screening films nearby their home in the Macedonian town of Bitola in the open air, and later at a hall they set up in 1923.