1ST AMSTERDAM TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL

19-20-21 MARCH 2010

FILM SELECTION Finally: The first Amsterdam Turkish Film Festival is taking place on 19, 20 and 21 March in Studio-K, eastside Amsterdam. With 17 quality Turkish films on the program, next to artist talks and q&a's with filmmakers from Turkey and Holland, music and dance performances and parties, the ATFF will shake the walls of Studio-K the entire weekend. Turks love film and have been loving it ever since the camera was invented back in the days. In it's heyday the Turkish cinema industry, a.k.a. 'Yesilcam' (or in English 'Greenpine'), produced 250 – 350 feature films every year. With the introduction of television the industry collapsed to revive back in the late nineties to come to a total amount of 80 local productions last year. 12 of them have been selected for screening on ATFF. Starting with this first ATFF, every year a retrospective will be screened from a reknowned or upcoming director. This year ATFF has chosen to screen the five feature films of director/writer Cagan Irmak. Irmak's films have proven themselves at the box-office starting out with low figures but as the films were seen the word of mouth made his films break records. Especially My Father And My Son and Issiz Adam stayed in cinemas for months, whereas the first reached 3,5 million visitors at the box-office. All his films are written in different genres, from classical drama to fantasy a la Pan's Labyrinth. We are proud to be flying him over as he will be present at ATFF for an artist talk and Q&A's! Turkey is developing rapidly, Istanbul is 2010's cultural capital of Europe and what better location to discuss the developments then at ATFF? The main goal of the festival is to strengthen the position of Turkish cinema on the European map as ATFF believes the quality of these films are on the same level as for instance Spanish or Italian films. Is the lack of proper distribution of Turkish quality films subject to the audience's lack of knowledge about them? Or is it merely the cultural differences why the audience can't embrace them? Answers to these kinds of questions will be sought in panel discussions with surprise guests from Holland, Turkey and Germany. Accompanied by performances of Turkish and Dutch artists and two blasting club nights with deejays from both countries, produced by Elevator Passion, on Friday and Saturday. We are very proud to welcome you to the first Amsterdam Turkish Film Festival