WUNRN
Turkey: "What a Beautiful Democracy!"
A Feature Documentary About the Struggle of Women Running for the Turkish Parliament
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About the Film
Do women have enough access to politics in
"What a Beautiful
Democracy!" a
feature length documentary by the Istanbul
based filmmakers collective filmist looks for the answers while chronicling
the campaign of women candidates running in the general elections in Turkey.
Brief Synopsis
Through the story of these candidates the question of gender politics in
“What A Beautiful Democracy!” is a feature documentary reflecting both women’s struggle for power and
also the social face of today’s
About the Production
The filmmakers were with the candidates during their entire
campaigns in the summer of
It is the first collective project developed by
Filmist Filmmakers Collective, whose aim was to chronicle the story of female
candidates amidst the biggest ever campaign for women's representation in the
parliament --the one before had only 4.4 percent of female members of
parliament, ranking 47th in the 47 member European Council in terms of female
participation.
The filmmakers filmed 6 candidates, one from the
Islamist AK Party, two from the secular Republican Party CHP –one being the
youngest ever to stand for elections.
Filmist also filmed two independent candidates
who were former sex workers. Filmist followed their struggle and emancipation
as they claimed the street and gained wide recognition and support from the
public as well as women’s NGOs. Their
tragic life stories reflected in many ways still unresolved women's issues in
the country, including incest, honor killings and patriarchal repression.
The filmmakers also filmed a Kurdish candidate
in the
The filming continued against the background of
ongoing controversy of secularism vs. islamism, reflecting the increasing
tension between paties during the election campaigns, as well as the tenison in
the border in the sout-east. These issues were touched upon through the
perspective of the main characters of the film.
“What a Beautiful Democracy!” is an independent production, produced by Filmist collective.
The post-production was supported by the Consulate General of Sweden in
İstanbul.
Festivals, Screenings
and News
"What a Beautiful Democracy!" had its first screening on April 18th,
The film was met with great
interest from the audience, and was followed by a Q&A session with the four
directors.
An extract of the film of 25 mins. was shown in the
political school for women, organised by Ka-der (an NGO for promoting women’s
candidacy in Turkey).
"What a Beautiful
Democracy!" is now among
the selection of films nominated by SIYAD (Turkish Film Critics Association)
for the “Best Turkish Documentary Award”. It will be shown in DOCUMENTAR-IST Documentary Days, in the
section of “SIYAD’s Selection of Turkish Documentaries”. The films in this
section were chosen from among 65 documentaries that participated in various
festivals throughout 2008.
The screening will take place on July the
10th 2008, at 2 pm in
Film Info
Directed by : Belmin Söylemez, Berke Baş, Haşmet
Topaloğlu, Somnur Vardar
Camera : Berke Baş, Belmin Söylemez, Haşmet
Topaloğlu,Somnur Vardar,
Melis Birder, Elvan Kıvılcım, Zeynel Doğan, Onur
Demir
Produced by : filmist
97 min, Turkish-Kurdish, with English subtitles
for more information :
Filmographies of the Directors
Belmin Söylemez worked as copy writer, editor, director and producer.
Her short films and documentaries got national and international awards and
were shown on TV Channels such as ARTE, SVT (
Berke Baş received her masters degree in media studies at
Some of her films are Crossing Brooklyn (2002), In
Transit(2005), Boreaus(2006 – editor),A
Jihad for Love(2007-videographer).
Haşmet Topaloğlu has worked for national tv-channels over a period of
ten years as reporter, producer, presenter mainly on human stories. Since 2002
he produces documentaries and educational films for NGO's.
His films include Black on Yellow(2004), Five
Masters of Construction(2005), Lotus Power(2005) and How
Beautiful Istanbul is Today (2005).
Somnur Vardar received her M.A. from Media Studies program of
She is currently working on her feature length documentary “Will
You Marry Me?”.