Festival On Wheels Celebrating Love Of Cinema In 20Th Year

Festival on Wheels, Turkey's annual traveling showcase of art-house cinema, promises to become a celebration of all things cinema in its 20th edition, opening today in Ankara.

In a special section titled “For the Love of Cinema!” -- which is also the main theme of the 2014 festival -- the Ankara Cinema Association (ASD) has brought together a selection of films that all deal in some shape or form with a passion for cinema.

Highlights of this section include Jean-Luc Godard's latest offering, “Goodbye to Language,” in which he demonstrates that the potential brought by digital 3D to a subtle, multi-dimensional narrative extends beyond the horizons of Hollywood, and “Camera Buff,” a 1979 film by master director Krzystof Kieslowski, which focuses on the story of a factory worker and amateur filmmaker who becomes increasingly and obsessively attached to his eight-millimeter camera. But looking at life exclusively through the viewfinder comes at a high cost, and he ends up a lone man.

“Close-Up,” a 1990 docu-fiction by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami based on the real-life story of a movie buff who pretends to be his favorite director, and “Opening Day of Close-Up,” a 1996 short film by Nanni Moretti, which follows the Italian director preparing for the premiere of the Kiarostami classic at his cinema in Rome, are also on the bill.

Another offering is Yaël André's “When I Will Be Dictator.” Billed as a “contemporary essay on the potential of cinema,” the film stands as a sort of sci-fi documentary that explores the relationship between reality and fiction in cinema. In “The First Movie,” director and film critic Mark Cousins steps out of the world of adults to document the children of a tiny, war-torn community in northern Iraq who have never been to a movie theater before, and shows their introduction to cinema.

Festival on Wheels, whose stated mission is to take world-class cinema to film enthusiasts in cities around Turkey while at the same time introducing Turkish cinema beyond Turkey's borders, is running from Nov. 28 through Dec. 4 in Ankara with screenings at the Büyülü Fener Kızılay movie theater and the Çağdaş Sanatlar Merkezi (Contemporary Arts Center) in Kavaklıdere.

Other sections specially introduced for the festival's 20th edition are “Murathan Mungan's Pick: Three Doors Opening on Reality,” in which three films selected by author-poet Mungan -- including Akira Kurosawa's “Rashomon" -- will be offered; “Views from the Ottoman Empire,” which brings together films and other types of footage shot in Ottoman territories by different filmmakers between the years 1896 and 1922; and “A Day at the Museum,” which features films about or set in some of the world's most prestigious museums.

The festival's regular sections -- World Cinema, Short is Good, Children's Films and a national feature selection called “Turkey 2014” -- are also on the bill.

Festival on Wheels will travel to Eskişehir from Dec. 3-7 and to Sinop from Dec. 5-8. For the full program, go to http://ankarasinemadernegi.org/festivals/20-gezici-festival.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)