The fifth Yılmaz Güney Kurdish Short Film Festival being organised jointly by the Batman Municipality and the Middle East cinema academy will be dedicated to Sinjar. The co-mayor of the Batman municipality, Gülistan Akel, has announced this with a press statement.

Applications for the fifth Yılmaz Güney Kurdish Short Film Festival which will be assessed between 10 September and 10 November in Batman have started. The festival was initiated by the declaration of Gülistan Akel, the co-mayor of the municipality, the deputy co-mayor Semra Güneş, and the executives of the Middle East cinema academy in the hall of the municipal assembly with a press statement.

The films wishing to participate will be evaluated between 10 September and 10 October and then the film festival will take place between 9 and 14 December 2014. Co-mayor Akel stated that the fifth Yılmaz Güney Kurdish Short Film Festival will be dedicated to the victims of the Sinjar massacre carried out by the ISIS gangs.

Stating that cinema is creating itself by feeding capitalism and individualism, overlooking societies, cultures, differences and other languages in order to serve capitalist modernity, co-mayor Akel said that: “We started out in order to create an alternative cinema and within this framework, we have transformed the Yılmaz Güney Film Festival."

‘Our purpose is to create a free cinema mentality’

Co-mayor Akel, remarking that the festival is a huge opportunity for the new Kurdish generation who are interested in cinema and who want to produce new cultural and artistic projects in their own languages and identities,said: “We aimed to organise the fifth Yılmaz Güney Film Festival as an art project that has a democratic basis, against the industrial market, free, believing in gender equality, and with ecological purposes. Besides that, the festival aims to introduce the historical and cultural richness of Batman and to bring together the directors, producers and actors who are interested in the cinema and who will come to Batman for the festival."

Akel pointed out that the festival will bring together the Kurdish movie makers and the people in Batman, and also accelerate the interaction between different cultures. She added that the festival will this year also organise seminars, workshops and exhibitions in order to encourage the young people in the city to gain a basic knowledge of cinema.