Shades of grey in 1963 film
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/features/sha ... m/20100523
TURKISH Cypriot director Dervish Zaim’s new film-in-the-making, Shadows and Shapes, is set to be his most controversial yet.
Set in 1963, the year in which the Cyprus Republic dissolved into ethnic violence, it follows the growing pains of Rusa, an adolescent girl from the Karpasia village of Komi Kebir.
But Istanbul-based Zaim says that ethnic conflict is only one of the film’s themes.
“It’s mainly a story about growing up,” Zaim told the Sunday Mail. “The conflict is in the background; it’s not the main theme”.
Nevertheless, the film’s promoters describe it as “a story that takes place as the events of 1963 unfold”, with Rusa and her shadow puppeteer father Veli separated as they flee their burning village. “The pain, the friendships, and the surrounding war casts a light on Cyprus’ story,” the promoters say.
Zaim says he set the film in 1963 “because in the almost 50 years that have passed since then, no one has made a film about that era”.
“Those times are like a forgotten memory,” he says.
In his own community, however, the “Bloody Christmas of 1963” and its aftermath is anything but a forgotten memory.
But as Zaim says, the film is not only, or even primarily about that.
“I believe it holds a universal message,” Zaim says. “It’s a message of peace, of growing together, of tolerance. In this sense it is not just a film about Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots.”
Naturally, Zaim cannot avoid the fact that he is making a film about a period of time that is remembered very differently by his community and Greek Cypriots. Nevertheless he insists that “as much as possible” he has “tried to stay faithful to historical events”.
Perhaps as a way of clarifying that he is not out to make a film about bad Greeks and oppressed Turks, the cast includes both Greek and Turkish Cypriot actors. Popi Avraam, among several other Greek Cypriot actors, plays a leading role as one of Rusa’s neighbours.
Zaim also insists he “tried to be as objective as possible” about what took place during the period covered by the film.
“There are no blacks or whites. People are always grey. No one is purely good or bad,” Zaim says, adding that the characters in the film were “both fictitious and created from people I have met or heard about”.
Zaim adds Shadows and Shapes to a growing list of acclaimed low-budget films that includes Somersault in a Coffin, Waiting for Paradise, Dot and Mud. Zaim also worked with Panikos Chrysanthou in the making of the controversial but widely acclaimed Akamas, a film that, because of the sensitivity that surrounds it, still has not been shown on Cypriot TV either side of the Green Line. Zaim says he hopes to see Shadow and Shapes, which will be in Greek and Turkish, in cinemas next year.
