Gay day at !f and blog-phobia 2

Yesterday was the gay day at !f International Independent Film Festival. I have already written about this festival’s opening night. I have not seen a single film at the festival after that. After 20 years of festival going and with the advent of DVD and Dvix technologies I have finally learn to limit my festival activities to the side events rather than the film going itself and this is regarded as a scandal by many of my colleagues. I could do the 4-5 even 6 films a day thing when I was young. There is no way I can do it now. Therefore for me !f was, from the start, about yesterday. First there was a video activism workshop organised by lambda (THE lesbian, gay, transvestite and transsexual organisation at Istanbul), which would last until sixish. Then at night there was the Rainbow Party! And there is so much to tell about both the events. After all this is exactly the type of thing this blog is supposed to be about.

However before going on to relate it all I have to pause to muse at yet another form of blog-phobia. There are those who come to these events that are in the closet. Even being out the closet does not necessarily mean you want you activities at a party reported. When I first told I wanted to start a blog to my dearest friend Kutlu and his dearest boyfriend Ziad they told me of a blog that became quite popular for a time. I can’t remember which country it was from I think it was somewhere in the middle-east. Anyway the guy told all about the gay seen and became widely read but it turns out he lost all his friends and therefore had to nothing to write about before long. At the time I said I’ll send everything I write to you and you guys decide what is suitable and not be my censors. This idea was turned down on the grounds that it was too much responsibility. Again here there is a bit of an exaggeration going on. I think the reality is not so much that it is too much responsibility but rather too boring and too time-consuming and in fact a not so subtle strategy designed to make sure at least two of my friends always read my blog.

Therefore I will start with the less incriminating video activism event and save the more lewd details of the Rainbow Party for later. I might in the interim call some people up and ask if they mind my writing. The workshop was to be held at The Hall which is a very old building that was once an Armenian church, I believe, recently turned into a night club. I am not much of a clubber. In fact my ex- girlfriend Sevil who has managed one and owned another very popular club at one time would tell you I am hopeless. Despite the fact I have already been to The Hall before this occasion although it is a relatively new place. This was with Seda (love of my life), Gencay, and Inanc and we went to see what was announced as “a fetish performance” but turned out to be a man in a latex stockings and corset lip-synching to boring German pop songs without even moving!

Anyhow architecturally the place is very beautiful. It is located at the ‘back streets of Beyoglu’: this is a phrase used to imply all sorts of lewd stuff though in the case of The Hall it merely means it is located on a street where transsexual prostitutes also live. And the very fact that The Hall has opened means the street is long on its way to gentrification. In fact I have been told that the transsexuals are already being harassed because of it. Although many argue it is not the Hall but the huge shopping mall that is in construction around the corner that is the real cause of gentrification. Inside, The Hall, has two separate halls where tow separate events and parties can coexist without in any way hindering each other. When we reached the door with Seda we happened upon Gencay and Inanc who had also just arrived. I was surprised at our timing but Gencay said it was inevitable that our rhythms have become in tuned because we spend so much time together and that he knows he will start having his periods the same time as we do. Gencay, being a gay man and all, this doesn’t seem much likely but the statement proves that hanging out with us has made Gencay start to believe that he is a lesbian.

I haven’t even begun to tell the event yet and now I have to rush out again, to go to a studio to talk about the best director category of the Turkish Film Critics Association SIYAD, as I had promised earlier this week. To be continued.

looking after elfe

Yesterday I looked after Elfe, a nine months old baby girl. She is the daughter of my friend and colleague Gulengul. She first came to us when she was six months old. Seda (love of my life) and I thought we could look after her one-day a week and let Gulengul have some time off this full-time business called mothering.

Since in Turkey we cannot adopt a kid and since if one of us gives birth to a child the other will have no legal claim on her/him whatsoever, it doesn’t seem likely that we will ever have a kid. I am not very sure that we would have had even if we could.
You see this ‘owning’ of kids has long bothered me. When a kid starts to cry in a public place if any one is interested at all they start asking each other where the mother is. No one feels the urge to do something apart from finding the responsible person the, person who owns the kid. I don’t want to even start ranting mother’s who see their kids as precious possessions for years and feel bitter when the kid proves to have a will of its own. Of course this bitterness arises provided that they ever let the kid to develop a will of their own which is not a very frequent occurrence especially in places like Turkey where the family is the name of a totalitarian regime. Consequently most of my friends who live in complete contradiction to the dictates of ‘the norm and the normal’ still feel the need to somehow get along with and try and justify their way of life to parents. And the easiest way to do this is to keep most of who they are a secret from their families. Which brings us once again to the topic of passing and coming out.

Therefore for Gulengul to leave her six months old kid at the hands of “mere friends” let alone a lesbian couple once a week in order to do as she pleases is extremely radical and only some one as strong willed as Gulengul could have done it. I can imagine what her family members think of that! And I have no doubt ,whatever they think, they will not be persuaded to keep their views to themselves. I am sure things will get even more complicated when Elfe starts to talk and related her experiences with us to them. In fact I only hope we can continue this practice that long. However for the time being once a week seems like a perfect dose of relating with a baby and I am grateful that we have a friend radical enough to have given us the opportunity. I am also grateful to both Gulengul and Yuce, her husband, for not turning out to be fussy parents who scream when their baby puts back into her mouth what she dropped on the floor. I call this fussy but it seems to be norm for middleclass families!

I realised yesterday that I like Elfe better nine-months-old then I did six-months- old. There is such a huge improvement. Now she is ‘aware’ of her surroundings for one thing and she was not 3 months ago. She can sit straight on her own whereas she couldn’t even keep straight propped up. It was so very difficult to feed her because she didn’t know what you were doing and had no idea about the relationship between the spoon at her lips the act of opening a mouth etc, nor the relationship between the act of swallowing and the things inside her mouth. Now when you bring the spoon to her lips she opens her mouth, takes it in and swallows. You had to rattle a toy in front of her with one hand while putting the spoon to her mouth with the other (which is impossible, so Seda did the rattling and I did the spooning. God knows how Gulengul did it on her own). Now, however, she rattles her own toys so all you have to do is feed her.

Of course there are drawbacks to this new awareness and motor coordination. When she is left in a room all on her own for even a second she cries. But this is no problem because now you can actually leave her in a room all by her own for a few seconds while you couldn’t do that 3 months ago! Sounds from the other room also seem to unnerve her only because she now has awareness that the “other” room has some connection to her. She is nervous when some new person enters the room for a few minutes until she is satisfied that this new person is ‘alright’. However, she does not cry when Gulengul goes away as long as she is not left alone and she does not show any special attention when she comes back. I am dreading the day when she will cry after her and wonder when that will happen.

To combine all these observations with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory I will have to say that I like Elfe in her Imaginary phase more than I did in her Le Real phase! And this suggests to me that little babies are prone to kindle the dread of falling back into the Real.

After snow craze

Yesterday was a hectic day. Spring term started so I went all the way to Alibeykoy (the end of the Golden Horn) to the university, to first meet with my course contact person (otherwise known as the CCP) who is also an ex-student, Pinar, then to lecture for 3 hours. I was hoping secretly that most students wouldn’t turn up because they tend to do that on the first day of term and especially when the weather conditions promise traffic jams. Alas they were all present so lecture I did. It is difficult to go back into the rhythm of it after a two - month break.

Then I met with Alisa (my film scholar friend who lives at London and whom I mentioned in a pervious entry concerning her stance against blogging) who is at Istanbul for a week and wanted to go to the hairdresser who cuts my hair as well as Seda’s and he is good. After years and years of long hair I finally got it cut short. The decision came after I sat through four seasons of “The L Word” watching brilliant haircuts. Of course Seda had already gone to the hairdresser in question and everyone including me had adored her hair. So now Alisa wanted to go as well. The hairdresser is on the same street as we live so we met there and asked if he was available he told us to come back in half an hour so we went back to my house and had a chat.

One of the topics was blogging. Alisa once again told me she couldn’t understand the urge. I asked if she understand the urge to keep a dairy. She said: “yes but you keep your dairy under your pillow, you don’t show it don’t to anybody”. I answered: “yes but that’s dangerously close to repressing I don’t want to get overly theoretical but the more your inner thoughts become a part of the symbolic system the better for you”. You see I am very much into psychoanalysis whereas Alisa isn’t so all I have done is giving an explanation that she won’t really understand!

However what I found really interesting was her explanation that she stopped reading a friends blog because she realised “I would like him better if I did not read it”. I found the declaration extremely striking when she first said it and since then I have realised why. If you like someone on the condition that you turn a blind eye to what he himself wants you to know, then you end up likening someone who is most definitely not that person but an imaginary construct of your own. I for one would never feel so desperate to be liked that I am willing to be someone else (or taken to be someone else) for the privilege. Both parties are better off without any liking on any body’s part. This seems to me very close to saying “I will like him better if I don’t know him better” which very much reminds me of precisely the urge to ‘pass’. To pass as straight while you are gay to pas as “white Turk’ while you are in fact Kurd etc. To deny yourself believing you will be ‘liked’ by more people if you do so. More to the point it reminds me of those condescending people who are gracious enough to be my friend if and only if I don’t point out to them that I am a lesbian. So I always knew there was a connection between blogging and coming out that is why the name of the blog is “out and about” but the more I think of it the more related they become.

Anyhow I couldn’t wait until Alisa’s hair was done because I had to rush to a board of directors meeting of SIYAD, (The Turkish Film Critics Association of Turkey). I am the deputy chair of this association. We talked about the election that is to be held on Thursday and the award ceremony on the 3rd of March as well as the events to be held during the upcoming Istanbul Film Festival, I promised to moderate a panel at the festival called “Turkish Cinema Inside Out”, which consists of foreign and Turkish film critics talking about contemporary Turkish cinema. I also promised to go to a studio this Saturday where they will shoot me talking about the nominees for the best director category, which will be shown during the award ceremony.

I wonder how Alisa’s hair turned out.

This morning I had a bit of slow time to counter the dashing about yesterday and went back to “Tipping The velvet”. It turns out the novel is even better than I thought, not just a lesbian romance but a lot of queer sex as well. Nan the protagonist is now earning her living as a male prostitute just like Shane from “The L Word”, we are told once did. And now that I have mentioned it I have to go back to reading it.

cowgirls and mandolin dreams

A very dear friend of mine, Ozge who is both a scholar and an artist and lives in the USA has been going to a lesbian western bar for the last one and a half years now. I believe she devotedly goes every Tuesday, which again if I am not mistaken is the lesbians only night whereas the rest of the time it is a lesbian gay mixed affair. Anyhow there is country music and good old cowgirl dancing. She tells me there is line dancing and two step dancing and some other dance that has the wonderfully poetic name ‘mandolin dreams’.
I envy Ozge and her cowboy bar on more than one count. First of all I am crazy about “cowgirls”, the costume, the mise-en-scene, the myth everything about it. My favourite film genre is the western so on and so forth. The very possibility of cowboy boots and hats is enough to go berserk as far as I’m concerned 2) I would have loved to be able to dance some formal dance not the shake it as you see fit free style that goes around in clubs but the type of dance you learn and master that has rules of engagement so to speak. 3) I wouldn’t mind a lesbian space to go to which we utterly lack in Istanbul. There are gay bars that lesbians go to as well but not a lesbian bar and certainly not a specialised lesbian bar like this one. 4) I picture the place filled with the Coyotes from the film “Coyote Ugly” which I know is not the case but still…
However I know nothing about country music and all that comes to mind when I hear the phrase “country music” is 1) the huge tits of Dolly Parton 2) Xander from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” drowning his sorrows through a night of country music. Therefore I am under the impression that this music is either very cheerful or extremely melodramatic and in any case cheesy. Although none of this matters as long as music is there to dance to. Anyhow Ozge of course not only has started to master the dances but also the music and she was kind enough to send me three songs as a kind of introduction to the world of the country western scene. The songs in question are 1) Carrie Underwood - Before He Cheats 2) LeAnn Rimes: Nothin Better To Do 3) Nickel Creek: When you come back down
I suspect none of these songs are pure country but are popish versions of country selected to ease me into the scene. I have to admit I only liked LeAnn Rimes but I will continue listening if she continues to send. But what I would really like is to do the line dance. I wish we could go to Atlanta to visit Ozge and see the bar for ourselves but it is too far away and too expensive.

There will be blood on a snowy sunday

It was snowing and the city had shut down. It was not a very wise decision to go out. And we wouldn’t have if we had to drive or even take a taxi. However all we had to do was to walk to Taksim Square, which depending on how fast you walked took 10 to 15 minutes and then take the metro (tube, underground whatever you call it) that would take us directly to Kanyon. The walk was difficult however. It was snowing and there was fierce wind. Isn’t snow supposed to be all flaky even fluffy? Well this snow was more like needles, even bullets. I suppose it was either snowing ice or the flakes where being churned into ice by the wind. In any case we were being beaten by it! The worst was when we reached Taksim Square where there is an unnatural gush of wind just as you turn a bend to reach the square popper. There we were nearly thrown back by the wind’s assault. But once we went underground everything was easy. The metro was quite empty and when we got out we found Gencay immediately who must have been on the same train.
I enjoyed the film, “There Will Be Blood” immensely although it was the soundtrack (and when I say soundtrack its not just the music I am referring to) more than anything that intrigued me and I might want to analyse it one day, working with the hypothesis that the entire soundtrack is subjective. The main character Daniel, who feels that the people close to him are draining his soul, just as he drains the petrol from neighbouring lands, was an intense and interesting character, portrayed brilliantly by Daniel Day Lewis. After the film we had a quick argument about which character we thought was more pathetic, I went for the main character while Seda for the character Eli. We argued whether Eli and Paul were really twins or there is only one character with a split personality.
The walk back home was easier in that the snow flakes were now more flakes then needles but more difficult since the temperature had lowered considerably now that it was night. When we came home we learned that the schools have been closed on Monday due to the whether.

Tipping the velvet on a snowy sunday

Snow has blanketed the city. It is yet to turn to mulch, which it will inevitably. However for now it seems to have dimmed the din of the city and created a perfect lazy Sunday for me with no intention of going out and about the city. So far I have spent it watching “My Fair Lady” cuddled with Seda (love of my life) and cooking asparagus. The film has left us with the irresistible desire to every now and then scream “in Spain, in Spain” or “the plain, the plain” for no apparent reason and suddenly out of the blue.

Apart from that I have finally started reading Sarah Waters’ “Tipping the Velvet” which I was saving for some time for a languid, lazy days such as today. I have only read 30 pages but I already love it. It has been quite some time since I have read anything this beautifully written and I can’t remember the last time I have read anything this romantic. I am no doubt biased on this matter but it seems to me the representation of heterosexual romance is rather dead. It has either been told and depicted and described to death over the centuries or the institution of middle class marriage has totally demystified it. At best you have romantic comedies or melodramas but romance without the laughs or the tears have become somewhat embarrassing. May be because it lacks the ‘difficulty’ it once had after all it goes without saying that like all stories, romance also strives on obstacles and no doubt lesbian love by definition still has obstacles inherent to it. But then again as I said I am prejudiced and obviously lesbian romance must move me more than the hetero version.

Of course as much as the style and the story there is the period atmosphere the ‘costume drama’ aspect that fits in so well with the cross-dressing theme. Of course romance is at is pinnacle in old England in Jane Austen for instance and her screen adaptations (NOT the American version of Pride or Prejudice – awful awful film- but rather the classic BBC version and Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility) and no doubt Shakespeare who also has the cross-dressing themes but seems also to always have the tragedy and the comedy mingled in the romance.

I can’t wait to watch the BBC adaptation of Tipping the Velvet and I am sure I will keep jutting down my musings on the novel as I read on. I will keep on reading until it is time to go and watch “There Will be Blood” tonight with Seda and Gencay at Kanyon - the name of a fancy shopping mall, mayhap I’ll put a picture of it if I can figure out how it is done.

blog-phobia

I didn’t want to get self-reflexive right away but it is inevitable.
First of all let me tell you that I am doing something illegal by blogging at wordpress since it has been banned here in Turkey. I won’t bother to go into the details. Someone in one blog among thousands of its likes on wordpress supposedly insulted some big shot who proceeded to sue, won and therefore the entire wordpress access has been denied to the entire country. When you try to enter a page saying access is illegal pops up. Of course for those who know it is not at all difficult to go around which I did obviously. But most won’t know or could not be bothered. So I have elected to write on a place where most of my fellow countrymen won’t be able to read. I am not saying I did that on purpose as a kind of twisted “privacy setting’ I am just saying this must mean smtg. As no doubt deciding to write in English, which is neither my mother tongue, nor a language I can claim to have fully mastered. These are all ways in which I both write and don’t write.
Why? Well I am 38 which means all this is not as natural as it is to someone younger as Douglas Adam’s once said any technology that was around when you were born is natural, anything that came when you were 20 is exciting and new and anything that came when you are older than 20 is against the natural order of things. However this is an evasive answer and if it sufficed I would never have started blogging in the first place.
let’s try smtg else. My friend Alisa thinks bloging is self-indulgent, exhibitionistic and narcissistic. Although her area of expertise is documentaries and she likes what is known as “the first person documentary”, she sees no documentary value in blogging what so ever. Now me and alisa seldom agree on anything and never it seems enjoy the same things (weird friendship? not at all!). However I am aware that in this case as in many she represents an important part of my world (the world of intellectuals). Which means I am blogging knowing full well how it seems to people around me.
Then there is this chitchat that is quite in fashion nowadays about the celebrities like Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears and how it must be extremely difficult to put yourself out there as a target of so much negative energy. Showing yourself to the world always has an aspect of taking of your armour and becoming vulnerable. But not as much as hiding in the shadows, and trying to become inconspicuous even invisible, as anyone trying to “pass”, would attest.
Which of course brings me to the psychoanalytic reasons of blog-phobia. My paranoid mother’s biggest dread in the world has always been the written word. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have watched her methodically tear scarps of paper into microscopic bits before they are thrown into the dustbin, scraps of paper that more likely then not contained nothing more incriminating than the grocery list. In fact she tried to avoid committing anything to paper whenever she could. Think what she would think about bloging if she could grasp the concept. (need I bother to tell you she dismisses the entire concept of computers on principle) so no need to wonder why I am not using my “mother tongue”.
But the problem with all of the above: the ban, the intellectual criticism, the fear of becoming a magnet of negative energy and paranoia pure and simple is that they are all exaggerated and they actually buy the claim that you are reaching (or reaching out to) the entire world. More likely no one will read or only a few friends even a few secret admirers but in the end all acts of self-disclosure are pretty much about things that are more interesting for you than they are for others. I know for a fact that what my mom achieves with all this paranoia is to cling on to the belief that her life is smtg that would interest millions of people that people are willing to go through her trash just so they can have a glimpse of her private life.
When you blog the biggest risk you take is to see how unimportant you really are.

!f independant film festival, opening night

I will simply start “in medias res” (a pretentious word for “in the middle of things”) and just start telling you (whomever you might be) about the opening I attended last night.

!f Istanbul is an international independent film festival that is in its seventh year and is organised by a dear friend of mine, Serra. This is the thing about Istanbul: Intellectuals are an endangered species (as they no doubt are all over the world). Therefore we are all on first name basis and never use the word intellectual so as to remain inconspicuous and out of dangers way. God knows what Serra will think when she realises I called her an intellectual for instance. She might blush or get angry or laugh or feel flattered or insulted. I will be ranting on this subject quite a bit in the days to come so enough for now.

The event started with a cocktail at 19.30 followed by ‘a special music and video performance’ at 20.00, followed by the screening of the opening film “Lars and the Real Girl”. Me and my girlfriend Seda (love of my life) thought that the cocktail is expandable and had managed not to attend it last year. But then again a lot of our friends have found us a bit introverted for their taste. In any case this time Gencay (our dearest friend who is the very reason I have a blog!) said we had to attend since Inanc (his friend) had no intention of skipping the opportunity of free booze.

Although I made the very unwise decision of wearing the high heeled boots I had bought at Camden Town 2 weeks ago (they are nice as a fetish not as actual boots I have decided) we managed to get there quarter to eight. The gala event was at Beyoglu AFM which is a big cinema complex with 10 theatres that has recently been renovated. It was the first time I was seeing the place after its renovation. Renovations are weird things I can’t but the life of me understand which part of the old building has been turned into this new structure and everything becomes dreamlike. This is the 3rd version of this theatre I have seen and I am afraid all 3 have become jumbled up in my mind turning into one big Lynch theatre. Incidentally the last Lynch film Inland Empire will be shown at the festival which I have already seen on DVD. But I digress. I will have to learn to stay on topic if this blog thing is going to work.

The place was full to the brim with all sorts of notable personalities but since this is a diary rather than a gossip column I will only note those of my personal acquaintance. My fellow film critic Cuneyt was the first to say high though we managed to loose him in the crowd then we found Gencay, Inanc and Aykan who is an ex-student of mine. He is doing a video activism performance on LGBT (please don’t make me write lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual every time) issues next Friday as a part of the festival and we talked about that. I will be going to it so there will be more on this later.

Then I saw a very old friend Eren who is the editor in chief of the independent very hip and artsy fashion magazine “2’de bir’. We used to work at the same newspaper Gunes back in the very beginning of 1990. (Oh god we are old!) She said she saw Mine and they decided we 3 should meet (Macbeth’s witches) Mine is another friend who used to work at the same newspaper back then but now has become a writer. I seriously don’t know how many novels she has published (shame on me). Of course we saw Serra and congratulated her. She was stressing about the screening and praying nothing would go wrong. It is a shame one can’t simply start enjoying and quit stressing at that point (the point of no return) but I know the feeling. Then we saw Sevil who is my ex, and her wonderful sister Belgin. Gencay wanted to meet Sevil for quite some time now, so we got that out of the way but by then the performance was starting and we went in. We were late meaning the theatre was full and we had to sit at the front which I hate, while we stepped on toes to get seated I managed to chat with yet another friend Olgu whose arm was in plaster. Didn’t learn how that happened but managed to gossip about Neo the new film school that he used to work at and which has rapidly proved itself to be a huge disappointment.

Then the theatre went dark. The musical performance was by a group of two woman and one man one of the woman Selen is an ex student of mine and I have been meaning to go to one of her concerts for the past 2 years now but alas could never make it so this was the icing on the cake of events this night. The performance was great. I am so feed up with people who think it suffices to simply stand on stage and sing. Here we had a thought through and perfectly timed stage performance. The music was also nice and novel with room for improvement, though Seda was not as impressed. Then again music is her line and (I actually know next to nothing about it) therefore it is more difficult to impress her in that score. I am determined to go to Selen’s next concert.

Then came the film, which is a typical American independent film about a man who falls in love with a sex toy! The film was very sweet. Too sweet actually one could even claim that the filmmakers took a radical subject and managed to drawn it in honey and render it domestic. But it was fun to watch and that is all that I ask really. In fact that’s what I like about many of these independent films: you thoroughly enjoy yourself as you watch but forget them immediately, many have this ‘feel good’ quality the likes of which you used to find in the good old golden age of classical Hollywood.

Anyhow Inanc it seems was not impressed and asked me “why don’t they show ‘No Country For Old Man’ at the opening. is it because they don’t want anybody to watch it for free” and I said “well I guess it is not wise to show hard-to-swallow-films-that get-to-you at openings. you go with things that will make your invited guests feel good, especially the sponsors”. But of course there is more to it than just that. I mean it would be a misrepresentation to the festival with the latest, and in my opinion best to date, Cohen bros film. Most films in the festival are nothing like it. Most are much more modest than this Oscar nominated film, that might find a place for itself in the ‘best 10 films ever lists’; most are much more like Lars and the Real girl.

There was a party at The Hall (more about this new club later) and we meant to go. However my feet were killing me (I am not used to high heels and should know better when occasionally I take the fancy) so I said to Seda l’ets just go home and change and then go to the party’. After all it was 11.30 and a proper party doesn’t kick in until midnight. You see we live at Cihangir - the intellectual ghetto- (I have a mind to create a dictionary of sorts to explain these things to those of you who do not live in this city) very near to Beyoglu, which is the centre of night-life and cultural activities. But the walk home under snowfall discouraged us to go back out. After all clubbing and parties are for younger and single people. Since we are lucky to have found each other, we have better options like cuddling and gossiping or having wild sex for the rest of the night. Therefore we decided we could do without the party.