Mavi Boncuk |
Hive 2019 ‘Kovan’ Directed by Eylem Kaftan[1]
Fiction, Turkish; English sub., Turkey, 2019, Colour, 93’
Director: Eylem Kaftan
Producer: Canol Balkaya, Eylem Kaftan
Screenplay: Eylem Kaftan
DoP: Serdar Ünlütürk
Editing: Erkan Erdem
Cast: Meryem Üzerli, Feyyaz Duman, Hakan Karsak
Synopsis
Ayşe returns to her hometown in northeastern Turkey to nurse her gravely ill mother. Before she dies, Ayse’s mother tells her that she will leave Ayse her much loved bee hives to manage. Ayse’s modern life has moved her away from the mountains of her childhood – a life in which the bees and their honey were central. But she puts her city life on hold to manage the bees, which provide a distraction from her grief. Ayse slowly starts to work with the local bee keeper to manage the hives but finds the lessons of her childhood are buried deep and the hives are more difficult to manage than she remembers. Ayse’s failure to pay needful attention to local advice sees her mothers bee hives seriously damaged, if not lost forever. What’s more a Caucasian bear becomes a real threat to her hives and her life.
[1] Eylem Kaftan is a journalist and filmmaker based in İstanbul, Turkey. Kaftan completed a B.A. in Philosophy at Boğaziçi University . She completed an M.A in film and video at York University in 2002, where she worked as a teaching assistant and wrote her thesis on the identity crisis in post-1980 Turkish cinema. Her first documentary, Faultlines, investigates the aftermath of the earthquake which hit Turkey in 1999. It won Best Short Film and the Jury Prize at the Planet Indie Film Festival in Toronto. Eylem then wrote and directed Vendetta Song[*] (2005) produced with DLI Productions in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada. This film about her personal journey into the honour-killing of her aunt in Turkey has received several awards including CIDA Prize for Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs; the Quebec Film Critics Association Award; Best Documentary
It was broadcast on Vision TV and Télé-Québec and has received several awards including CIDA Prize for Best Canadian Documentary on International Development at Hot Docs; the Quebec Film Critics Association Award for Best Medium Length Documentary; Best Documentary, Calgary International festival; and Best Documentary, Female Eye Film Festival.
Her third documentary Bledi, This is Our Home tells the story of the non-status Algerians in Canada.
Eylem has contributed to several Canadian documentaries on social and political issues ranging from immigration and women’s rights to mental illness and culture shock.
Eylem is also working on her new documentary on Kurdish youth.
In 2010, Kaftan made a documentary series for Aljazeera documentary channel, called the Dreamcatchers.
Between 2011-2013 she worked for Al Jazeera Turkish and produced several short documentaries and three 44-minute films, which were shown at Al Jazeera English channel. The Passion and Penalty is a film about the matchfixing scandal in Turkish football. Sarajevo, My Love is (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmuqWmALnjoa) a film about a Serbian general who defended Sarajevo during the siege of the city. Seeing isn't Everything which is about four blind people living in İstanbul. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9KsI5SSmnk
In 2014 Kaftan produced short docs Al Jazeera Plus channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O69_tFa5K9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV2yC-SjD5s
She made The emptiness in me, which is about three non-Turkish sufis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dEJC79WHGM
She also worked as a presenter for a TV series for TRT Documentary on ‘urban farmers’, called Biçiftlik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDEWpOSfvDo
Her latest film is about the massacre in Rabia hospital in Egypt called Massacre in Rabia made for Al Jazeera English https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BEp3hZl69I
Kaftan also works for the national newspaper Vatan as a freelance writer.
[*] Vendetta Song NFB LINK
Eylem Kaftan 2005 | 52 min
This short documentary follows Montreal filmmaker Eylem Kaftan as she travels to Turkey in an attempt to unravel the 30-year-old mystery of her aunt Guzide's murder. As she searches for clues and closure, she encounters antiquated customs in a Kurdish culture she's never known. She knows that her aunt was the victim of a senseless vendetta killing and as she ventures from village to village she pieces together the woman’s final days and closes in on the identity of her killer.