Film festival to pay tribute to Istanbul

Istanbul has acted as a bridge between Asia and Europe for centuries. The sixth annual Turkish Film Festival will focus on this dual heritage with the theme “Istanbul: One city, two continents.” The city, which saw empires rise and fall around it, will be at the center of this year’s four movies.

“It’s good for the community to share the diversity in Bloomington,” said IU graduate student Ihsan Topaloglu, one of the festival’s organizers.

Topaloglu, a native of Istanbul, said spending the first 25 years of his life there gave him a great appreciation and love for the city, which is home to more than 10 million people. He described Istanbul as “one of the capitals of culture in Europe.”

Topaloglu said the festival’s planning committee tried to choose films in which many people would be interested, including a modern romantic drama, a comedy of errors, a documentary of Istanbul’s eclectic music scene and a drama set during the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century.

All of the films have one thing in common besides Istanbul, Topaloglu said. All four have English subtitles.

The festival is supported by the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center, the IU Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies Chair and the IU Turkish Student Association.

Following Saturday’s screening of “Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul” will be a peasant disco at 902’s Nightclub on Kirkwood Avenue.

“It’s an international dance party,” said IU graduate student and disco organizer Leah Tannen.

Rather than playing traditional folk music, though, Tannen said attendees should expect “ethno-pop” — modern music from Russia, Latin America, the Balkans, India and more.

“More or less, it’s from all over the place,” she said.
As the Peasant Disco’s MySpace page put it, “THIS AIN’T YOUR BABUSHKA’S POST-SOVIET DISKOTEKA!”