Women's Films Festival Takes on the Military Coup

International Flying Broom Women's Film Festival begins for the twelfth time with the opening ceremony held in Ankara yesterday.

Singer Rojin was the hostess of the ceremony, where actress Suna Selen was given the award of honor while director Yeşim Ustaoğlu and art director Zepür Hanımyan received the Bilge Olgaç Achievement Award.

"It's exciting to organize a women's film festival" Selen Doğan from the festival's organization told bianet. "Women's cinema has a different language but it's not a bitter, pitiful as thought. Women reflect their lives, problems and joys at the wide screen."

The festival program includes scores, which deal with issues ranging from marriage to the Middle East problem. 81 directors from across 26 countries participate at the festival with 90 films. This year's main theme is "80s". Festival coordinator Halime Güner noted that women were subjected to torture and bore difficulties after the military coup in 1980 but they survived and continued the struggle.

Minister of culture and Tourism Ertuğrul Günay gave a speech at the awards ceremony. "The festival's theme is significant," he said. "We should never forget what has happened in the 80s. They were the darkest years of Turkey's history, which we still try to get even with." During his speech one women from the audience protested Günay.

One of the important side events of this year's festival is an exhibition of women's letters written during the era of the coup. Doğan expressed her hope that this exhibition is a beginning to document the past, which would result in a museum on the era.

A jury, consisting of Ayşegül Devecioğlu, Gülden Treske, Halime Güner, Latife Tekin and Umut Tümay Arslan chose the letters at the exhibition, which will stay open untill May 18.(BÇ/AGÜ)

For more information, please visit the festival's official web site.