AFTER 21 YEARS

Can Candan’s ‘Walls’ to be screened in Germany on the 31st anniversary of reunification

For his film “Duvarlar – Mauern – Walls”, documentary filmmaker and academic Can Candan asked Berliners from Turkey about the effects of Germany's reunification on their daily lives. The documentary will now be screened again in the country after 21 years.

İstanbul

Can Candan’s ‘Walls’ to be screened in Germany on the 31st anniversary of reunification

* Credit: Ali Aktaş

Click to read the article in Turkish

Dismissed from Boğaziçi University by appointed rector Naci İnci, academic and documentary filmmaker Can Candan's film "Duvarlar – Mauern – Walls" (2000) will be screened again in Germany as part of two events on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the country's reunification.

In 1991, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which had divided the city from 1961 to 1989, and on the 30th anniversary of the guest worker agreement between Turkey and Germany, Can Candan interviewed the Berliners from Turkey about their experiences around the reunification of Germany and the effects of reunification on their daily lives.

Maxim Gorki Theater in Germany's now-unified capital city of Berlin will screen Candan's "Duvarlar – Mauern – Walls" as part of its Mauern 3.0 program on German Unity Day tomorrow (October 3).

The film screening will be followed by a conversation with Candan.

* Credit: Maxim Gorki Theater

In late October, "Duvarlar – Mauern – Walls" will also be screened as part of the "... oder kann das weg? Fallstudien zur Nachwende" (...or can that go away? Case studies on post-reunification) exhibition, which will take place in Berlin from September 16 to November 7, 2021.

Having debuted in Germany 21 years ago, the documentary film has recently been added to the collection of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb (Federal Agency for Civic Education), which offers free access to films by all schools, and to the collection of the Cologne-based Documentation Center and Museum on Migration in Germany (DOMİD).

"Hardly any other document can express the views and analyzes of Berlin migrants in such a condensed form at the time of the 'Wende', shortly after the 're-unification' of Eastern and Western Germany," says the DOMİD, introducing Candan's work to its audience.

Academic and documentary filmmaker Can Candan saw a news report covering the "concerns of Berliners from Turkey about rising racism" in the country while he was a student in the US in 1989 and made his "Duvarlar – Mauern – Walls", his first feature-length documentary film.

About the documentary

Duvarlar-Mauern-Walls, is a trilingual (Turkish, German, English) documentary about a moment in the recent history of the largest minority in re-unified, post-Wall Berlin, the immigrant community from Turkey, as witnessed by a Turkish filmmaker from the United States. In the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the two Germanys, 1991 was the year when anti-foreigner violence in Germany was becoming too visible to ignore. 1991 was also the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the migration from Turkey to Germany. In this film, immigrants from Turkey talk about their past, present, and possible future, reflecting on what the opening of the Wall and the unification of the two Germanys meant for them and how increasing hostilities are affecting their sense of belonging in the new Germany. Duvarlar-Mauern-Walls, is the view from the periphery by a filmmaker who is simultaneously an insider and an outsider.

* Source: https://duvarlarmauernwalls.blogspot.com/

About Can Candan

Documentary filmmaker, academic.

He has a BA from Hampshire College (USA) in film and video, and an MFA from Temple University (USA) in film and media arts. As a filmmaker since 1989, his works have been screened internationally at festivals, conferences, schools, universities, in galleries, cinemas, and on television. He has taught film courses and workshops, both in universities and media education centers in the United States and in Turkey. He is a founding member of docIstanbul Center for Documentary Studies, which organized the 2010 Visible Evidence International Documentary Studies Conference at Bogazici University in Istanbul.

During the academic year, he teaches on documentary history, theory and criticism; documentary cinema in Turkey and mentors film-related projects and theses. In 2016, he published (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK) an edited book entitled "Kurdish Documentary Cinema of Turkey" with Suncem Koçer (PhD) and has been collaborating with her on a new edited book entitled "Documentary Cultures in Turkey." He is also working on a new book (in Turkish) in collaboration with Sonay Ban (PhD), about the history of documentary cinema in Turkey.

He has three feature length documentary films in international distribution. He is also developing and fundraising for his new feature documentary film entitled "Nuclear alla Turca" on the nuclear stories of Turkey.

In 2005, he resigned as the chair of the film and television department of Istanbul Bilgi University after the university administration refused to take action on a sexual harassment case and he was subsequently fired. In 2012, he helped establish Boğaziçi University's Sexual Harassment Prevention Commission (CİTÖK).

In 2014, he resigned as the head of the jury of the national documentary film competition at the Antalya International Film Festival, Turkey, calling attention to the censorship scandal regarding a documentary about the Gezi Park Uprising.

In January 2016, he was one of the 2,212 signatories of the Academics for Peace declaration "We will not be a party to this crime", calling on the Government of Turkey to end the violence against the Kurdish population and resolve the conflict through peaceful means. Along with other signatories, he was accused of "propagandizing for a terrorist organization" and tried in a heavy penal court under the anti-terror law, facing a minimum jail sentence of 15 months. Following the Constitutional Court's ruling in favor of freedom of expression in 2019, he was acquited of all charges.

He continues to actively advocate for peace, conflict-resolution, human rights, freedom of speech and expression as well as environmental protection.

He is the academic advisor of Boğaziçi University's LGBTI+ student club, which was closed following the appointment of a rector by a Presidential decree.

Recently, he has received The Turkish Film Critics Association's 2021 Honor Award.

*Source: Can Candan Academia account

(HA/SD)