2156) 'Festival On Wheels' To Entertain Movie Buffs In Four Cities

The 13th European Films Festival, a traveling event also known as the 'Festival on Wheels,' will kick off today with the Ankara leg, offering masterpieces by veteran directors to movie buffs in three Turkish cities before it crosses Turkey's borders with screenings in Bosnia and Herzegovina capital Sarajevo. Turkey's easternmost province Kars will be the second stop of the festival that will run through to Nov. 25 . .

ANKARA - Turkish Daily News

The 13th European Films Festival, a traveling event also known as the Festival on Wheels, will kick off today with the Ankara leg, offering masterpieces by veteran directors to movie buffs in three Turkish cities before it crosses Turkey's borders with screenings in Bosnia and Herzegovina capital Sarajevo. The festival will travel a distance of 5051 kilometres, showcasing 90 films from 26 different countries. It is organized jointly by the Ankara Association for Cinema Culture (ASKD), the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, the Kars Municipality, Aras Cargo and Statoil and Akman Holding.

The festival will run through to Nov. 25 and will first take place in Ankara, where the Büyülüfener Movie Theater in K?z?lay will host festival films from Nov. 2-8. Turkey's easternmost province Kars will be the second stop of the festival on Nov. 9-15, while the event will entertain moviegoers in Samsun on Nov. 17-20 and in Sarajevo on Nov. 21-25.

Kars this year will be the center of attraction of the festival, with a number of competitions and workshops scheduled in the city. The festival's international competition, the “Golden Goose,” will be held in Kars. The best film will be awarded 20,000 euros by the Kars Municipality while the second best film will be presented the “Silver Goose Award” and a 5,000 euros prize.The Association of Film Critics (SIYAD) Jury will also award the SIYAD Prize, a Bronze Goose.

Festival films

This year's festival will feature films in the categories of Special Screening: Michael Haneke, Turkish Cinema 2007, The Other: Hrant Dink, Special Screening: Cristian Nemescu, Absurd Films and European Panorama. The films to compete in the the Golden Goose International Film Competition are also among films to be shown in the event, which will also host three International Youth Organisations scheduled in Kars as well as ''Stories of Kars'' Short Film Script Competition.

Serbian director Srdan Golubovic's “The Trap,” Swedish Anders Nilsson's “When Darkness Falls,” Croatian director Ognjen Svilicic's “Armin,” as well as “The Class,” Estonian director Ilmar Raag's real-life inspired musing on high-school violence, “The Other Boy” from German director Volker Einrauch, the latest film from leading Romanian director Nae Caranfil, “The Rest is Silence” about the story of a director obsessed with making a film about the War of Independence against the Ottomans; Israeli director David Volach's Tribeca Film Festival winner, “My Father My Lord,” and Polish director Andrzej Jakimovski's “Tricks” will be competing in the Golden Goose International Film Competition.

“Egg,” the first instalment in a proposed trilogy from Turkish filmmaker Semih Kaplanoglu which won critical acclaim at Cannes will be among the Golden Goose contenders as well.

Legendary Turkish film director and actor Y?lmaz Güney's "Yol" (The Way) will also be screened in the event. A 30-minute footage, which was never used in the film, will be screened at this year's festival for the first time, 25 years after its production. Donat Keusch, the Swiss producer of the film, and Elizabeth Waelchli, who edited the film together with Y?lmaz Güney, will also be coming to Ankara and Kars as guests of the festival.

Festival audiences will have the chance to see a selection of works by Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke, one of the most nonconformist filmmakers of European cinema, in the Special Screening: Michael Haneke section. The “Funny Games,” “The Time of the Wolf,” and “The Seventh Continent,” are among the films to be featured at the event.

Screening for Hrant Dink

The Turkish Cinema 2007 section will include Turkish-German film director Fatih Ak?n's “The Edge of Heaven,” Reis Çelik's “The Refugee” and Handan Ipekçi's “Hidden Faces” while festival audiences will find a section titled ''The Other,'' dedicated to Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink who was murdered in January, featuring films about the problems of living in a different country.

This year's festival dedicated a special section to Romanian director Cristian Nemescu, who died tragically in a car accident last year. Director's short films including “C Block Story,” and “Mihai and Cristina,” will be shown as part of the festival program.

One of the sections audiences will perhaps enjoy most is the Absurd Films section. Film enthusiasts will have the chance to sample a selection of absurd films from around the world during the festival. The European Panorama section meanwhile gathers together a multitude of international award-winning short films.

The festival's another initiative, the ''Stories of Kars'' Short Film Script Competition will give short film directors the chance to shoot a film with a professional cast and crew. Young film directors will develop projects in workshop led by director Zeki Demirkubuz.

Young filmmakers from 19 European countries will also attend the event and produce eight short films based on the novel “Kar” (Snow) by last year's Nobel laureate for literature, Orhan Pamuk, as part of the Snow Film Production Workshop.

The European Films Festival, which is a member of the European Coordination of Film Festivals (ECFF), was first organized in 1995 with the aim of showing Turkish and European films to film lovers in various cities. Over the last 10 years, the festival has visited Ankara, Bursa, Çanakkale, Diyarbak?r, Greece's Drama, Georgia's Tbilisi, Azerbaijan's Baku, Eskis,ehir, Gaziantep, Istanbul, I.zmir, Kars, Kayseri, Malatya, Mersin and Van. November 2, 2007