MURAT DÜZGÜNOĞLU / DIRECTOR

Murat Düzgünoğlu was born in Istanbul in 1969. He received his education at Mimar Sinan and Marmara Universities, Fine Art Faculty Cinema and TV division. He has worked in diverse parts of the cinema in TV market in Turkey. In the course of his study, Murat Düzgünoğlu filmed a 35mm short film called, 'Ayrilik'. This was chosen to be included at the Antalya Altın Portakal İnternational Film Festival's competition division. This film has also been invited to the Montpelier  Mediterranean Film Festival  in France. In 2005 he shot  a documentary about the contemporary figurative painter, Orhan Taylan. Murat Düzgünoğlu directed a TV series for the national TV channel, Star TV in 2006. This series is called 'Ümit Milli' and isprodced by Istanbul Mass Medya Company. The following year, he directed another  TV series for another national channel, Kanal 7. The name of the production company is Esra Film and the series was called 'Şifacı'. In addition, he has also shot 10 other television films for different TV channels. There are still two of his feature film's scenarios waiting to be actualized.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

The people of a small town in Turkey, hostage to the struggle for survival and geographical constraints, search albeit fumblingly for a way out. In a place like this, people tend to think their lives haven't changed for a long time and doubt whether they ever will. Having reached this realisation, they look upon any change that confronts them, any offbeat or interesting incident, any new face as the potential for breaking this provincial monotony and embrace it with open arms. This manner of getting interested always brings with it the possibility for some kind of incident or a story with more artistic expression. In the end, it is inevitable for an event or figure new to a small and dreary town to be the building blocks of this story; and this inevitability paves the way for fantastic and extraordinary things. I should make it clear that I set out from the sense that these fantastic and extraordinary things sometimes constituted reality itself. All the way through the film, for example, I based the story of the cow that escaped from the municipal abattoir on this fantastic reality. Leaving aside the fantastic elements of the story, I think the cow's escape drove the people of the town to certain ontological conclusions on matters like pride, obstinacy and anger. It's my belief that pride - even if it is the salt of life - creates incomprehension and, in the wake of this, despair. Then anger. The idea of incomprehension manifests itself in the imam's search for a face that looks like the dead little girl. And likewise in the situation of the mentally deficient girl, who has a shop rented for her so she can watch the passers-by on the street through a chink in the shutters. The basis of my argument here is that pride has gradually ceased to be one of the fundamental characteristics making human beings human and become the first and crudest reaction to any run-of-the-mill happening.