Awsome Movies

This weekend I saw several short films from the Boston Turkish Film Festival. The first one, which I did not get at first, was a short comedy with son teaching his Turkish mother how to say American actor’s names. The mother and son’s accents where so heavy that I didn’t get it until Portia explained what their where saying after words. This first film was short and comical. It was ok.

The second film almost made me cry, almost, I didn’t cry, dust got in my eye… any way there was no narrative and the first 5 minuets looked at two old men who would both walk very long distances to meet and play chest every day. They both live in small run down villages. One old guy had to cross a 6 lane highway to meet every day, and sure enough one day he did not show up and the other old guy waited all day for him. The movie ended by showing the missing old man dead on the side of the road, hit by a car, covered in news papers and traffic just driving by like nothing was wrong. This movie was very well shoot and was my favorite by far, it was very moving.

Another one I really like was the story about these people that live in a valley in the winter and all climb to the top of the mountain for the summer. They bring all their cattle too. Recently people have started driving up the new roads instead of making the 2 day hike. The older people all miss the hike but the young don’t seam to care. They showed old pictures of the whole village walking up, it looked beautiful. They all still have a huge festival on top of the mount and it seamed very weird to me. There are hundreds of people all dancing and playing and there is nothing up there except for a few people play instruments. That would never fly in America; people would look at these hundreds of people dancing and all holding hands and be like where are the rides, food stands, all the things to buy and parking? And why are they all holding hands? These people live so much simpler and are entertain so much simpler and enjoy the close company of each other. This move had many beautiful shots of the mountain and valley. This place where they live is so beautiful.

The last one was of daily life in a village. It showed a lot of people’s laundry drying outside and people walking around. These where some cool shots but over all I was not very interested in this movie.

I am really glade I went to the MFA to see these shorts, the two I liked the most ( the two old men and the one about the village in the valley) were really well done and really gave me a feel of life in these poor villages. In some ways these villagers are far richer then any American.