New Kurdish movie released

"Blackboard" movie wins Jury's Special Award at Cannes, will be screened with effect from
Sept. 21 

 Turkish Daily News 
September 11, 2001

Following the release of the Kurdish movie "A Time for Drunken Horses" in Turkey, a
22-year old Iranian director called Samira Makhmalbaf has made a movie called
"Blackboard", which is going to be screened in Turkey with effect from Sept. 21, the
Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. Samira is the daughter of renowned Iranian movie
director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who entered the 1999 Cannes Film Festival with the short
film "Apple". The movie "Blackboard" is a feature length production and won the Jury's
Special Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000.

The movie describes how people living on the Iran-Iraq border smuggle goods and try to stay
alive following the massacre at Halabjah. The distributor of the movie in Turkey is the
owner of Belge Film Sebahattin Cetin. Recalling the controversy over the Kurdish movie "A
Time for Drunken Horses", which had won the Golden Camera award at Cannes in 2000,
Cetin said they received permission from the Ministry of Culture to screen the movie in
Turkey.

Cetin said the Cannes board approved the movie not by looking at its language but at the
message it gave and at the effects it would have on adults and children alike. "We did not
take these movies to Cannes because they were in Kurdish. They can all be considered
benchmarks in world cinema. We think they are world class movies. We decided to let
Turkish people see them," he said.

Noting that Kurdish movies and music was no longer banned in Turkey since 1991, Cetin
said: "Turkey is heading towards the EU. You cannot get anywhere with a stone age
mentality. Let them look at the message in the movie and its artistic value rather than getting
all hot and bothered because of its language."
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