Play it, Emin: Walking along the Russian Monument at Ayastefanos uses as a point of departure the actual historical event which signified the official start of national cinema in Turkey in 1914 and whose filmic documentation is lost.

I commissioned Karagoz master Emin Senyer to animate the demolition act of the non-preserved film, based on the following existing information material; three photos documenting the demolition and a description of the event by two different sources; the lieutenant-demolisher’s personal memoirs and newspapers’ announcements. On the left screen, the camera moves along the actual location (Florya, Istanbul suburb) where the destruction of the monument took place 100 years ago. On the right screen, the process of the building up and the rehearsal of Emin Senyer’s shadow theater reconstruction of the demolition act takes place.

CREDITS

Concept: Eleni Kamma
Master Craftsman & Shadow Puppeteer: Emin Senyer
Director of Photography: Boris Van Hoof
Editing: Inneke Van Waeyenberghe
Sound Design: Laszlo Umbreit
Script Montage and Editing: Tina Van Baren

Turkish to English Translation: Merve Unsal Research
Assistant: Gulsen D. Akbas

Play it, Emin: Walking along the Russian Monument at Ayastefanos forms part of the larger project Oh For Some Amusement!, which is supported by Mondriaan Fonds, NiMAC (Nicosia Municipal Arts Center), PiST/// Istanbul, and the Theater aan het Vrijthof, Maastricht. Oh For Some Amusement! is also participating project at the Sound-Image-Culture (SIC) workstation, Brussels.

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