Li Kûçeyên Diyarbekirê… (Diyarbakır Sokaklarında…)
14’ 09’’, 2020, Kurdish (with English & Turkish subtitles)
Director: Özkan Küçük
Camera: Özkan Küçük, Savaş Boyraz
Editing: Özkan Küçük
Music: Mustafa Biber
Script and Narration: Özkan Küçük
Turkish-Kurdish translation: Özkan Küçük
Turkish-English subtitle translation: Yetkin Nural
In Walking the Streets of Diyarbakır (Li Kûçeyên Diyarbekirê…), Özcan Küçük goes back to the footage that was recorded for an unfinished film during the quarantine days. This footage, which was recorded between 2010-2012, in 2018 and 2020, reflects different periods of the city (as well as various political ruptures in Turkey and their consequences); and opens up a space for Küçük to contemplate on his relationship with Diyarbakır. Walking the Streets of Diyarbakır is the film of a walk, a long walk in the streets of Suriçi (oldtown), which is destroyed after the armed conflicts in 2015. A tripod without a camera waits at the end of a street; as Küçük says: “My camera… You also shut your eyes to these streets.” As in every film on a city, Walking the Streets of Diyarbakır is as much about the streets as it is about the will to document the history of the streets. It borrows words, ideas and dreams from the signs, writings on the walls, doors of houses, sounds of the streets; and it thinks with the city. It is a film about a void that is felt even more strongly in the empty streets at the times of the pandemic. It is an imaginary stroll in the streets of Diyarbakır; a letter to a lover, to the love of freedom or to Sur.
Özkan Küçük
Born in Dersim in 1975, Küçük did his bachelor’s degree at Yıldız University in Environmental Engineering and later finished his master’s degree In Marmara University’s Radio-Television and Cinema department with a thesis on Turkey’s Cinema in the 90’s. He worked in every field of cinema at Mezopotamya Cinema in Istanbul. He also wrote on cinema in newspapers. During 2003 and 2004, he was the coordinator of Diyarbakır Cinema Workshop. He took place in the foundation of Cegerxwin Cinema Academy in Diyarbakır, giving lectures on cinema. He is also among the founders of Filmamed and Short-Wave film festivals. Besides his fiction short Pepûk (2013), Küçük produced various documentaries, including Years later, Here is Diyerbekir (2003) and Li Serxaniyên Diyarbekiré (On the Rooftops of Diyarbakır, 2005).
This video is produced for Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema’s Looking Outside series. Following the first screening of the video, a live conversation (in Turkish) with Özkan Küçük was realized.
