Şu An Okunan
Street Solidarity

Street Solidarity

Street Solidarity
15’ 43’’, Turkish (with English subtitles)
Camera and Editing: Haydar Taştan
Subtitle translation: Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş

In the first days of Coronavirus breakout in Turkey, a digital poster appeared on social media walls and WhatsApp groups: “If you need support, reach out to us. We are your neighbors in Kadıköy.” Kadıköy Solidarity Network is one of the local initiatives that has taken action to help people within the high risk group with their needs during the pandemic. In Street Solidarity, Haydar Taştan takes his camera to streets with this group. Taştan doesn’t only learn how the network came to be through interviews, he also catches them “at work”: while they are cooking, getting organized, figuring out confusions, discussing, finding an address or listening to music. Street Solidarity expose the realization of the word “solidarity”, which we often see on posters that circulate from person to person.

Haydar Taştan
Visual story teller. Taştan started off his career as a photo journalist. He worked with Nar Photos for a period and created photo-stories. He wrote and directed a short film called Cengiz (2020). Taştan believes in the power of images without explanations and keeps working on photography, video and film productions with this approach.

This film is produced for Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema’s Looking Outside series. Following the first screening of the video, a live conversation (in Turkish) with Haydar Taştan was realized.