Yarasa Kuşu
14’ 05’’, 2020, Turkish (with English subtitles)
Story and editing: Gökçe İnce
Organization: Burcu Yalım, Öğünç Hatipoğlu, Gökçe İnce
Camera: Gökçe İnce, Tamer Giray
Sound: Öğünç Hatipoğlu
Subtitle translation: Yetkin Nural
Bats leaving their cave because of a dam construction becomes the talk of villagers. Rumors about these hard to see night birds start circulating in the village. This bird doesn’t know where it is going, doesn’t have a nest, flies non-stop, working at nights catching flies in the air and feeding itself… In The Bat Bird, Gökçe İnce revisits the footage she recorded at Balıkesir’s Sarnıç village in 2010; during a time where Corona virus – a virus that is assumed to originate from bats – is turning the ‘human world’ upside down. Inspired by Thomas Nagel’s 1974 paper, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’, İnce is telling a fairy tale. A fairy tale on the impossibility of human’s understanding of what it is to be a bat and how to find one’s way as a bat; even though bats are mammals just like humans. In The Bat Bird; the bat becomes a mythological character that evades human understanding and knowledge, escaping both vision and physical reach; while we observe humans from other animals’ gaze.
Gökçe İnce
İnce completed her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at Middle Eastern Technical University, and her master’s degrees in Industrial Design at METU as well as Cinema and Television at Bilgi University. She works as a director, editor and producer in the documentary field. Müezzin (Sebastian Brameshuber, KGP, 2009), My Child (Can Candan, Surela Film, 2013), Focus on Infinity (Jörg Burger, Michief Films, 2013) and Anadolu Kültür’s BAK (2012-2017) shorts are among the films İnce worked as an editor. She has directed the short documentaries; Your Movement is Free (2018) and The Sounds of Streets (2019). She gives video workshops to children and has a podcast called ‘Podcast with my dad’, which focuses on films taking place in space.
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 Gökçe İnce was realized.
