SALT Cinema Begins: European Cities and Stories in the 90s
SALT plays an important role in our city’s cultural and art life through various events. Recently, they are preparing to meet cinema lovers with a very special selection with SALT Cinema. The screenings are going to be between October 2 and November 20, every Wednesday at 19.00, free of charge at the Nazım Hikmet Culture and Art Center in Oran. SALT Cinema is prepared within the scope of Our Many Europes project of European museum confederation L’Internationale, and it follows the story of Europe in the 1990s. The audience will be the guest of the lives of Europeans with eight films in the selection.
Let’s take a quick trip down the memory lane… In the eve of the 21st century, just before the new millennium; the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union dissolved, and Europe entered a process of transformation. The Maastricht Treaty, which became effective in 1993, led the way to the formulation of policies for a monetary union, European citizenship, as well as other developments in justice and home affairs. While the process that structures the current face of the EU and expands the freedoms of individuals after the Cold War continued, wars took place in Europe, and countries were divided. The cities that were in Iron Curtain countries and the life in those cities have been rebuilt, consumption frenzy has taken over. The history of this transformation bears the clues of today’s world.
In his book Cinema and History, Marc Ferro says, “… the film is History, whether it is the image of truth or not, whether it is document or fiction, real or wholly imaginary intrigue. Our postulate is: something that has not occurred (and why not, in the same way in which things have occurred), people’s beliefs, intentions, imaginative; it is History as much as History”. The films and documentaries in the selection bring together facts and fictions about the European cities of the 1990s and convey the history with the language of cinema. And their story is not so far away from our own story.
Within the program we will witness the following stories: the life of a working-class family in North London during the Thatcher period, a criminal organization in the dark streets of Naples, the journey of a transport truck from Kosovo to Belgrade, the reconstruction of Berlin after the fall of the Wall, Kolya that gets lost in between borders of three cities and many more… This viewing experience will also convey daily life in the 90s Europe and present individual and collective projections of recent history. We will witness the new cities under the “global cities” and “branding” labels in the post-Cold War period. This will also allow us to question the place of Europe’s 90s heritage in today’s world.
SALT Cinema Program
The October program of SALT Cinema, which tells city stories from Serbia to England and from Italy to Transnistria:
Life Is Sweet (1990) October 2, 19.00
1990’s movie Life Is Sweet is the first international project of the director. In this fun and melancholic film about the dilemmas of daily life, modest dreams, food, friendship, and love; director Mike Leigh refuses to romanticize the traditional family life, revealing his true tastes with a subtle approach. The film presents a melancholic, yet funny, intimate portrait of a working-class family in a suburban neighborhood just north of London. The family’s father, Andy (Jim Broadbent), buys a truck and dreams of a shabby wheeled restaurant. His wife Wendy (Alison Steadman) started to work as a waitress at a friend’s new restaurant. Natalie (Claire Skinner), one of the family’s opposing and character twins, is an apprentice mechanic, opposed to gender rules. Nicola (Jane Horrocks), on the other hand, can be described as a nymphomaniac, and she is a Marxist.
Camorra (2018) October 9, 19.00
In the documentary film 2018, Napolean writer and director Francesco Patierno focused on the origins of criminality in and around Naples. The film, which will meet the audience in Ankara on 9 October, looks into the dark world of organized crime organization Camorra from a sociological and anthropological perspective. The film uses archives, newscasting, interviews and reports of the Italian radio and television station RAI-TV. In Camorra, which is immersive and somewhat depressing, the foundations of Naples’ violent turmoil are also explored.
Teret (2018) October 16, 19.00
Director Ognjen Glavonić’s film that made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival reveals the moral and social effects of war by breaking a 20-year silence; it points out how a country’s past mistakes are inevitably burdened by future generations. In 1999, when NATO launched an air raid against the Slobodan Milosevic regime, Teret, is burdened with recent history with the gloomy Balkan landscape in the background. The film begins with Vlada (Leon Lucev), a middle-aged truck driver, entering a warehouse in shattered Kosovo to pick up the mysterious cargo he has commissioned to transport Serbia’s capital Belgrade. The rules of this transport business are simple: stick to the timeline, do not ask questions and keep your cargo locked at all times.
Babylon Berlin (2001) 23 October, 19.00
Berlin Babylon, accompanied by the music of the legendary industrial group Einstürzende Neubauten, was screened in 2001 as the opening film for the Panorama Section of the Berlin International Film Festival. The film, which will be of particular interest to architects and city planners, rises among the dust clouds left behind by the Berlin Wall, at a time that was necessary to repair the texture and to unite the divided city. Hubertus Siegert reflects the horror of destruction and the magic of change at Babylon in Berlin; Real estate, money, and power are the themes in this movie.
Extinção (2018) October 30, 19.00
In Eastern Europe, which is called “Stalin’s chessboard”, our hero Kolya starts a journey from the Transnistria, which is not recognized by the member states of the United Nations. Portuguese director Salomé Lamas’ black and white film Extinção moves between fiction and reality, examining the transformed Eastern European geography through identity and belonging.
SALT Cinema screenings are open to everyone, for further information and contact information on subtitles, please contact: salt.ankara@saltonline.org
