First cut of ‘dark comedy’ Kısmet in the pipeline
A NEW short film about a Turkish Cypriot mother and son faced with the “impossible duty” of carrying out their late husband and father’s wish to be cremated is to be completed by the end of next month, it has been announced.
The first cut of Kısmet, a “dark comedy” which was shot in Geçitkale in November, has been completed on the island with editing and post-production to be handled in Holland, scriptwriter and co-director Doğuş Özokutan Çiftçioğlu said.
“The productions on the island are always about the ‘Cyprus problem’, which is becoming overwhelming,” Mrs Çiftçioğlu said.
“That’s why I wanted to make films about other aspects of life . . . I like to write and direct dark comedies.”
Mrs Çiftçioğlu said she and her husband, fellow director Vasvi Çiftçioğlu, had put together an “international team” to produce the short, including Dutch director of photography Pieter Verburg, who had previously worked with the couple on their internationally acclaimed short, Random Attempts.
“I wanted work with . . . Verburg because I like his vision and we became a good team by shooting Random Attempts,” she said.
“For Kısmet, I organised a team that I can work easily in. The team has a vitally important role in film-making but it is hard to put a team together because of some ‘gaps’ in the film industry [in North Cyprus].”
Mrs Çiftçioğlu said her crew — who shot the film with a top-ofthe-range RED 8K digital camera, “just like in Hollywood” — had also encountered difficulties in acquiring the necessary equipment to shoot the film and that some items had to be imported.
She praised sponsors Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) for providing financial backing for Kısmet after she and her husband had produced Random Attempts from their own funds.
“We do not shoot movies for money,” she continued. “Short films do not make money anyway. We can’t sell them to TV [stations] or [cinemas] because of insufficient audience numbers.
“The development of sponsorship is linked to an increase in production, so these are important steps which could keep the [TRNC] film industry alive. What EMU did is really important.”
Meanwhile Mrs Çiftçioğlu said Random Attempts would be soon be available to watch online free of charge.
The film has won three international awards since it premiered in April 2015; two from the USA and one from Brazil, while it has featured at more than 40 international festival screenings in 23 different countries, including those used as qualifying events for the Oscars.