Ruzgarin Hatiralari [Memories of the Wind] by Ozcan Alper (review)

Kadercan / Film Reviews   101 of immigrants from the Middle East in Detroit at the turn of the twentieth century. Her work appears in publications including the International Journal of Islamic Architecture and the Journal of Urban History. doi:10.2979/jims.1.2.10 Endnotes 1. Laila Al-Arian, “TV’s most Islamophobic Show,” Salon, December 15, 2012. Accessed December 10, 2016. www.salon.com/2012/12/15/tvs_most_ islamophic_show/ and Laura Durkay, “’Homeland’ is the most bigoted show on television, The Washington Post, October 2, 2014. Accessed December 10, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/02/ homeland-is-the-most-bigoted-show-on-television/ 2. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 3. Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 1. 4. Jack G. Shaheen, “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies A People,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 588, Islam: Enduring Myths and Changing Realities (July, 2003), 171–193. Ruzgarin Hatiralari [Memories of the Wind] Narrative, 2015, 122 minutes, Directed by Ozcan Alper Released on the occasion of the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, Ruzgarin Hatiralari [Memories of the Wind] tells the story of the ongoing oppression of an ancient people through the life of one dissident intellectual. Beyond its central plot, the film embodies a universal story of displacement, seeking refuge, and questioning one’s identity in exile. In this powerfully choreographed thriller, the dissident Armenian-Turkish poet, painter, and journalist Aram (Onur Saylak) tries to find refuge in a house across the Soviet Turkish border during the 1940s. The auteur-director Ozcan Alper deals with the Armenian genocide and Turkey’s treatment of its minorities in an almost Tarkovskian cinematographic style with long takes, slow pacing and metaphorical imagery; thus transcending typical approaches to understanding exile and forced migration in the Middle East.1 Memories of the Wind approaches the theme of displacement in a global context,documentingthepoliticallandscapeof1940sTurkeyandSovietRussia, by focusing on individual characters’ interior experience with displacement. In 102  Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, Vol. 1.2 this way, Memories of the Wind presents a poetic historical narrative. The film’s soundtrack combines with meditative cinematography to capture the foggy landscape of the Black Sea region and convey the emotional trauma of our protagonist, Aram. William Faulkner’s words in the film’s opening, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” underline the universality of the theme of displacement that shapes the lives of all the main characters in this film. Memories of the Wind is one of few films to examine the impact of the capital levy (varlik vergisi), one of the most notorious and drastic Turkification policies imposed on minorities in Turkey. The government ultimately used it as a measure for expropriating the non-Muslim minorities, especially Armenians, and diminishing their economic power. The film begins in 1943, one year after the capital levy was enacted in the Turkish parliament. Aram is a tragic subject of the policy and falling into deep debt for taxes owed on his small printing house.Thesearetaxesthathecannotimaginepayingastheyfarexceedthevalue of his business. Facing imprisonment and danger to his life for his outspoken criticism of the Turkish government’s ties with Berlin, he is forced to flee the country.2 Aram escapes to a remote mountain house in the forest across the SovietGeorgia border, where Mikhail (Mustafa Ugurlu) and his young wife, Mariam (Sofya Khandemirova), give him shelter. The rainy and foggy atmosphere of the area is central to the imagery throughout the film, and this atmosphere has different meanings for all three characters in connection with their respective pasts. Aram, who is supposed to wait for the arrival of his comrade Rasih (Murat Daltaban) who is another Armenian with connections in the Soviet Union, becomes more and more agitated with life in the woods. The imagery of his life in this village and the spring rain remind him of his mother’s face, which he has been trying to remember all his life. Through flashbacks, particularly images of his mother in a remote foggy place reminiscent of the Black Sea region where he awaits his destiny, he recalls a painful past that claimed the lives of...