2023 - 68th Edition
Memory and utopia

BLACK HEAD

Korhan Yurtsever
Turkey
 - 1979

Cafer, a Turkish worker, moves his family from their Turkish village to Germany. He has always regarded Germany as the country of endless opportunities, but his new life there brings with it many unexpected difficulties. His wife becomes involved in the women’s movement and undergoes changes both outwardly and mentally based on the friends she makes there; the older son is lonely and doesn’t want to go to school; the daughter has to stay home and take care of her newborn brother.

Korhan Yurtsever

He was born in Istanbul (Turkey) in 1947. Already at the age of twenty, he began working in his uncle’s sound studio, and in the 70s he became an assistant director at Birsel Film. His debut film, ‘The Bad Spirits of the Euphrates’ (1978), won numerous awards at international festivals such as San Remo, Antalya, Varna or Chicago. At the personal invitation of the mayor of West Berlin, Dietrich Stobbe, he settled there to prepare and shoot his film ‘Black Head’ (1979). After the film was banned in 1980, he went into exile in Germany for six years before returning to Turkey, where he resumed his directing work with ‘Chain’ (1988). Unable to release that film in his native country, he faced censorship and began directing commercials, before returning to feature directing in 2015 with ‘You Left Me Desperate’.

DIRECTOR
Korhan Yurtsever
SCREENPLAY
Bülent Oran, Levent Ersin, Zehra İpşiroğlu, Korhan Yurtsever
CINEMATOGRAPHY
George Becker, Muzaffer Turan, Salih Dikişçi
EDITOR
Korhan Yurtsever
SOUND
Kutay Derin
PRODUCTION
Korhan Yurtsever
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Korhan Film
CAST
Betül Aşçıoğlu, Savaş Yurttaş, Cüneyt Kaymak, Özlem Güler, Macit Flordun, Bülent Oran, Gülsen Tuncer, Anna Kalde
RUNNING TIME
82 min.
TYPE
Largometraje
FORMAT
Color
YEAR OF PRODUCTION
1979
VERSION
O.V. in Turkish and German subtitled in English and Spanish.
COUNTRY
Turkey
CONTACT
Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art
Restoration by Arsenal - Institute of Film and Video Art in collaboration with bi’bak / SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA (2021-22)

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