MUAMMER BRAV
Film critic
The editor and the presenter of “Hayatım Sinema“ TV programme, Muammer Brav is a graduate of Istanbul University Department of Economics and has a PhD in industrial design. While still studying, he has coordinated Istanbul Film Festival for six years. Muammer Brav’s interviews are being published in various magazines and newspapers, alongside his movie and film festival reviews.
ALPHAN EŞELİ
Director
New York Institute of Technology graduate Alphan Eşeli won the prestigious Kristal Elma “Başarı Belgesi” for Best Director in 2006. The next year, he was a finalist in the London Advertising Awards and the New York International Awards. Currently based in Istanbul, he splits his time between directing TV commercials and lensing fashion campaigns, as well as working on his debut feature film. Alphan Eşeli is also the co-founder of ISTANBUL’74.
COURTNEY LOVE
Musician & Actress
Courtney Love is an American vocalist, lyricist, musician and actress, perhaps best known as frontwoman and rhythm guitarist for alternative rock band Hole.
Love sought to form a rock band from an early age, and founded Hole in 1989 at the age of 25. The band released several albums in the 1990s, debuting with Pretty on the Inside, an underground hit, especially in the United Kingdom. The band followed with two highly acclaimed albums, Live Through This and Celebrity Skin.
Love also starred in several films throughout the ’90s, most notably The People Vs. Larry Flynt directed by Milos Forman, for which she won a Golden Globe nomination. In 2009, Love reformed Hole with new members, and released the group’s fourth album, Nobody’s Daughter in 2010. Rolling Stone magazine once described her as “the most controversial woman in the history of rock”. In early 2011, Courtney Love was made a Non-Executive Officer For Rock And Roll by the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA).
DAN COLEN
Artist
Dan Colen is an American artist based in New York whose work consists of painted sculptures appropriating low-cultural ephemera, graffiti-inspired paintings of text executed in paint, and installations.
Colen’s work has been exhibited at galleries including Deitch Projects, Gagosian Gallery and Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York, and Peres Projects in Berlin. His work has been shown internationally in many exhibitions including “Potty Mouth, Potty War, Pot Roast, Pot is a Reality Kick” at Gagosian Gallery in New York, “USA Today” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the 2006 Whitney Biennial in New York, “Fantastic Politics” at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo and “No Me” at Peres Projects in Berlin.
In ‘Secrets and Cymbals, Smoke and Scissors: My Friend Dash’s Wall in the Future’, Colen built an exact replica of a section of poster, photo and flyer-covered wall from friend Dash Snow’s apartment. Each piece of visual material was hand-made and attached to a Styrofoam copy of the wall.
His works are held in the collection of the Saatchi Gallery.
Haider Ackermann
Fashion Designer
Born in Sante Fe de Bogota, Colombia, Haider Ackermann grew up living in various cities throughout Europe and Africa. After graduating from high school in the Netherlands, he then moved to Belgium to join The Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerpen. He left the Academy after 3 years to start working for different designers. In March 2002, he presented his first collection in Paris (AW 2002-03). Collection acclaimed by the international press, soon after, the Italian luxury leather house Ruffo asked him to collaborate on the Ruffo Research collection (SS 2003). In 2004, Haider Ackermann won the prestigious Swiss Textile Award. A year later, he signed up with the Belgian fashion group bvba 32. Consequently he moved to Paris where he opened his atelier. That same year, he contributed to A magazine as Guest Curator.
His collections are distributed worldwide in over an hundred carefully selected sales points, including department stores and internationally renowned boutiques.
Haider Ackermann’s work is about contrast. The mix between high and low culture, elegance and street life. He is intrigued by cultural differences and cultural force. The purity and simply aesthetic of forms mixed with the activity and vitality of life itself.
KIRSTEN DUNST
Actress
Kirsten Dunst made her film debut with a small role in Woody Allen’s New York Stories. This was soon followed by a role as Tom Hank’s daughter in the film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s bestselling novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities. Dunst got her big break at the tender age of 11, when she played the pre-pubescent bloodsucker Claudia in the screen adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. Although critical response to the film was mixed, Dunst received high marks from reviewers for her controlled portrayal of an adult perpetually trapped in a child’s body. Rice’s literary following flocked to the film and made Dunst a ghoulish cult favorite. For her performance, Dunst received the MTV Movie Award for best breakthrough performance and a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actress.
Kirsten Dunst went on to appear in a string of major Hollywood productions including Little Women (1994), Jumanji (1995) and Wag the Dog (1997), but also received critical attention for her performances in the less-publicized mock-documentaryDrop Dead Gorgeous (1999) and the political spoof Dick (1999).
Dunst engineered a successful transition to “adult” roles with her 2000 appearance in Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides. Dunst received positive critical attention for her facility with the movie’s weighty themes of teen suicide and burgeoning sexuality. In 2002, Kirsten Dunst brought the much-loved comic book character Mary Jane “M. J.” Watson to the big screen in the blockbuster film series Spider-Man. In addition to her work in the mega-successful Spider-Man franchise, Kirsten Dunst has continued to work in smaller, off-beat films. She appeared in the unusual romantic drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Working again with Sophia Coppola, Dunst took on the title character in Marie Antoinette (2006), one of most infamous members of the French aristocracy. Dunst will star in Lars von Trier’s upcoming science-fiction film Melancholia which will be premiering at Cannes in May 2011.
MARCO MUELLER
Artistic director
Since 1980, Marco Mueller has worked as a film critic and historian producing articles and essays for international publications. Since 1978, after successfully establishing himself as a “festival maker” collaborating with various European festivals, he created and directed the first large film festival in Turin which was called “Electric Shadows” and comprised a major retrospective of the history of Chinese cinema in 135 films.
Mueller went on to collaborate in various ways in the selections for the Venice Film Festivals from 1980 to 1994 (especially for the selection of Asian films). In 2004 Mueller was appointed Artistic Director of The Venice International Film Festival; he has been awarded and is internationally recognised for his contribution to cinema.
MICHAEL STIPE
Singer
Michael Stipe is an American singer and the lead vocalist for the alternative rock band R.E.M. As the front man, for arguably the most important and influential American rock band of the post-punk era. Stipe transformed himself from enigmatic cult hero into mainstream icon. Famed for his confounding opaque lyrics, the once-introverted Stipe translated his growing fame into an outlet to champion his social and political concerns, emerging as one of popular music’s most respected figures.
MURAT DALTABAN
Actor & Theatre Director
Murat Daltaban studied drama at the Ankara University. Following his graduation in 1992, he joined the National Theatre and started to appear in movies. His supporting role in the 1999 feature film Salkım Hanım’ın Taneleri (Mrs. Salkım’s Diamonds)got him noticed, and his roles in the TV series Kınalı Kar and later Hırsız Polis gave Murat Daltaban the chance to expand his acting repertoire. Leaving National Theatre in 2005, with Özlem Daltaban and Süha Bilal, he founded DOT – the first Turkish theatre to stage plays associated with the in-yer-face movement. Designed as an open stage enabling flexibility and creativity, DOT has been a huge success since its inception. Other than staging plays at DOT and sometimes taking part in them, Murat Daltaban also continues to star in movies and TV series.
NURGÜL YEŞİLÇAY
Actress
Nurgül Yeşilçay studied drama at the State Conservatoire of Anadolu University in Eskişehir. Since her graduation, she has performed several major roles for the stage, including Ophelia in Hamlet and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Theatre aside, she shot to prominence as the lead in, among others, three record-breaking Turkish TV dramas. Among them, Asmalı Konak (The Mansion with Vines) directed by Çağan Irmak, brought her huge critical and commercial success. She also played the leading role in the movie sequel of the TV series, directed by Abdullah Oğuz.
In 2004, Nurgül Yeşilçay was named Best Actress at the 12. Adana Golden Boll Film Festival for her performance in the Atıf Yılmaz movie Eğreti Gelin (Borrowed Bride). In 2006, working with Fatih Akın, she played the Turkish girl Ayten Öztürk in the movie Yaşamın Kıyısında (The Edge of Heaven), a German-Turkish cross-cultural tale of loss, mourning and forgiveness, which won the prize for best screenplay at the 60th Cannes Film Festival in 2007. Nurgül Yeşilçay also won the Best Actress Award at the 45th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival for her role in the movie Vicdan (Conscience, 2008).
REHA ERDEM
Director & Screen writer
Reha Erdem is a leading Turkish filmmaker and screenwriter. He began his studies in History at Bogazici University in Istanbul. In 1983, Erdem went to Paris 8 University to major in Cinema and Modern Art and completed a graduate degree. He directed his first feature film, A Ay (Oh Moon) in 1989. It received awards at the Nantes Film Festival, and was screened at the Locarno, Moscow, Vancouver and Dunkerque Film Festivals. His second feature, Kac Para Kac (A Run for Money, 1999) represented Turkey at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. It was featured at the Tokyo, Munich, London, Oslo, Thessaloniki and Seattle Film Festivals, and also was screened in the 3rd Boston Turkish Film Festival in 2004. Erdem was invited to direct Hizmetciler (The Maids) by Jean Genet for the Istanbul National Theater in 1991. He directed a short film called Deniz Turkusu (The Sea Song), inspired by the poem of famous Turkish poet Yahya Kemal Bayatli. Since 1990, he has directed over a hundred TV commercials. In 1993, he founded Atlantik Film production company with Ömer Atay.
RYAN MCGINLEY
Photographer
Ryan McGinley is an American photographer living in New York City who began making photographs in 1998. In 2003, at the age of 25, McGinley was one of the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was also named Photographer of the Year in 2003 by American Photo Magazine. In 2007 McGinley was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography.
In recent years, Ryan McGinley’s photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums. He had solo shows at MoMA P.S.1 in New York (2004), in Spain at the MUSAC in Leon (2005), and is featured in public collections in the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Alison Jacques Gallery in London; and the The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
SAM TAYLOR-WOOD
Photographer & Director
Sam Taylor-Wood makes photographs and films that examine, through highly charged scenarios, our shared social and psychological conditions.
Taylor-Wood’s work examines the split between being and appearance, often placing her human subjects – either singly or in groups – in situations where the line between interior and external sense of self is in conflict. Her languid and silent film portrait of David Beckham, for example, which was shot in a single take, offers a serene alternative to this most intensively photographed celebrity.
In Prelude in Air, Taylor-Wood filmed a musician playing a piece of cello music by Bach, but the cello itself has been erased. Likewise, in Breach (Girl and Eunuch), a girl is portrayed sitting on the floor in the throes of grief, but the sound of her tears has been removed. In the celebrated film Still Life, an impossibly beautiful bowl of fruit decays at an accelerated pace, creating a visceral memento mori. Taylor-Wood has also explored notions of weight and gravity in elegiac, poised photographs and films such as Ascension and a series of self-portraits (Self Portrait Suspended I – VIII) that depict the artist floating in mid air without the aid of any visible support.
In her film The Last Century, what appears to be a static image of a group of people slowly reveals itself to be a real, filmed take, timed to the length of a burning cigarette: the film is entirely static apart from the involuntary blinking, twitching and barely-visible breathing of four motionless actors, all arranged around a central figure as if in a group portrait painted by Rembrandt or Caravaggio. Recently, Taylor-Wood directed her first narrative short film, Love You More, with a script by Patrick Marber. In August 2008, Taylor-Wood directed Nowhere Boy, a biopic about the childhood of The Beatles singer, John Lennon.
SANDRO KOPP
Artist
Sandro Kopp was born 1978 in Heidelberg, Germany. After graduating Abitur 1998, majoring in Fine Art and English, he spent a year of civil service working on a Jugendfarm with children with A.D.D. In 2000, he moved to New Zealand, his mother’s home country. Here he painted and exhibited, as well as teaching at an art school in Wellington.
Since early 2005, he is based in the north of Scotland, but lives nomadically much of the year, dividing his time between Italy, Germany, New Zealand and the USA. His work is held in numerous significant collections world-wide.
SERRA YILMAZ
Actress
Serra Yılmaz is well-known for her work as an actress and a director in theatre, film and television. She studied psychology in France before working as an actress at the Istanbul Municipal Theatre from 1988 to 2004. Her film career took off in 1983 with the film Şekerpare and in 2002 she won acclaim for the leading role in 9, a film directed by Ümit Ünal. She has had supporting roles in such internationally-acclaimed films as Harem Suare, Le Fate Ignorante (The Ignorant Fairies), La Finestra di Fronte(Facing Windows), Saturno Contro (Saturn in Opposition) and Un Giorno Perfetto (A Perfect Day) all directed by Ferzan Özpetek. Serra Yılmaz’s recent films include Scontro di Civiltà per un Ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (Clash of Civilization Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio) and Ses (The Voice). Her awards include Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Harem Suare at the Antalya Film Festival, Best Actress for her performance in 9 at the 21st Istanbul International Film Festival, and Best Supporting Actress for Facing Windows at the Flaiano Film Festival.
In addition to acting, Yılmaz is also a translator who speaks Turkish, French, Italian and English. In 2006 she was the official interpreter for Pope Benedict XVI on his trip to Turkey.
SOPHIE CALLE
Artist
Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle’s work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.
Since 2005 Sophie Calle taught as a professor of film and photography at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. She has lectured at the University of California, San Diego in the Visual Arts Department. She has also taught at Mills College in Oakland, California. Exhibitions featuring the work of Sophie Calle took place at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium; Videobrasil, SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK; and the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
At the 2007 Venice Biennale, Sophie Calle showed her piece Take Care of Yourself, named after the last line of the message her ex had left her. Calle had asked dozens of women—including a parrot and a hand puppet—to interpret the break-up e-mail and presented the results in the French pavilion. In October 2009, a major exhibition of her works, including Take Care of Yourself, The Sleepers, Address Book and others, opened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2010 another major exhibition.
TERRY GILLIAM
Director
Terry Gilliam is a leading American-British film director, screenwriter, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam’s films include Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
The 1980s saw Gilliam’s self-written Trilogy of Imagination about “the ages of man” in Time Bandits, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. All are about the “craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible.” All three movies focus on these struggles and attempts to escape them through imagination; Time Bandits, through the eyes of a child, Brazil, through the eyes of a thirty-something year old, and Munchausen, through the eyes of an elderly man.
Throughout the 1990s, Gilliam directed his Trilogy of Americana, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Gilliam’s films have a distinctive look not only in mise-en-scene but even more so in photography, often recognizable from just a short clip; in order to create a surreal atmosphere of psychological unrest and a world out-of-balance, Gilliam makes frequent use of unusual camera angles, particularly low-angle shots, high-angle shots, and Dutch angles. Roger Ebert has said “his world is always hallucinatory in its richness of detail”.
Gilliam made his opera debut at London’s English National Opera in May 2011, directing The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz. Gilliam turned 70 in November 2010.
THOMAS DOZOL
Photographer
Thomas Dozol is a Paris-born New York based Photographer.In 2010 he had his first solo exhibition in New York entitled Entre Temps, the French term translates to “times in-between”. With his pellucid colour photographs, using only natural light, Dozol seeks to capture his subjects in front of his or her bathroom mirror in a natural state of “Entre Temps”. Some of the faces he has captured include Michael Stipe, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jake Shears.
Tilda Swinton
Actress
Tilda Swinton is an Academy Award winning Scottish actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. Her early film work included several film roles for director Derek Jarman, notably War Requiem playing a nurse opposite Sir Laurence Olivier as an old soldier. In 1991, Swinton won the Volpi Cup Best Actress award for her role in the postmodern film Edward II. Swinton also played the title role in Orlando, Sally Potter’s film version of the novel by Virginia Woolf.
Recent years have seen Swinton move towards more mainstream projects, including the leading role in the American film The Deep End (2001), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. She appeared as a supporting character in films such as The Beach, Vanilla Sky and, as the archangel Gabriel in Constantine. Swinton sat on the jury of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2005, Swinton performed as the White Witch Jadis, in the film version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In 2007, Swinton’s performance as Karen Crowder in Michael Clayton earned her both a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress as well as the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. Swinton next appeared in the 2008 Coen Brothers film, Burn After Reading. She had a starring role as the irresponsible eponymous character in Erick Zonca’s Julia. Her upcoming film We Need to Talk About Kevin premieres at Cannes in May 2011.
MUAMMER BRAV
Film critic
ALPHAN EŞELİ
Director
COURTNEY LOVE
Musician & Actress
DAN COLEN
Artist
Haider Ackermann
Fashion Designer
KIRSTEN DUNST
Actress
MARCO MUELLER
Artistic director
MICHAEL STIPE
Singer
MURAT DALTABAN
Actor & Theatre Director
NURGÜL YEŞİLÇAY
Actress
REHA ERDEM
Director & Screen writer
RYAN MCGINLEY
Photographer
SAM TAYLOR-WOOD
Photographer & Director
SANDRO KOPP
Artist
SERRA YILMAZ
Actress
SOPHIE CALLE
Artist
TERRY GILLIAM
Director
THOMAS DOZOL
Photographer
Tilda Swinton
Actress
