Q&A with Kardelen Eren, director of the film
Under the Blanket, 14’ 55’’ | 2019 | Fiction
***3rd Balkan Can Kino Film Symposium
Unfolding the Layers: Shorts from Turkey *Curated by Zehra Cerrahoğlu
https://www.facebook.com/events/3382426095181128/
TRANSCRIPT of answers:
1. Hi, I’m Kardelen Eren. I graduated from Dokuz Eylül University Faculty of Fine arts, directing department in 2017. I’ve been working in cinema and tv series since my graduation. I actually started making short films with small assignments given during school. After a while, the stories piled up and my desire to tell increased. And I got out of homework and started making short films for myself.
2. In our country, there are pressures felt in every field, sometimes in language and sometimes in mind. I grew up in a serious neighborhood culture. My grandmother raised me up to the age of 9 because my family was working. I used to go to this type of neighborhood gathering at least 3 days a week. Frankly, it was an environment where the neighbor, gossip, criticism and judgment never ended. The starting point of the film was not a gay boy, but this neighborhood setting. Any character I put there would be crushed under this pressure anyway. As a result of social observations and feelings, I have depicted the general pressure in our country in a way that is reduced to the individual. Let’s say at least I tried that. In our country, everyone lives for other people. As soon as we learn to love ourselves, these pressures will disappear anyway. I found myself in such a narrative, saying that one starts out of what he knows. I wave my flag with the motto “People should be loved just because they are human”.
3. One of the biggest problems in making movies in our country, like everything else, is money. In the last couple of years, methods for making films have started to increase. As short filmmakers, we can get pitching supports. Budgets can be found from private and state-sponsored competitions. Gradually, producers and industry employees were formed to support us. Problems are more easily overcome when directed towards these resources. The real trouble is in the barriers in the mind. While growing up here, people get used to growing by restricting themselves mentally and by rasping them. It does not grow up with a free thinking system and individual consciousness from an early age. This can sometimes be literally challenging. The biggest issue is to tell your thoughts 🙂
4. I don’t know what time shows. One day we were out and we were locked in the house for months. We have acquired new norms. It is difficult to make a plan in this process. However, as long as a person lives, mental production does not stop / cannot stop. When we wake up every day, what happens and what we read makes us feel something. I have no purpose other than expressing my feelings and thoughts. So I will continue to make films, write and shoot as long as I can 🙂 However, I do not have a new short film project at the moment.