Director: Eren Çakmak
Running time: 4mins
Running a film festival is expensive – and it often means that organisations struggle to break even, let alone make a profit. With submission fees the only source of revenue that many festivals can rely on, that can make granting waivers difficult – resulting in filmmakers who already struggle to have their voices heard being further marginalised.
Stories told by artists from low-income backgrounds, opposition groups hit by censorship, or individuals in nations subjected to international sanctions still need a platform. That’s why Indy Film Library’s Saturday Matinees series has returned for a fifth season.
Over the current run of matinees, IFL will showcase work from places where monetary and legal constraints have prevented the free communication of political and social issues.
The second film in our free-to-view programme comes from Eren Çakmak, a filmmaker based in Türkiye. Colorful and Empty Chair is billed as an experimental documentary, telling the story of a man who has spent his life concealing his sexuality from his family.
According to the opening of the film, the subject was afraid of the repercussions if he would appear in the film, so Çakmak employs a voice-actor to read his testimony – while the sole visual is of an empty chair, painted white, but adorned with a single rainbow-patterned cushion.
Born in Siirt, a province in the south-east of the country, the narrator recalls his early life in his Kurdish community. His father arranged for him to marry young, and in the years since, he has had four children with his wife – but he often longs to have lived a different life. Some moments since have allowed him a sadly fleeting glimpse into what that life might have been like – moving to Istanbul allowed him some refuge from his controlling father, and to encounter many other closeted LGBT+ people across the city. In the moments when he comes together with “people like [him]”, his “true personality seems to emerge”.
At the same time, the narrator says these links have helped him to become part of a community helping other people in “dangerous situations” relating to their sexuality. He is part of Facebook and WhatsApp groups that provide refuge and support to people “in life-threatening situations” –underlining why he is still so reluctant to tell people he is gay, but also showing his courage to try and support other people in the face of such oppression.
It’s an interesting and worthy story, then, but not one the film itself necessarily lives up to. While it is understandable why Çakmak has been unable to show a face in connection with the testimony, his cinematography does little to complement the words of his subject. The same flat shot of the empty chair is used throughout, the only change being a slow and apparently aimless zoom from the camera.
It might have been an idea to try and use different shots of the chair to illustrate themes or feelings in conjunction with what is being said. For example, the plain whitewashed angles of the chair could provide imagery to accompany the recollection of the man being forced to conform to married life from an early age. Then, when he speaks about trying and failing to live up to that, and explains how his true-self inevitably keeps breaking through the frayed edges of his performance, the camera could have picked out the details on the chair where the paint is flaking off, revealing a more vibrant, red-brown beneath its glossy veneer. And extreme close-ups of the cushion could have been a burst of colour to illustrate how he feels when he is among people in the same situation – while zooming out to allow us to see the cushion’s motif as a series of proud fists in different colours of the rainbow would have been great to go with his story of fighting for the safety of others.
Calling this an experimental film leads me to want more in the way of visual diversity, of trying to match the story with what we can see. But beyond that, it should still be commended for trying to give a voice to a silent community in Turkish and Kurdish society – and exploring their hopes, fears and struggles for a wider audience.
The film will be available to view for free in full from 09:00 UK time on Saturday the 13th of July, until the end of the weekend, via our Saturday Matinees theatre page. You can also score it out of five. As the film is still trying to gain access to other festivals, the page is password protected. Use the code IFLMATINEE24 to access the film.
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