The Adana Art Council, a platform of art-related associations and societies in the southern city, said in a written statement it issued yesterday that the Altın Koza festival was a showcase of outstanding examples of both Turkish and world cinema but that it does not receive the attention and financial support it deserves from Ankara.The festival was to open Monday evening with a ceremony and screening of South Korean director So Yong Kim's 2008 film “Treeless Mountain,” a cinematic take on abandonment, told through the perspective of a 6-year-old girl. The film's director and two child actors, Hee-yeon Kim and Song-hee Kim, were expected to attend the opening gala.
For years the opening and closing galas of the Altın Koza festival have been broadcast live on Turkish Radio and Television Corporation's TRT2, but the station is not airing the opening ceremony this year. “[In Turkey] even the [local] garlic and onion festivals are venerated more than Altın Koza. It is highly significant that Turkish state television, TRT, which used to broadcast the opening of the Altın Koza Film Festival every year to the entire world, this year decided to shelve the live broadcast,” said Haluk Uygur, the head of the Adana Art Council, in the statement.
Uygur also complained that while Altın Koza received a mere TL 250,000 in funding from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for 2009, another southern film festival, Antalya's Altın Portakal (Golden Orange), has been funded with TL 5 million. “[The ministry's] funding, which shrinks every year, will probably drop to zero next year,” Uygur was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.
Noting that the festival is well recognized in art circles, Uygur said last year's Altın Koza drew some 100,000 festival-goers. They expect attendance to reach 170,000 at this year's edition, which runs through June 14 in nine theaters across the city. This year's lineup offers 190 productions in total, including feature films, documentaries and short films from Turkey and around the world, in various competitive and non-competitive programs.
