Dawn (1963)

Şafak / L'Aube (35mm), 1963

A short film from first Turkish surrealist director Alp Zeki Heper. He was awarded prizes for his short films "A Woman" and "Dawn" by the IDHC and the Austrian Ministry of Culture.

"Of the two short films from that period, which are available to us today, the first one, "A Woman" creates an artificial world, obviously aided by the fact that there's no sound. Within a single space, the director treats the sorrows of two people married to each other. We might even say, Alp Zeki Heper created a surrealist home in this film. Outside, seen through the window, a light is being switched on and off. The director thus creates an artificial day and night, that is, something something appearing and disappearing, like the two people trying to found a family in this film. Those two people, the man and the woman, are leading their own existentialist lives. Heper´s dilemma is the fact that a man and a woman, by founding a family, have to abandon their personal freedom. That´s why, while the woman rebels, the man remains passive and is adding fuel to the woman´s anger by frightened glances. Thus the [patriarchal] family´s basis is shaken and scattered on the ground. There is no winner in this war among the sexes in marriage. Both parties lose and are convicted. Zeki Heper takes a look at this drama with an original, authentic voice.

In Heper´s second short, "Dawn", we are watching, in a single space between two windows, a triangular love relationship of three people. Unlike "A Woman", "Dawn" isn´t a work totally devoid of sound. The use of music carries "Dawn" to a more epic, a more poetic level. We can see the style of Heper's first short in a more pronounced way in his use of space and lighting.

I think what is most striking in Heper's two shorts, is the space created by the camera. In Heper's films, space is important to convey the narrative and the emotions. What I'm trying to say, the director is somebody who isn't afraid to try something out, he's courageous far above his time."

http://trenkel.blogspot.com/2011/11/a...

http://trenkel.blogspot.com/2011/11/a...