Hasankeyf_en

HASANKEYF waiting life ďŹ lm documentary project production Hagam directed by Mauro Colombo

Reaching Hasankeyf Approximately a year ago a volunteer of an international association of cooperation told us about her activity carried out in Hasankeyf, aiding and supporting the local population, and the consequences of the plan of the construction of a dam on the Tigris river. Ilisu, thus the name of the dam, would provoke the flooding of the village forcing more than 55.000 persons to abandon their own villages.

In that moment we have recorded the news of the new plan in this remote part of Turkey simply like the umpteenth announced disaster, by now perhaps accustomed to read news of huge infrastructure plans in every part of the world, from China to the South America, from Africa to India with the result of an environmental devastating impact.

Exactly a year after that, during a travel in Turkey, we have found ourselves in the Turkish Kurdistan. A name on the map has turned out familiar and it has recalled us immediately that meeting.

The strong curiosity pushed to us on the sides of Tigris where Hasankeyf is. We arrived in the morning after some hours of travel from Mardin on a sunny day: we had got very surprised before this beauty and the fascination of this village.

The valley with its vertical walls, the rests of the ancient civilizations, the voices of the children who played in the water, a simple and slow life, seemed to bring us back to the idea of Mesopotamia that we had learned during our first years of school, when we studied about the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Assyrians and the Babylonians.

We had left with the idea of making only photos, but when we found ourselves in this valley the small photo camera we had with us revealed itself precious: we started to film the situations of that day, we spoke with the inhabitants about the life of Hasankeyf, of its problems, the plan of the dam and all this that was linked to that plan.

The feeling that we received was that of a suspension in the time, of a nearly impotent waiting before a choice not depending from the Hasankeyf people. A wait that seems the consequence of all the difficulties of a poor and hard life, in a place where work and perspectives lack because of its probable future which even prevents to imagine a tomorrow So, we had the idea of realizing a documentary film that penetrates this wait underlining a conflict where history meets modernity, the national interests the local ones, the requirement of personal increase with the preservation of own roots.

Hasankeyf, a small village in the south oriental Turkey.

Hagam - 2008

The background Hasankeyf is a Kurdish village in the triangle comprised between Diyarbakir, Batman and Mardin, in the south-oriental Turkey; it is a12 thousand year open air museum built on the rocks sides of the Tigris. This is the Mesopotamia of the Assyrian and of the Byzantin, the place where the central Asian and Iranian cultures crossed with the Europeans.

The overlapping of civilizations and cultures of the entire region are visible in the traces of ancient human settlements, with the hundreds of caves, in the elegant minaret of the El-Rizk mosque and, on the opposite river, the monumental tombs and a cupola whose blue ceramic pieces remember the Persian art.

Today among the traces of Hasankeyf, Kurdish shepherds and farmers live with craftsmen, vendors of souvenir, and some restaurant owners, in front of a breathtaking sight.

In 1954 the Turkish government started to elaborate the plan of a dam, Ilisu, that once completed would submerge Hasankeyf under 30 meters of water. The Ilisu dam is part of the Gap plan, Water Plan for the Southeastern Anatolia, which foresees the construction of dams and hydroelectric plants along the high course of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

From 1980 some dams have already been constructed and 320 villages evacuated, often with debatable methods. But the lack of ďŹ nancing postponed the starting date of the intense works on Ilisu till when, in 1999, the Swiss society Sulzer AG declared to be interested to ďŹ nance the plan.

German, Austrian and Italian companies have joined in the following years.

Today the Turkish government seems to have reopened the plan, with the idea of completing the works of the dam within 2014.

Ilisu will be the second dam of the country, with a capacity of approximately 10 kmu00B3 and a surface of 313 kmu00B2, will submerge 6mila hectares of arable lands and the water river basin that will be formed will overow a 136 km valley, with a production of 3833Gwh per year for 300 million dollars of incoming.

The back of the medal is obviously dramatic: beyond 289 sites of inestimable archaeological value will be swept away and more than 200 villages will be submerged, forcing 55mila people to the leave of their job, their homes or will be forced to move into other zones of the country, exposed to social exclusion and to marginalization.

Ilisu will born at 65 km from the Syrian and Iraqi borders, where the Turkish water control of the Tigris river will have particular repercussions on the fragile geo-political balances and on the civilian people.

Hagam - 2008

The documentary Today 5000 persons live in Hasankeyf, for majority of Kurdish origin. The water course seems to mark the rhythm of an existence hung to a thread.

The Tigris ows in a valley with rock walls two hundred metres high from where you can dominate the beauty of an ancient land.

On these hills, over the village, there are the rests of a middleage town digged in the rocks.

Moreover, solitary valleys scramble up rocky hills. Below, all around and even on the rivers of Tigris, several caves leave us free to imagine incredible numbers of inhabitants in the past.

The Ilisu dam in activity, once completed, would submerge the village under 30 meters of water.

But in Hasankeyf life continues as nothing has to happen. The children play in the water, the olders take care of the animals, while the young ladies wash the clothes at the river, the small restaurants wait for the few tourists that reach Hasankeyf during the summer. At the evening, when is warm, the old men meet outside of the bars to play cards or Backgammon, while the TV shows some American movies.

There is not job in Hasankeyf. The prospectives of life are limited to the poverty of the village. No one wants to invest in a tourism that could be ourishing, if the village would still be there in few years.

While somewhere else someone is deciding the sort of this place, of its inhabitants and of its archaeological/ historical patrimony, while the only important reasons seem the economy and the energy, a whole community lives in a limbo, with not enough news about his destiny.

Going into this community with discretion, HASANKEYF, WAITING LIFE will try to analyze a big conict living the daily life, where the history collides with modernity, national interests with the local ones, the necessity of personal growth with the preservation of the own roots.

Hagam - 2008

The tale and the mood HASANKEYF – waiting life is not reportage; it wants to be photography of a reality in which the suspension of time becomes the only character able to give back objectivity above all.

A village that seems idyllic changes itself into a contradictory picture of ideas and contrasting feelings, caused by the sense of uncertainty as the possible consequences that an economic project could impose in a short term.

The teacher of the local primary school seems not to worry for the dum because the governament has been speking about it since 1954.

The seriuos psicological hardships of many children in the village is more important for him then anything else.

They live in poverty without a real family support “Eight sons in a family are too many”he says, while we see them swimming in the Tigri.

And it seems that the river is giving all the vital energy to Hasankeyf.

Everything takes place on the bancks as it has been for centuries: women chat while they dip the clothes in the water, boys throw the nets to catch the fishes they will give to the small stilt-house restaurants on the other side of the river.

There a re few tourists in this hot summer.

“Unfortunately, tourists are not a real resource”, told us the 17-year old boy with shining eyes, son of the only hotel owner.

Few rooms with view on the river, too much for the summer period but no one want to build more lodgings: who wants to to invest in a village that maybe will briefly disappear?

Hagam - 2008

“Yes, it is very beautiful here, but there is not job and it is boring.Perhaps I will go to Instanbul to study or abroad if I found the money”.

The expectations are little and the escape is comprehensible. But the voice of the water, that seems to resound in this large valley, lull you in a sensation of no time: you believe to understand that in reality he would prefer to stay here...

Time flows like the river and the first buldozzers move and the voices spread around.

Will the teacher have to add uncertainty to uncertainty or will he be able to concentrate on his precious work? Who will have the desire to earn something in order to leave the village to found a job somewhere else? will there be no money then? Will the government pay the exchange?

Who will fight till the end for the country of his father and his grandfather and the father of his grandfather?

These seem the questions that resound in the air with the sound of the river.

“We are Kurdish and Kurdish are strong” two guys tell us on the bridge at the sunset Hasankeyf is a village waiting for the someone else’s decisions: a stall that emerges through the words, the atmopsheres, the feelings, the impressions, the sounds.

To narrate this complex painting we have to go into Hasankeyf and his inhabitants life, following the daily activities, trying to find how the impotent sense due to stranger decisions influences their lives.

An iscription hangs over the entrance of the Zeynel Bey's grave, one of the Hasankeyf's wonders: “This is Zeynel's grave.

Allah does not leave him the land”.

These hopes, that Zeynal could rest in the same land that his father chose for him 600 years ago, are now depending on the dum project.

In this prayer there is the atavic bond of this people and of whom preceeded it with his land and with his river.

A river that rappresents the story and in the same time is what could cancel the story forever under its mass of water.

With the story, a way of life handed on for centuries could disappear.

The story Could disappear, Hasankeyf could disappear.

Hagam - 2008

HASANKEYF waiting life ďŹ lm documentary project

Hagam C.so L. da Vinci, 48/50 - 21013 Gallarate (VA) tel. +39.0331.772229 fax +39.0331.798112 info@hagam.it

directed by Mauro Colombo +39.333.4530805

research Massimo Lazzaroni +39.348.3010652

executive production Gianluca Gibilaro +39.339.3843522