Kushtepe Blues
Burhan Öçal & Trakya All Stars: A Musical Homecoming
Renowned in Turkey for their musical documentaries, Hazar and his team invite audiences to the world of the children of Kushtepe, who take instrument lessons and learn music theory at Bilgi University. The children include a young Gypsy fiddler whose father "plays behind the solo singer" in a restaurant at the Bosphorus, and young girls whose mothers clean the corridors of the university where they are being taught music. Some aspire to be studio musicians, while others want to compose symphonies. However, their favorite music is "slow" music, or "Kushtepe Blues."
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Burhan Öçal & Trakya All Stars: A Musical Homecoming
Directed by Nedim Hazar.
Turkey, 2003, color, 33 min.
Turkish with English subtitles.
Percussionist Burhan Öçal has spent the last 20 years in Zurich and Istanbul, far away from his Turkish hometown of Kırklareli. Starting his musical career in festivities organized by Turkish migrant workers, Öçal quickly built a respectable reputation in the European jazz and world music scenes through his work in combos and his contributions as a percussionist in other musical projects. He has worked with jazz musicians such as Joe Zawinul and Djamaladdin Takuma, the classical-avant-garde formation Kronos Quartet, and Sting. Öçal also dreamt of putting traditional Thracian and Balkan instruments together, and mixing these instruments with modern elements such as electronic looping. As its name implies, the film is indeed very musical; it documents the process of "taking the sound of the Roman in Thrace and presenting it to the world."
This screening is co-presented with the Goethe-Institut Boston and the Boston Jewish Film Festival.