Saturday, April 14

The Pillar of Salt from both “International Competition” and “National Competition” was screened at Atlas Sineması with the participation of the director Burak Çevik and the film crew. “Atlas Sineması is very important to me. I used to say that when a film of mine to be screened at Atlas Sineması, I will be able to call myself a filmmaker. This happened today,” said Çevik, and added that the shooting of the film took one year. He explained that they worked with a limited budget, claiming that a film can be made without a big financial source.

The film tells the story of a woman stuck in time looking for her lost sister after finding out that she’s pregnant. The director explained: “Giving birth brings lots of questions with it. There’s the question of whether or not to bring someone into this chaos. The main character goes through a transformation with the pregnancy.” The film progresses as sequences and the director Çevik explained that it is very much concerned with the question of representation: “We see photographs, ultrasound images and pictures in the film. The pictures separate the sequences. The process of building these made the story a more concrete one.”

The film doesn’t show any males as a formalistic choice, and Çevik talked about the timelessness of the film: “I find 4/3 timeless in terms of format. When you decide to make a film you see there are lots of tools and you want to use them. But the sense of beauty can change in time; instead, I think it’s more important to build a main framework.”

Photo: Benek Özmez