Reviewed by Jordan Elgrably

released by Ifc Films
The films of Fatih Akin caught my attention early on, with his second feature to make it stateside, Head-On (2004). A bleak story of two Turks in Hamburg, the movie signaled the arrival of a new writer/director who was going to give more established auteurs like Wim Wenders and Tom Tykwer a run for their money. But Fatih Akin was young, Turkish and Muslim—and Head-On explored the underbelly of Turkish life in both Germany and Turkey in a way that was impossible to forget.

Hussein Chayalan fashion imagesAfter the intellectual and physical toil often involved in the production of art, Hussein Chalayan broke the mold by laying his collection of silk dresses to rest-in the most literal sense. While it was considered unusual, the burial and months-later exhumation of his graduate collection instantly put Chalayan on the charts.

Hussein Chalayan (Hüseyin Çaglayan) was born and educated in Nicosia, Cyprus before attending Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London, England. Graduating with honors and a BA in fashion in 1993, Chalayan's talent would continue to progress from the success of his graduate collection, "The Tangent Flows." This collection not only instigated his career as his eponymous label was launched a year later in 1994, but helped him achieve global success as a highly innovative contemporary artist and fashion designer. Chalayan has twice been named British Designer of the Year and has received many awards and honors since.

Event Details

Date/Time: 

Jun 20 2010 1:00pm - 5:00pm

Price: 

$40 in advance, $45 at the door ($36 members with advance RSVP)
Click here to buy tickets

Where: 

Levantine Cultural Center
5998 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90035
Street parking
Located equidistant between Fairfax and La Cienega

a creative writing workshop

Levantine Cultural Center & The Writing Studio present Writing for Peace: War, Peace & the Path to Freedom. This workshop in creative writing with Elana Golden is for new and experienced writers—limited to 10 participants.

Turning wounds into literature is an act of self-preservation, self-discovery—a journey toward personal and global healing and peace. Elana Golden is a Los Angeles writer and teacher who works and corresponds with Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. She has taught creative writing at Levantine Cultural Center for  the past two years. She has worked with new and established writers from many countries, including Iran, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Egypt and the United States.

Whether among nations, classes or families, the workshop provides a peaceful, respectful and inspiring space in which to write stories born of war, conflict or occupation. The skills of creative writing will be taught and explored, as well as effective methods to put aside the critical mind.

David ShashaReview by David Shasha
 
Back in 1990, English-language readers were introduced to the work of Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk.  With the publication of his brilliant novel The White Castle we got our first glimpse of a truly extraordinary literary talent.  Pamuk’s writing at that time was closely linked to the post-modern historical novels of Italo Calvino, Salman Rushdie, and Umberto Eco whose work hearkened back to the fantastical fictions of Jorge Luis Borges. Such writing took seriously the realities of history, but placed them into new and challenging contexts, creating what the critic Christine Brooke-Rose has called “palimpsest history.”

The Museum of Innocence: your purchase in part benefits Levantine Cultural CenterIn Pamuk’s White Castle the reader was transported back to Ottoman Turkey in its engagement with the European world. The story broached for the reader many of the themes that would become staples of Pamuk’s writing in the future: The struggle between East and West; the fragile and permeable nature of human identities; the division between economic classes; the weight of tradition and social convention in a modern age; and, most importantly, the tricky status of the Double—that doppelganger that creates inversions and transformations which makes identity confused and unstable. The novel was spare, but elegant; a truly mesmerizing piece of fiction.

The two protagonists in The White Castle become inverted mirror images of one another and eventually change places; the Italian who is captured by the Turk and becomes part of his household at the end of the tale becomes a Turk, the process completing a complex set of arrangements that has been working itself out over the course of the novel. The White Castle was set in a time when the Ottoman Empire was still a going concern and delved into a cultural history that saw Europe and the Muslim world interacting in ways that have today been mostly forgotten.  With the eclipse of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, an ascendant Europe sought to overrun the Muslim world; a reality that has led us to the many difficulties that we face today.

Reviewed by Omid Arabian

Voices Unveiled: directed by Binnur Karaevli"I used to study tradition," says artist Belkis Balpinar early in Binnur Karaevli's new documentary Voices Unveiled. "Tradition is keeping society intact... but in the meantime it keeps back the evolution and development. For that reason now I start to be against tradition."

The film, subtitled "Turkish Women Who Dare", examines the status of women in modern Turkey, a country precariously balanced at the juncture of modernist, progressive tendencies and traditional, religion-based values. Its main subjects are three women who are in their own ways challenging and transcending those traditional values; each represents a different approach to that process.

Event Details

Date/Time: 

Apr 29 2010 7:00pm - May 3 2010 10:00pm

Price: 

$10, $5 students/seniors/Friends of Goethe Institut; festival pass $50

Where: 

Goethe-Institut Cinema
5750 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90036
just east of Curson (between La Brea and Fairfax)
free underground parking after 6 pm
Info 213.446.4878

South East European Film Fest: April 29-May 3, 2010Fueled by independent spirit and passion for the cinema of southeast Europe, the team behind Los Angeles-based SEE Fest (South East European Film Festival) has announced its fifth annual showcase to take place at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, and UCLA's James Bridges Theatre, from April 29 through May 3.

On May 3 from 9 am through 1 pm at the Center for Managing Enterprises in Media, Entertainment & Sports (MEMES) at UCLA Anderson SEE Fest is hosting its 2nd annual Business Conference on South East Europe's cinema, a half-day seminar on packaging and financing international productions, producing in South East Europe, and the role of new media in distribution of foreign films.

"We bring to light innovative, different films that create an in-depth portrait of south east Europe, where countries are sandwiched between defunct empires and mixed legacies", says Vera Mijojlic, festival director. "They are the voices of a wonderfully expressive diversity, something southeast Europe and Los Angeles have in common."

Event Details

Date/Time: 

Feb 26 2010 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Price: 

Free to the public, donations requested. Doors open at 7 pm. Open Bar.

Where: 

Inside/Outside Gallery-Levantine Cultural Center
5998 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90035
corner of Stearns (one block east of Crescent Heights)
street parking and in the CVS underground lot across the street until 10 pm only.

Reviewed by Afsaneh Ashley Tabaddor

What does it mean to be "White" in America today?

By Mischa Geracoulis

Istanbul cityscapeTurkish Classes for Adults & Kids

Levantine Cultural Center hosts the LATAA School.

Since 2007 LATAA Turkish School has served anyone who would like to learn Turkish language, culture and social life in Los Angeles.

LATAA School has two classes:

1 - Kids class: ages 5-11
2 - Adult class: 13 and up

This Year LATAA School continues its classes at Levantine Cultural Center.