Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

October 1984 - W 10 I
CINEMA
Thousands of Turks and Kurds in
exile marched through the streets
of Paris on Thursday, September
13, on their way to the Père Lachaise
cemetery for the burial of their comrade, the
film-maker Yilmaz Güney, who died of cancer
at the age of 47.
Guney's film~ showed the world the reality
of a Turkey where the struggle between
the common people of the countryside and
the powers-that-be is complicated and
reinforced by the hold of feudal customs and
the economic grip of Western imperialism.
He is best known outside his own country
for films directed-amazmgly-from a pri-
~on cell in Turkey, such as "The Herd," or
"The Way," among others. From his Paris
exile shortly before his death, he made the
har~hest and cruellest of all his films, "The
Wall," about torture in a children 's prison.
. On the morning of the funeral, hundreds
of people gathered at the Kurdish Institute
in Paris-which Güney, himself a Kurd, had
helped found and consistently supported-to
pay their respects to the artist. Among the
mourners was Jack l.ang. French Minister
of Culture, who knew Guney personally and
made it po~sible for him to direct "The
Wall" in a suburb of Paris. By the afternoon,
the tomb where Güney had been laid
to rest at Père Lachaise was surrounded by
wreaths from those whose hopes and ~truggles
he had depicted during his life.
All the organizations, without exception,
of the heterogeneous Turkish left were
represented. So were the Kurds of Turkey
and Iran, the "Communists of Greece," the
Armenian War Veterans of France, the
Armenian Cultural Association, the French
Guney's wife and friends standing at his tomb
in Paris,
Yilmaz Güney:
Artist and Resistance
Symbol
One of Turkey's best known and certainl)' most courageous
film-makers died in exile in Paris on September 9. His films,
however, remain as a testament to the man and his work.
By Sam Corbin
~'lathing Work~r'~ Union (CFDT) and
\,llHlUS 1I1lltlm of the hen"b 111m mdu~try.
'\1'0 l'H'~ent wa, I)anlelk Mllterrand, wife
of Ihe I rl'rl\;!1 rre~IJenl.
1he pTllh:ipal Iuneral 01atwll-a moving
t arcwell-- Wéh dch\(:red j rom a wheekhalr
tH' a Turk i~h law rrotessor, Server Tanilll,
\10 ho wa, ~11\J1 b~ a fa,ci,t in btanbulm 1979
dnd l~ paralYled (Hllll the \Iodist down a~ a
rl>~ult01 hl, >IoounJ. Thl~ helo urthe demoddlle
re~lstan~c II. lur\..cy now tcaches con-
'T1tulional 1 walked
Ihrl'c houl' t0 the nearest ~chool ever} day
111 urder to a'4u1rc the IlIdi~pensable rudimellt~
of a f"rmal education.
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