Robin Saban is the Founder/President of the International Student Film Festival Hollywood.
Mr. Saban began his career in the entertainment industry as a writer and director in Montreal, Canada. He wrote and directed several plays for live theatre while living in Montreal from 1992 to 1996. In Los Angeles since 1998, Mr. Saban worked in the entertainment industry as a film editor and project developer, and co-wrote the film script titled “29 Palms”.

Mr. Saban studied film and theater at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada (1991). In 1997, he studied digital film and video editing software “AVID” at Video Symphony in Burbank, California.

The International Student Film Festival Hollywood which Mr. Saban founded, offers student filmmakers from all over the world a unique opportunity to gain the recognition of film industry leaders, creating career development opportunities in their home countries as well as in the United States.

Website: www.isffhollywood.org

Omer Zulfu Livaneli was born in Ilgin, Turkey in 1946. After being held under military detention for three months during the coup of March 12 th, 1971, he had to leave Turkey and move to Sweden. After Stockholm, he lived in Paris and Athens, and he returned to Turkey in 1984.

Livaneli’s latest novel “Leyla’s House” was published in Turkey in May 2006; as of today it’s in its 45th edition and a number one best-seller.

His third novel “Bliss”, published in 2002, also a number one best-seller, made 44 editions, became almost a cult work and is recently adapted to cinema in Turkey. In 2005, “Bliss” was published in Greece and Sweden, and in 2006, it was published in France by Gallimard, in the United States by St.Martin’s Press and in Italy by Gremese. Immediately after its publication in the latter, Bliss was awarded by Barnes & Noble, the biggest bookstore chain in the world, with the annually given “Discover Great New Authors” award due to its “superior literary value”. Bliss will soon be published in Norway by Gylendal and in Netherlands by Prometheus/ Bert Bakker. His second novel “One Cat One Man One Death”, his first novel “The Eunuch of Constantinople” and a collection of his stories titled “A Child in Purgatory” have also been published abroad.

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Serdar Somuncu, a Turkish citizen, was born on June 03, 1968 in Istanbul, Turkey. He studied acting, directing, and music in Maastricht, Netherlands and Wuppertal, Germany.

Since 1985, he has been permanently busy in these areas.

Aside from his participation in diverse movies, television series and other broadcasts (Lindenstrasse, Die Anrheiner, Schwarz Greift ein, etc.) Somuncu has created more than a hundred theatre pieces and has acted in countless
productions, for example, in Bochum, Bremen, Oberhausen and recently in Mozart’s “Escape from the Serail” at the opera house in Münster.

Since 1987, he had been the leader of the Kammerensemble Neuss.

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Semih Kaplanoglu was born in 1963, in Izmir. He received BS in Cinema Television from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Dokuz Eylul Universiy, Izmir in 1984.

He was the scriptwriter and director of the 52 Episode TV serial “Sehnaz Tango” which was a prestigious work in TV at the time.

Semih Kaplanoglu’s debut “Away From Home” (Herkes Kendi Evinde), apart from winning many awards, attended to many festivals around the world.

His second feature film “Angel’s Fall” (Melegin Dususu) has received a wider interest among international film critics and audience. After having World Premiere at the 55th Berlin Film Festival, the film has won The Best Film Award in Nantes 3 Continents, Kerala International and Barcelona Independent Film Festivals. And the FIPRESCI Award was given by the international jury in 24th International Istanbul Film Festival. The film still continues its journey among international festivals all around the world.

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Born on 16.7.1962 in Braunschweig. elementary school in Ankara, Turkey. Returned to Germany In 1971. Studied German Literature and History for a year in Munich. Practical training in film. Studied Film from at the German Film & Television Academy (dffb) in Berlin. He has been working as a writer and filmmaker since 1992.

Thomas Arslan belongs to a group of German directors, who have been labelled “Berlin School“. What they have in common is an unusual level of aesthetic reflection. It makes itself felt - as an absence of cliché and stupidity - in every single frame for example of his film “From Far Away (Aus der ferne)” that begins in Istanbul and moves to Turkey’s most eastern regions.

Turkey is the country of his childhood and this might explain why he prefers to show children in this film. Children immersed in play and activity, but also children at work and children reacting playfully to the camera’s presence, thereby always making the camera’s absence felt, the absence of that which makes you see what is there.

Arslan’s camera moves very little. It follows and presents the movement East by filming the roads travelled on the way. Occasionally it opens places and spaces in wonderful sweeping pans, giving a sense not simply of an openness to the world’s “being there”, but also of the power of a documentary to make it visible - within the limits, of course, of the tautologically possible.

Thomas Arslan’s austere films, reminiscent of Robert Bresson, probably provide the most precise social analyses. They explore the various paths open to those of mixed ethnicity: viz. crime (DEALER, 1999), adaptation or return (GESCHWISTER (“Brothers and Sisters”), 2000) or the search for self-determination (DER SCHÖNE TAG (“A Fine Day”), 2002), and his heroes and heroines invariably come up against the boundaries set by society. Where can cultural “halfbreeds” go in Germany? That is the question posed in the films of the ’90s. Virtually anywhere, say the films of Fatih Akin. Virtually nowhere, say those of Thomas Arslan.

Sources:

Turkish Cinema Newsletter

FilmPortal.de
More reading about Thomas Arslan’s works:

“From Far Away” a film by Thomas Arslan
German Film and Migration - A History of Perception 

One more thing: ‘German-Turks’. Thomas Arslan for example

Between Cultures - Third-Generation Immigrant Cinema

Berrin Yavuzer – Artist Statement

I am working with the uncontrolled expression and combination of internal imagery, abstractions freighted with feeling. I tend to paint medium to large canvases in primary acrylics.

It is a real challenge for me to use words about my work. Cultural influences of the eastern Mediterranean, clash of east and west, symbolic glyphs, tales of the Aegean diaspora, images of ancient myth, and Muslim constraint recur in my work – on the surface and just beneath it.

My feeling varies in reflection of inner struggles, typified by forceful expressions of color. There is the constant battle to bridge external reality and the unconscious. Sometimes there is an internal leap beyond the threshold to dream and fantasy, an unexplainable odyssey into childhood fear and fulfillment.

The woman at the canvas – child, daughter, woman, wife, mother, human, artist – reaches into darkness and finds colorful nightmare visions in her. The woman in me – extravert, unusual, pessimist, with a black and white window on life – needs to fight to bring to light these visions as the past and the darkness reach out for me. Yet my conscious aesthetic remains excitement and sensitivity.

I was born and raised in Turkey. I received my BA degree in film and television production from Marmara University in Istanbul where I worked as a film editor and painter for many years. I came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2001. My goal is to become more widely known in the American art world.

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