Digital Docu-fiction: A Way to Produce Kurdish Cinema

Abstract

This exegesis contextualises my feature-length film The Sultan and the Kings, a studio-based project produced for the Doctorate of Visual Arts. As a Kurdish émigré and filmmaker who left Iran in 1997, lived in Turkey for a couple of years, then emigrated to Australia in 2000, I studied film and also continued the filmmaking practice that I had begun in Iran in 1988. The exegesis examines the shortage of literature about Kurdish films, the misrepresentation of Kurdish filmmaking, the emergence of Kurdish cinema and the obstacles faced by it, as well as the emergence of Kurdish cinematic styles. By considering how my film relates to Kurdish cinema overall, what is referred to as the “cinema under oppression” and the “cinema of diaspora”, this exegesis examines the development of a form of storytelling that I term digital docu-fiction, which blends elements of documentary, fiction and digital film manipulation. Through this form of practice, Kurdish filmmakers aim to take control of the whole process of filmmaking, from production to exhibition. The exegesis discusses this form of storytelling with reference to the development of my own practice and aesthetic, using my short film A Woman with a Digital Camera as an example of digital docu-fiction.