KARA

English Synopsis

My seven years spent in Turkey as a detached teacher on behalf of the Italian Foreign Office (M.A.E.) at the Italian High School (I.M.I.) of Istanbul (Turkey), has left on me an indelible mark. Reflecting on that experience, revisited in the light of subsequent events, was born the story of KARA, a woman full of contradictions.

The plot focuses on an Italian artist wearing a wedding dress, who wants to effect a pacifist and humanitarian mission. This mission begins in Istanbul, where she meets up with her Turkish friend, Deniz, with whom she had previously planned her artistic mission. That project — long cherished by the two women, but misunderstood by Turkish extremists and other political circles — undergoes a series of unexpected events, that force them to abandon it.

Preview of a dream

The wind, that has accompanied me on the long journey from Italy to Turkey, knows well my story. I had put in my head a rather extravagant idea: to go to Turkey to perform an artistic performance wearing a wedding dress.

First stop: Istanbul, where I was supposed to meet with my Turkish friend, Deniz. Together we had planned to continue – even in a wedding dress – our journey to Syria and beyond to bring a message of peace to peoples, mainly Muslims, who are not used to such protests.

This idea was hanging over my head since I had become aware of my artistic vocation after the first rudimentary experimentations on canvas with the help of my grandfather, an extravagant and famous Italian painter.

My name is Meltem, as the breeze blowing over the Bosphorus; my nickname is KARA, as the Black Sea and the deeper and hidden roots of the human soul.

Kara and the opposite: Beyaz, the white of the wedding dress, a sign of new life, candor and dreams not yet lived...

The day of my departure finally arrived amid the recommendations of my mother, worried about my adventurous and, in her view, risky journey. I followed the fantasies that make artists different from everyone else. So I have finally immersed myself in a new world for me: Istanbul and its daily bustle, the often conflicting noises and smells, the sudden miseries and extreme contradictions. Cloaked in white, I seemed like the dreamlike vision of some surrealist painter and, for sure, could not go unnoticed my figure who wandered along the dirty and unconnected streets of the city. Like a leaf catapulted by a sudden gust of wind, I twirled here and there as I attempted a shy hitchhiker, scouring a smelly puddle with the trawl. Alone and far from my country: this is how I lived so many lives in one life...