QUE NO DISPAREN A LA COMETA (1989)
IMDb
Créditos:
TÍTULO: Uçurtmayi Vurmasinlar / Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite
AÑO: 1989
PAÍS: Turquía
DIRECTOR: Tunç Basaran
INTÉRPRETES: Ozan Bilen (Baris), Nur Sürer (Inci), Füsun Demirel (Fatma)
ARGUMENTO: Inci, presa política en la cárcel de Ankara, acaba de ser liberada. Perdura en su recuerdo la especial relación que tuvo dentro de aquellos muros con Baris, un niño de 5 años hijo de otra reclusa...
Película situada enteramente en la cárcel de mujeres de Ankara y basada en las experiencias de la guionista Feride Çiçekoğlu como presa política tras el golpe de estado de 1980. Que no disparen a la cometa contrasta las ingenuas percepciones de un niño con las de los adultos encarcelados y los guardias de la prisión. La prisión se presenta como un entorno que magnifica las jerarquías e injusticias que prevalecen en el mundo exterior.
Podría considerarse la alternativa abiertamente sentimental a la durísima El Muro de Yilmaz Güney. Sentimental tiene una connotación peyorativa en el cine moderno que, ya sabéis, no comparto; más bien al contrario. En cualquier caso, espero que las lágrimas no impidan ver las estrellas al espectador más emocional, porque la película ofrece más, mucho más, como se expone en el siguiente artículo.
Este era un proyecto que tenía aparcado debido a problemas familiares y que ve la luz precisamente ahora que no vuelan las cometas. No ha sido premeditado.Tunç Başaran's Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar (Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite, 1989) is based on Feride Çiçekoğlu's autobiographical novel by the same title. An artistically acclaimed movie about a women's prison ward after the 1980 coup, the Kite contrasts the naïve perceptions of a child with that of the incarcerated grown-ups and prison guards. The prison ward is presented as a setting that magnifies the hierarchies and injustices which prevail in the world outside.
The prison ward as a microcosm is a theme that has been treated by authors such as Orhan Kemal, whose 72. Koğuş (Ward 72), published in 1954, has also been set to drama and film. Similarly, Kemal Tahir's Karılar Koğuşu or Women's Ward, published posthumously in 1974, explored the microcosm of a women's ward with political flair, but from the perspective of men. It was not until the arrival of women authors such as Sevgi Soysal or Feride Çiçekoğlu that the lives of female inmates would have credible and striking representations.
Much like Soysal, whose work socially and politically precedes hers, Çiçekoğlu compares and contrasts the behavior, ideals, and desires of regular female prisoners with those of political prisoners. She underscores the contributions of political prisoners to the community of the incarcerated. In the book as well as the film adaptation, political prisoners like İnci (Nur Sürer) mitigate conditions of persecution by restoring ideals such as justice. "Barış," the name of the child inmate in Çiçeoğlu's work and in Başaran's 1989 film, may be seen as a güzelleme, a commemorative praise for political prisoners in women's wards, as well as for the work of Sevgi Soysal, the writer of a volume of short stories, Barış Adlı Bir Çocuk, that is, A Child Called Peace (1976).
Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite depicts people in the women's ward not as good or evil, but as enlightened or ignorant about the ways of power and their station in life. Many of the regular prisoners have been oppressed for too long to contemplate a better world. They are unaware of their own power to take collective action which would end oppression. Nor can they defeat cynicism by building trusting relationships. But most of them respect the political prisoners, who stay away from frivolous interpersonal conflicts and demonstrate leadership by defending the rights of the weak. From giving counsel and baby-sitting to writing petitions and sharing their food, political prisoners help other women in the ward.
An inmate who has been incarcerated for an offense having to do with her marriage to a drug dealer is allowed legally to be accompanied by her son, Baris (Ozan Bilen). Abandoned by his father and locked away with his mother, the five-year-old tries to make sense of the larger world. According to Aslı Tunç, who surveyed the visual characteristics of the setting, "the vast contrast between empty spaces and Barış's tiny body gives the audience a feeling of loneliness,"24 further augmenting the narrative about innocent entrapment.
With the exception of outings to the doctor's or to the courthouse, Barış never leaves the penitentiary. In search of company, the child befriends a political prisoner, a young woman by the name of Inci. From the tale of Pinocchio to the meaning of communism, from how to take care of a bird to why the female guard with the keys is not really everyone's mother, Barış learns from Inci the meanings of people, places, and words. A tabula rasa, he discovers concepts like ihanet (betrayal) and iftira (slander), imbuing them with new significances.
Like other prisoners, the child's only access to open skies is the courtyard and small window through which one can the view the hills surrounding Ankara and its historic castle. There Barış spots a flying object in the sky above the courtyard, but lacks the vocabulary to define it. He learns from Inci that the object is a kite, flown by people often children-in open fields. Inci provides Barış with a vocabulary of images representing freedom, flight, and happiness.
By contrast, representatives of power, such as the warden, are arbi trary, absurd, and paranoid. The prison guard erases the image of the kite drawn on the courtyard floor by Inci. The warden tears books apart and punishes people who read them. In one cartoonish episode the warden asks one guard to burn the torn pages of a book in the stove, then commissions the second guard, to check on the first one, and asks a third, to make sure the second guard checked on the first one. But not everyone who is commissioned by power is evil. For example, a young gendarme who accompanies his mother to the doctor's chats with him and buys a simit7 for him. Barış notes that those who abide by rules blindly share in power's inhumanity.
Eventually, Inci is released from prison-an event that tears at little Barış' heart. Before leaving she promises Barış that she will fly a kite on the grounds of the Ankara castle so he can enjoy the sight of a kite. Indeed one day women take Barış to the courtyard where he can see the promised kite, which delivers a message of hope. In response, the warden orders his men to take down the kite. When they fail, the warden himself aims at the kite. In the final scene, the offending kite escapes, and is joined by other kites parading in solidarity in the open skies.
Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite is narrated by Inci as a flashback to her time in custody. The film opens with Inci climbing up the steep hill of the castle, from where she flies the kite. In the end it returns full circle back to the present moment in which Inci flies the kite. Linking the two time frames is Barış, who needs and deserves freedom, represented by the kite Political prisoners like İnci keen hope alive and unite the community around it. But their cohesiveness is predicated upon their estrangement from the community of the ward. Their offenses cannot be categorized as misdemeanor, felony, or capital offense. Neither poor nor bourgeois, conservative nor ultra-Westernized, they reject conventional expressions of identity as irrelevant; their self-presentation is different. Consequently, when Inci is released, a few children outside accost her in English, presuming her to be just another tourist in the poor neighborhood of Ankara's old castle. This tangible distance from societywhether of the ward inside or the city outside-is both a blessing and a curse. It signals the potential of Inci and her friends to transform the existing social order for the better, just as it also suggests a barrier to collective change.
When a pregnant inmate gives birth in prison, Inci and her friends suggest that the baby be named “Özgür" (i.e. "Free"), but the idea is quickly dismissed by the new mother, who opts for a conventional name like "Ahmet." Even Barış's name, which conjures up images of a peaceful future, is but as a gesture to a popular music icon, Barış Manço, who was admired by Barış's deadbeat father. Yet the child's innocent spirit and his search for guidance represent a source of hope.
Gönül Dönmez-Colin mentions the film as a good example of political cinema that represents children realistically even as it employs the image of the child "as a metonym for wider suffering."By and large this is an accurate observation, but needs elaboration. When socialists like İnci are finally released from the dungeons, many have lost their innocence, leaving their inner child behind like Barış. Barış's separation from Inci-a mother figure-is laden with crisis. It represents the world outside as distinct from the one inside, announcing a physical separation between the dream and the dreamer.
Even when they are separated materially, both Barış and Inci associate the kite with freedom and each other, which averts ultimate defeat. Unlike other narratives such as All the Doors Were Closed (1989), where innocence is lost or naught to begin with the Kite resuscitates the inner child and restores its symbolic reunion with the revolutionary. Consequently, as a departure rather than a point of return, childhood remains central to the narrative.
Social Trauma and Telecinematic Memory: Imagining the Turkish Nation since the 1980 Cup
By Pelin Başcı
He partido de una VOSI con subs incrustados y algo esquemáticos y una VO+ST con subs más completos... pero en turco. Además la VO limpia (es un decir) tiene breves cortes, aparentemente para adecuarla al público infantil ya que atañen generalmente a expresiones malsonantes. Sólo uno de esos cortes afecta a la continuidad y ahí he insertado una indicación para poder seguirlo. El resultado final no es el más deseable, pero es lo mejor que se puede sacar a partir del material disponible.
Algunas capturas:
Baris apoyado contra el imponente muro de la prisión con las manos en los bolsillos
es definitivamente una imagen icónica en el cine turco
Datos técnicos:
Spoiler:
ed2k (versión original en turco)
Ucurtmayi.Vurmasinlar.(1989).DVBRip.XviD.avi [699.93 Mb] 
Subtítulos en español
Ucurtmayi.Vurmasinlar.(1989).DVBRip.XviD esp.srt [110.2 Kb] Subdivx
English subtitles
Ucurtmayi.Vurmasinlar.(1989).DVBRip.XviD eng.srt [108.9 Kb]
