In the event organized under the coordination of AA Academy and moderated by AA Foreign and Economic News Publication Manager Barışkan Ünal, a conversation was held with director Semih Kaplanoğlu.
Kaplanoğlu, who answered questions from Ünal and the participants here, explained that he has been involved with cinema since the moment he knew him, that his uncle once ran a summer cinema, that he used to use his 8-millimeter camera at a young age, and that he worked as a copywriter after university.
Speaking about the script writing process, Kaplanoğlu said, "I wrote scripts from the films of the directors I liked and turned them into scripts. I traveled in their mind maps. I think I found my own path after watching Tarkovsky's movie 'Mirror' in 1987. It is exactly close to my soul, my thoughts and my feelings." "That was the movie. The world changed for me after I saw that movie. I especially wanted to salute Tarkovsky in my movie 'Wheat'" he said.
In response to Barışkan Ünal's question about the film Buğday, Kaplanoğlu said, "I wanted to discuss science and knowledge a little more in this film. I am someone who plants and reaps crops, I deal with soil. I have always had a connection with soil. It is a film I based on thoughts about where the future world is heading."
Stating that the writing process requires a kind of solitude, Kaplanoğlu said, "It's a bit of a delicate area. Those who read my scripts say that they have nothing to do with the script after watching the films. The script is my starting point. If you look at cinema as a matter of communication, there is no point in making a film. Cinema is an art for me and therefore an individual job."
Kaplanoğlu responded to a participant's question about creating the main and supporting characters by saying, "I write the story and then deepen the character. The characters that start to enter the story should have things that will reveal the main character's relationships within the story and his own situation."
Kaplanoğlu responded to the question, "Writing or shooting?" with the following answer: "Both are very difficult. This cinema is not an enjoyable job. While writing the script, I recreate what I see while visiting the locations. I never want the set to be finished. After shooting each shot, I see something deeper. I say, 'Should I shoot this too?'"
Kaplanoğlu, who stated that he thinks that humanity will enter another phase with the digital transformation, the emergence and spread of artificial intelligence, said, "I think we need to be blind. We need to turn our backs on the image coming from the screen because I think it is not real. Sometimes I give a synopsis to artificial intelligence, I say, 'Make a treatment out of this.' It comes up with extraordinary things. All of them are actually stories created with the knowledge of classical cinema. Frankly, the era of great directors is over. Cinema is evolving somewhere else."
