Tracing State Violence, Resistance and Memory in Kurdish Cinema

Abstract

Kurdish cinema provides a multitude of narrative contexts for social inquiry. This article focuses on the interlocking role of Kurdish cinema in constituting and bearing Kurdish cultural and collective memories. By focusing on three films, Bêdengî / Silence (2010), Future Lasts Forever (2011), and Dengê Bavê Min / My Father’s Voice (2012), I explore how state violence and resistance are depicted, represented, and reflected on in the Kurdish filmmaking scenes. I argue that Kurdish cinema makes ‘non-existing’ and ‘invisible’ Kurdish bodies visible and commits them into collective memories. Through a multi-layered analysis of these films, I showcase how the Kurdish experiences and memories of gendered state violence are visually recorded, preserved, and transmitted beyond spatial and temporal boundaries and how different subject positions and subjectivities are produced and represented. By highlighting the multidirectional and multilayered aspects of memory, I portray the entangled practices of state violence. Finally, this article shows that Kurdish cinema provides victims, survivors, and witnesses a space to vocalize their demands and needs by making storytelling possible. At the same time, it implicates the ‘silent audience’ and reminds of its ethical and political responsibilities in the historical continuity of state violence.