(Screened
with Burhan Ocal & Trakya All Stars: A Musical Homecoming)
Director NEDIM HAZAR:
Nedim Hazar was born in Ankara in 1960, raised in Sydney and Istanbul, and began his professional career in Cologne, Germany, where he has been living since 1980. He worked as an actor in Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen (Recklinghausen City Theater) for three years and took parts in various television and cinema productions. Later he took a musical journey of six years between London and Alma Ata with the ethno-rock band, "Yarinistan", as the group's singer and composer, which has four albums. Since 1990's, he works as a presenter and a producer in the Germany radio station, WDR. He created numerous interviews and short documentaries for WDR, 3 Sat and Arte. Nedim Hazar is graduated in 1998 from Cologne International Film School (IFS) in screenplay writing and in 1999 he received education in directing in Amsterdam Advanced School of Arts (AHK), studying with Michael Radford, Brian Gilbert and Gillies McGinnon.
Synopsis:
What is the significance of the "Mannheimer School" in music? And how did the Enlightenment Period affect contemporary music? 7 to 9-year-kids can answer such questions in Kushtepe, a "Merry Gypsy" suburb of Istanbul. Renown in Turkey through musical documentaries, Nedim Hazar and his team invite audiences to the world of the children of Kushtepe, who take instrument lessons, learn music theory and solfege in Bilgi University, which is situated in the middle of the neighborhood. The young Gypsy fiddler, whose father "plays behind the solo singer" in a restaurant at the Bosphorus and his friends; young girls whose mothers clean the corridors of the university where they are being taught music; girls who long for the green and the trees of their parents' homeland and cannot visit it due to financial reasons; they all want to become musicians. Some prefer to be studio musicians, some want to compose symphonies. However, their favorite music is "slow" music,
ie. "Kushtepe Blues".
Nedim Hazar was born in Ankara in 1960, raised in Sydney and Istanbul, and began his professional career in Cologne, Germany, where he has been living since 1980. He worked as an actor in Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen (Recklinghausen City Theater) for three years and took parts in various television and cinema productions. Later he took a musical journey of six years between London and Alma Ata with the ethno-rock band, "Yarinistan", as the group's singer and composer, which has four albums. Since 1990's, he works as a presenter and a producer in the Germany radio station, WDR. He created numerous interviews and short documentaries for WDR, 3 Sat and Arte. Nedim Hazar is graduated in 1998 from Cologne International Film School (IFS) in screenplay writing and in 1999 he received education in directing in Amsterdam Advanced School of Arts (AHK), studying with Michael Radford, Brian Gilbert and Gillies McGinnon. 
