Thiruvananthapuram, March 22 (IANS)
Kurdish filmmaker Lisa Calan who is the Chief Guest at the 23rd edition of the International Film Festival in Kerala (IFFK) has said that her fight is against the Islamic State (ISIS). She was interacting with media persons here on Tuesday.
The Kurdish film maker who lives in Turkery had lost both her legs in an ISIS bomb attack in Turkey on June 5, 2015 while participating in a People’s Democratic Party’s election rally just two days before the Turkish general elections. She said that in the blast five people lost their lives and several people were injured. Lisa said that several film makers came to her support and they started a campaign to raise funds for her treatment abroad titled ,’ Let’s be arms and legs to each other’.
She said that after the attack her will power increased and her strength and resolve to comeback has become immense. The film maker said that she had got a job in Diyarbakir City Hall after the attack but was later fired from the post.
The filmmaker said that the attack against her was portrayed as an attack against women and her very presence with prosthetics is a clear message to the perpetrators of violence, the ISIS.
Lisa said that she can stand on her legs because of the resolve of the Kurdish people.
She said that the Kurdish people are facing several problems in Turkey and that they are forced to fight for the claims and rights including women’s rights, education, children’s rights. The filmmaker said that there was an interesting dynamism in Kurdish people and that they were tired fighting a war for the past 100 years and said that the ideology and the nation are giving them strength to fight.
When asked whether she expects the formation of an independent Kurdishthan, she said that she expects that Kurdisthan would become a reality one day. The filmmaker said that most of the Turkish movies are not very political and does not reflect the mind of the people.
The filmmaker said that she was in the process of making a documentary about the survivors of bomb attacks in Turkey and added that there were many who had lost limbs and had been in bed after the bomb attacks of the ISIS. Lisa Calon also said that she would also try an autobiographical movie in which she will depict the trauma she had undergone including the painful surgeries that she was subjected to in Germany, Australia and Turkey as well as the struggle to come up after the bomb attack had fatally damaged her legs.
She also said that she is now seeing life from the common man’s perspective and earlier it was through the lens of the upper class that she had viewed the society.
Lisa said that she was thankful to the Kerala Government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to have given her the Spirit of Cinema award and for the honour at the IFFK venue in Thiruvananthapuram.
She was also awarded the spirit of Cinema award at the IFFK venue by the Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on March 18th, the inaugural day.
Her movie ‘Language of the Mountains’ was also screened at the festival.
