editor's pick

09:47

İlkay Akkaya is one of the well-known members of Grup Kızılırmak, a musical group. She was born on May 26, 1964, in Istanbul. After graduated from the Press High School at Marmara University, she joined Grup Yorum as the soloist. She released three albums with Grup Yorum. She got out of Grup Yorum together with Tuncay Akdoğan in 1988. In 1990, she founded the group Kızılırmak with Tuncay Akdoğan and İsmail İlknur. While at Kızılırmak, Akkaya also worked on her solo career. From 1990 to 1992 she was seen at the Birlik Theater in Ankara, where she played the role of Ballihan in the play Pir Sultan Abdal. She composed the score for the film Bir Küçük Bulut. She released her first solo album “Kül (Ashes)” in 1998 and then released her albums such as “Unutma (Don’t Forget-2001)”, “Yine (Again-2003)”, “Yalnız (Alone- 2005)”, “Umut (Hope-2013)” and “Hayat (Life-2015)”.

10:11

Mahsa Vahdat was born in 1973 in Tehran. She began her musical journey at a very young age. She moved to Paris due to the Iranian Regime’s pressure. After learning to play piano, she studied traditional Persian singing under Pari Meleki and Mehdi Fallah. She entered Tehran Arts University in 1993 and graduated with a B.A. in Music in 1995. As women are not allowed to sing in public as a solo singer after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Mahsa Vahdat secretly recorded her “Songs From The Persian Garden” album. Mahsa has performed as an independent artist in concerts and festivals in Asia, Europe, the US, and Africa together with musicians from Iran, Europe, and America since 1995. Following her participation in Lullabies from the Axis of Evil (2004), Mahsa started a long-lasting collaboration with the Norwegian record label Kirkelig Kulturverksted (KKV) and producer Erik Hillestad, which led to a worldwide release of a series of records.

08:49

The title of the film references the Iranian historical city of Persepolis. It is a 2007 animated biographical drama film based upon Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. The story follows a young girl as she comes of age against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution. When the 1979 Iranian revolution against the Shah of Iran begins, her middle-class family is thrilled and participates in the rallies. The Shah is deposed and elections for a new leading power commence. Marji's family's situation does not improve and they are profoundly upset when Islamic fundamentalists win the elections and start repressing Iranian society, imposing strict Islamic law

10:28

Singer Feryal Öney was born in Konya province of Turkey in 1970. She started her career in music in Konya. In 1987, she moved to Istanbul to study at Boğaziçi University, where she became heavily involved in the Boğaziçi University Folklore Club (BÜFK). In 1996, she recorded her first solo album, “Hardasan- Azerbaijani Songs”. Singer Feryal Öney has been known as one of members of Kardeş Türküler.

10:18

Libertarias (Libertarians) is a Spanish historical drama made in 1996. It was written and directed by Vicente Aranda. It stars Ana Belén, Victoria Abril, Ariadna Gil. The movie is set in 1936 in Barcelona in the midst of the Spanish Revolution and Spanish Civil War. It is one of the best movies that describe the Spanish Civil War. It sheds light on women's participation in the civil war and their stance in the war. It tells women's resistance, shouts, laughter, and victory marches, and of course, women's own war inside them and their struggle. In the film, the former nun Maria (Ariadna Gil) takes shelter in a brothel to escape from the monastery. The film shows how women can build their lives.

10:34

İmdat (Help) is written, composed and arranged by Nazan Öncel. The song draws attention to femicides with its meaningful lyrics. Nazan Öncel thanked many people such as Nükhet Duru, Demet Evgar, Songül Öden, Deniz Çakır, Gaye Su Akyol, Tuba Ünsal, Sinan Kaynakçı, Orkun Tunç, Gülten Kaya, Tolga Akdoğan, Özlem Karakuş and Mor Dayanışma (Purple Solidarity) for their solidarity. In the video of the song, the photos of many killed women in Turkey such as Münevver Karabulut, Ceren Özdemir, Özgecan Aslan, Pınar Gültekin and Ece Çiçek are shown.

10:40

“I Know Why the Caged Bird sings” is the first of the autobiographical works by American writer Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series sheds light on an inspiring biography of the writer. Maya Angelou was also a poet, actress, and playwright. In her book, she advises us to look at the world from the window of an unprotected little girl facing violence. The book chronicles Maya Angelou’s life from age three through age 16, recounting an unsettled and sometimes traumatic childhood that included rape and racism.

11:58

Ece Temelkuran’s book “Women Who Blow on Knots” takes us a journey in the Middle East. The book tells us the stories of four persevering women. As the world is changing, these women try to adapt themselves to it. They are sometimes alone, sometimes fall down but always stand up…

09:56

On her wedding night, Shirin is arrested for murdering the janitor of their home building. Hush! Girls Don't Scream is 2013 Iranian drama film about a woman on death row for killing a man. The film is a realistic film and it is about many issues such as women's self-defense, rape, and blackmail, and child abuse in Iran. It tells why women keep silent and why women are silenced. Shirin has a nightmarish childhood and she kills the man to not allow other girls to be victims. Shirin is sentenced to death.

08:53

Cecilia Krull is a Spanish singer. She is the singer of many TV series. She began her musical life when she was seven years old. She was born in a family that brings music into her veins. “My Life Is Going On” is the theme song for the “La Casa de Papel” series. She has had more than 200 million plays around the world for her song “My Life Is Going On”. She is one of the most important jazz singers.

11:32

“You Have the Right to Remain Fat” is a book written by Virgie Tovar, who was named one of the 50 most influential feminists in 2018 by Bitch Magazine. The book has been translated into Turkish and published by Güldünya publishing house. “I'm a 250-pound woman who decided to stop dieting because I wanted to stop waiting and start living,” writes Virgie Tovar in her book.

09:10

Nomadland is a 2020 American drama film written, edited, produced, and directed by Chloé Zhao. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the Golden Lion. It also won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It stars Frances McDormand as a woman who leaves her hometown, Nevada, after her husband dies and the sole industry closes down, to be “houseless” and travel around the United States. It received four nominations at the 78th Golden Globe Awards, winning Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director; in winning the latter award, Chloé Zhao became the second woman and the first Asian woman to do so.

10:25

Iranian Kurdish singer Yalda Abbasi is actually well known by music lovers in Turkey. She has held multiple concerts previously in Turkey and many music lovers watched her performances. She, who tells the pain, feelings, and daily lives of the Horosan Kurds in her songs, is a woman devoting her life to music. Yalda Abbasi lives in Tehran and continues her musical life actively in her country despite the pressures of the Iranian regime.

09:49

Bahman Ghobadi has made the silent screams of children growing up in a war environment heard by dedicating Turtles Can Fly to “all the innocent children in the world, the casualties of the policies of dictators and fascists.” The film tells us the stories of children, who grow up in minefield, earn a living by collecting and selling the mines in the region. Many of these children have lost limbs to landmines. Turtles Can Fly shows the war through the eyes of children. The film is set in the Kurdish refugee camp on the Iraq–Turkey border on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq and it is about refugee children. One of the children is thirteen-year-old Soran, known by the alias Kak Satellite. He is known for his installation of dishes and antenna for the villagers who are looking for news about Saddam Hussein. Then, we learn the stories of three children: Agirin, Riga, and Hengov.

08:36

Simone was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. She was one of the women who laid the groundwork for the second wave and she is known for her most famous statement, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”. She was born on January 9, 1908. She studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature and languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie. She was the youngest person ever to pass the agrégation exam. At the end of World War II, Simone Beauvoir and Sartre edited Les Temps modernes, a political journal which Sartre founded along with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. She used Les Temps Modernes to promote her own work and explore her ideas on a small scale before fashioning essays and books. Beauvoir remained an editor until her death. She died of pneumonia on April 14, 1986, in Paris.

13:44

My Marlon and Brando (2008) is a film written by a woman saying, “I can live everywhere if I live with my loved ones.” The film tells a woman’s struggle in Iran, Syria, and Iraq…Maybe most of us know the story of the film: Kurdish actor Hama Ali and Turkish actress Ayça meet each other on a film set. They fall in love while shooting a film. After the shoot, Ayça returns to Istanbul and Hama has to go back to his home

12:05

In recent years, more singers begin to sing songs in Zazaki, a dialect of Kurdish. Zarance’s album titled, “Wayirê Vengê Ma” is one of the works in Zazaki. Zarance explains why she released her album in the following sentences, “The primary aim to release this album is to be a breath in my mother language Xızır (also known as Zazaki/Kirmanckî), to protect the traditional culture, language, belief, and nature of Dersim (Tunceli). Zarance was born in the Ardıçlı (Gersunut) village of Dersim’s Pülümür district. She had her primary and secondary and high school education in Bursa province. She studied geophysical science at Istanbul University and she did her doctorate in geophysical science at Kiel University in Germany. Wayirê Vengê Ma is the first album of Zarance.

13:31

09:25

Betty Friedan’s book “The Feminine Mystique” was published in 1963. During 1964, the book became a bestselling nonfiction book with over one million copies sold. In the book, Friedan challenged the widely shared belief in the 1950s that "fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949, the housewife-mother." Andi Zeisler described the book as, “Feminine Mystique is the Tupac Shakur of literary feminism, reincarnated at least once every decade with new insights that engender old beefs while at the same time serving as a reminder of why it’s a classic.”

09:22

“Can you teach me a song you think I should bring back home?” is the only question of musician Petra Nachtmanova during her journeys to both the end of the world and the center of her heart. She travels from Berlin to Istanbul, through Anatolia, over the snowy peaks of the Caucasus and into the dusty desert of eastern Iran. Saz is a film about the power of music and the scope of the world, simultaneously a road movie and a quest for meaning, a breathtaking trip in the border region between Europe and Asia, which shows that despite conflict and crisis, there is a human everyday life out there, as well as something special that holds us together.