7 March — Monday

My English is still elementary, if not broken.

But recently I discovered that I don’t censor or control myself as much in English as I do in Turkish. It’s this constant child-like feeling: short sentences, simple paragraph without almost any proverbs or local expressions, no historical connotations whatsoever. Definitely a different person than the one I know for the past 25 years, almost as if I’m rediscovering daily life from scratch.

One might rightfully argue that not all immigrants have the same level of foreign language. But all non-native language speakers go through this child-like stage at some point when they first move to a new country, trying to adapt not only to the culture or language, but also to this new person they discover in themselves, speaking an in-between-language all day where jokes aren’t as funny and thoughts aren’t as immediate. Unlike home, words are not connected to a collective memory but to a constant sense of floating.

Maybe it’s a different form of expression.
I wonder how it would translate into image.

 

 
 
 
 

THIS IS WHAT THE SKY LOOKS LIKE WHEN YOU GET VERY CLOSE, 2021
Fragments of a photo of the sky shot from the plane on my way from London to Istanbul.
This was the first time I was allowed to travel outside the UK
after two years due to my visa restriction and COVID rules concerning Turkey.

Shot on 20 August 2021
around 6:30 in the evening, on 35mm colour film

Gabriela, February ’21, cooking for our Brazilian night after shower

 
 
 

 

One of those evenings in Battersea, February ’21

 

London ’21

 
 

Goia, March ’21

 

 

(Currently Unavailable)

This happens to be the first film I made in 2004-5, when I was 13.

My mom and I bring some tea for my dad when he is trying to fish.

My dad feels uncomfortable because another man found his secret fishing spot and ruined his peaceful weekend getaway, so he wants to leave. On the other side, my mom thinks that he wants to leave because we interrupted his peaceful day. Meanwhile, a sneaky frog gets closer and closer to my dad’s fishing rod.

 
 

Aberfeldy, February ’20
Some weeks before Covid