Mahluk

Choreography and performance: Deniz Atlı
Directors: Deniz Atlı, Orhun Bora Çetin
Editing: Orhun Bora Çetin
Music: Serkan Eles
Camera: Galip Kürkçü, Volkan Aykaç, Orhun Bora Çetin
Platform Dance Theatre – PDT
AsiKeçi (Ankara Art Initiative)

This short dance film concentrates on personal stories and memories in order to reflect the topic of ‘persona non grata’ through cultural importance of Anafartalar Mall which was built in 1967 in Ankara, Turkey. This 50-year-old place was resisting to a demolishing with the memories, lives, stories and art works by Atilla Galatalı, Füreya Koral and Cevdet Altuğ in it. The artworks of these Turkish ceramic artists define the spaces in which people live their life’s for many years; the people walk by the mall, may be some of them breaking the daily routine and steps into the mall, the people we see around every day and their memories for many many years, for generations in these walls…. This perspective of choreographer and dance artist Deniz is being explained with abstract dance scenes. In the film these people are falling and standing up again and again, they get sad or excited; continue their lives and collects the feelings, memories… They built up their safety homes, look deeply into questioning eyes and may be needed to run from their troubles. Or they reopened the past, remembered the losses, their disappearing dreams in order to find themselves. They imagined getting/flying away from the monotonous, dull lives or faces that is imposed to them. May be the actual ‘persona non grata’ is not the memories, lives or the places like Anafartalar Mall but the world order which pushes people to be miserable, who knows…

This short film was a part of Persona Non Grata exhibition of Ankara Arts Initiative (AsiKeçi) in Anafartalar Mall, Ulus, Ankara, Turkey. It took part in Cinema Dance Ankara International Short Dance Film Festival 2018. Also, it was broadcasted in Milyon Tv (online music channel).