Last week I traveled to Istanbul to cover the Greenhouse project – an EU funded program to develop documentary film and filmmakers from the Middle East and Mediterranean. My feature will come out this Friday, but in the meantime here is a short travel piece from Istanbul that appeared in today’s paper.
Istanbul is, perhaps, best seen through the eyes of a cinematographer: Imagine a city so chaotic, but whose characters travail along the banks of a slow-moving river; and imagine a soundtrack so incongruent you can hear modern techno music and Islamic chants within the same earshot.
Location: Take a wide-angle lens, you’ll need one. The city on the Bospharus which straddles Europe and Asia is big – very, very, very big. Official estimates range from 12 million to 20 million inhabitants, which is an unsurprising discrepancy for this city.
