March 2, 2004
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu
Promising young German director-writer Yüksel Yavuz presents his moving film A Little Bit of Freedom at UCSB Campbell Hall
Summary Facts:
- A Little Bit of Freedom
- Director Yüksel Yavuz will hold a Q&A after the screening
- Yavuz’s film examines issues of immigration, nationality, and sexual identity
- Yavuz is a Regents’ Lecturer in the UCSB Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
- Thursday, April 8 / 7:30 pm
- UCSB Campbell Hall
- General: $6 / UCSB students: $5
- Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
Director-writer Yüksel Yavuz, one of Germany’s rising young filmmakers, will present his emotionally gripping film A Little Bit of Freedom (Kleine Freiheit) on Thursday, April 8 at 7:30 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. A Little Bit of Freedom (2002, 98 minutes) chronicles an unlikely friendship between two immigrant teenagers—one Kurdish, the other African—struggling to get by in Hamburg, Germany. Yavuz will hold a Q&A after the screening of his film that Variety called “involving, gritty, lively and affecting.” He is a visiting UCSB as a Regents’ Lecturer in the Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies.
A Little Bit of Freedom focuses on Baran, a young Kurdish refugee, and his buddy Chernor, an African refugee from Yemen, who find themselves in the seedy red light Reeperbahn district, the hub of immigrant life in Hamburg. Without legal papers, these stateless youths come of age in a foreign landscape where they do whatever it takes to survive—from under-the-table jobs to drug deals—but despite the conflicted potential of their present, they can’t escape the difficult pasts from which they’ve fled. “Yavuz explores the deepening relationship between the two men as they work together to evade undercover cops,” writes the Brooklyn Rail, reviewing the film at its North American debut at the Hamptons Film Festival. “He gives us an urgent sense of the Hamburg underbelly and refuses to compromise his ending.”
Yavuz was born in 1964 in Karakocan (Turkey) and joined his parents in Hamburg, Germany at the age of sixteen through a government program that enabled the reunion of immigrant families. He brings a unique twist to the German immigrant experience, as he belongs to both the Kurdish and Alevi minority groups. “I wouldn’t describe myself as a Kurdish director,” Yavuz has said in an interview, “but as a filmmaker with a Kurdish origin. There is a relation between my biography and my work. I spent my childhood and part of my youth in Turkey, and so I experienced a different kind of education [than other German directors]. All this has an influence on my development of my protagonists and the stories I select.”
Yavuz first worked in a German meat factory in an atmosphere of isolation and occasional camaraderie he later captured in his first film April Children. At the same time he became active in local social and cultural groups, co-editing a newspaper devoted to minority issues. Despite economic hardship and discrimination, Yavuz studied at the Hamburg School of Economy and Politics from 1986-1989 and at the Hamburg School of Fine Arts from 1992-1998. His first filmmaking experience came while he was at school, and his short My Father, the Guest Worker (1994/1995) won an award at the International Documentary Film Festival in Munich.
In 1998 Yavuz wrote and directed April Children, hailed as an “impressive feature debut” by Variety. A richly detailed and compassionate portrait of a Kurdish family in Hamburg suspended between tradition and modernity, the film won awards in festivals from Salerno to San Francisco. The Hamburg evoked by Yavuz in April Children has been compared to the Yugoslavia of Emir Kusturica and the Baltimore of John Waters—drawn in clear lines yet complicated through its ironic and tragic moments.
As a UC Regents’ Lecturer in the Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies, Yavuz will engage with students and faculty from various academic departments. Instituted in 1962 to encourage rare and invaluable interaction between gifted non-academics and the university community, the Regents’ Lectureship program of the University of California has continued to provide campus residencies in sponsoring departments for people with distinguished achievement in the arts, sciences, humanities, business, politics and international affairs.
A Little Bit of Freedom with filmmaker Yüksel Yavuz is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures. Tickets are $6 for the general public and $5 for UCSB students.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.