Filmmaker Kazim Oz will screen his latest documentary, “The Last Season: Shawaks,” on Sunday, April 14, at 6 p.m., in the Kirner-Johnson Building’s Bradford Auditorium. The screening is sponsored by the economics department, and is free and open to the public.
“The Last Season: Shawaks” is a documentary which explores the nomadic Shawak community in eastern Turkey. In winter, the nomads live in a small village, but when spring comes, they hike high into the mountains to pasture their livestock. Oz accompanies the Shawak for a whole year, observing the challenges of their daily lives up close. The film produces an intimate depiction of a group of people who have to work very hard to eke out a humble living.
Oz was born in 1973 in Dersim, Turkey. Since 1996, he has worked in the Cinema department of the Mesopotamia Culture Center, currently know as Mesopotamia Cinema Collective. His first short film “AX” (the land) was well received by the public and in international cinema. He finished his first long feature “FOTOGRAF” in 2001. The film achieved several prizes, and was in theatres in winter 2002. His later work, a feature documentary titled “Dûr” (The Distant), was awarded “best documentary” in the Turkei & Deutschland Filmfestival, Nürnberg, in 2004. In 2008 Oz completed his second feature length fictional film, “The Storm.” “The Last Season: Shawaks,” his second feature-length documentary, is a co-production with ARTE-France.
