Tarlataban - Asmin Film Production

About Film

Tarlataban is a structure which was established in Boğaziçi University by a group of people who believe that with collective labor and sharing environmental friendly agriculture is possible. The group who named themselves as Tarlataban started farming in Boğaziçi University’s garden. They had a lot of things to say and protest about the existing foods and agricultural policy. They are trying to create an alternative form to consumer society. They believe they will create a total change on the campus. Althought Tarlataban Collective mainly focuses on Boğaziçi University campus, it continues with participants in and out of the campus. Our film witnesses the works of Tarlataban Collective which was bor out of ‘Starbucks Invasion’.

Watch the Movie

Movie Quotes

Pınar: Now, while buying food, people do not know where that product came from or what is the story behind. None of us do. How much work there is, how much exploitation behind or how many steps there was in that tomato, cucumber or whatever it is, we have no idea. As consumers we are isolated from all those stories behind it; we just buy and eat.

Cihan: Students decided to invade Starbucks through the end of BÜKOP, we started talking about how we could interfere with the school’s food system and create a new space besides the invasion. The idea of a farm came up then.

Handan: I think people should start change locally. Hence, what we are doing here is to change something at school. We actually want to create something schoolwide, small, and sustainable on the campus. This might be a bigger dream but here we have a mini version of it. This is, at least, a start.

Purpose, Approach

With their structuring, crowd and chaos making our lives a torture most of the time, are big cities our only alternatives? Can there be a conscious and preferred country life in our country too? Is it possible to live without being apart from the nature or being carried away by the consumption frenzy? Can there be an urban farmer? Are all these running away from the city, these pursuits a kind of trend? We think aloud with the people whose lives we witness. We are reconsidering the cities we live in. We ask if it is possible to build a new living space with our own color and shape apart from the models that are presented to us.

In a world where everything is constructed upon the urban life are these life trials utopic?

In our narration which we used the witness method basically, we will have questions that we seek answers. Is it possible for people who have spent so much time in big cities to get rid of this urbanism that stick on them?

The work done is very important but how and what is the source of the responses of practical life?

How do people who have little or no contact with the nature have a start in the country? Is this a reunion or just a struggle with the nature? Is the word ‘it’s not the nature that needs us but we need the nature’ valid in every situation?

Is it possible for the ones who fought or struggled with the nature all the time and had a public memory to have another relationship in an instant?

Our film focuses on the ones who leave the city in order to ‘have a collective life in the country’. Although we take a stand with the ‘another life is possible’ idea, our attitude to these stories do not show it. In these life style trials, we not only witness the things created but also show the things that do not work or contradict.

Crew

TRT Belgesel Kanalı – TRT Tourism and Documentary Channel

Yönetmen, Metin Yazarı – Written and Directed by

Bingöl Elmas

Kameraman – Camera