Schiffe aus Wassermelonen

Watermelons, boats, boats from watermelon rinds - clearly this is a film about childhood! About that special kind of childhood of the East or maybe of the Past!

In childhood every detail is full of meaning, full of amusement, the near future holds grand plans and dreams, in childhood myths can have very real appearances, and there are many many summer minutes to spend with your friends, on the dried meadows of the village or maybe on the imaginary sands of the coast...

A childhood in the East: where townsmen are too poor but have their pride, where they still pay a lot of attention and appreciate the small details, where life repeats its slow rhythms and the future is blissfully far away. In the East myths still can have very real appearances, and there are many many daily moments to spend enjoying the simple blessings of God while waving off the flies in the hot air, chatting with your watermelon customers, or taking a nap!

I should warn you that just like our childhood, the film has no specific finale, it ends unexpectedly, taken away by the circumstances. One day we realise it has been gone for some time already, while we had still so much more plans and business to do with it...!

A humble, monumental and so necessary memory of times that will one day pass, and places that will soon change! Ashkolsun arkadashlar!

Boats Out of Watermelon Rinds (Karpuz Kabugundan Gemiler Yapmak) is so naive a film that it resembles to no other film. People who call it another Cinema Paradiso just for the reason that its two principal adolescent characters love cinema, don't make justice towards Watermelon Rinds. Cinema Paradiso is a professionally produced and acted Italian film in which one of the two principal parts is acted by a French star (Philippe Noiret) whereas Watermelon Rinds in which all parts are acted by real townspeople takes all its mesmerizing power from its sheer amateur (natural and warm) quality in everything, especially, in acting.

The way people talk (the agreeable local accent they use) is one of the most valuable assets of Watermelon Rinds. The touching quality of warmth and sincerity of this film makes one think if a really good movie can be done only without professionals (especially without professional actors). You may experience the same feeling when you watch a certain Italian film which is named not Cinema Paradiso but Ladri Di Biciclette. In this respect (and only in "this" respect) you may better try to find similarity between Ahmet Uluçay's "Karpuz Kabugundan Gemiler Yapmak" and Vittorio De Sica's "Ladri Di Biciclette".

Because of the rumors about Watermelon Rinds being just a sort of Cinema Paradiso, I had resented the film and not watched it till now. And now I have realized that the rumors had made justice n'either to the film nor to me.

Boats Out of Watermelon Rinds is in no way a sort of Cinema Paradiso. In fact it resembles nothing but itself. Congratulations, Mr Uluçay!

COSKUN BUKTEL

The actual nice things in the movie are small details like the secret eating of the walnut by the elder sister,like the scene of epilepsy attack of Deli Omer...- In the beginning of the movie,there was a scene o a cat moving around a man crying which is shot totally incidentally,is making you feel good ,happy but not...and immediately after the dead man comes alive and you feel peculiar... During all the time,during all that childish love stories you actually expect the explanation of that coming back to life scene and it is explained actually in the end when Recep promises Deli Omer to bring alive his dead wife.

A sort of Turkish "Cinéma Paradiso", this is an account of two Turkish village boys, who take up summer jobs in the nearest town to finance their dream of constructing a working projector, by which to screen bits of film scavenged from the town's one movie theater. One of the boys works as an assistant to a water-melon seller, the other as a barber's apprentice. Both are convinced that this is the first step to successful film-making careers. The events of that summer mark the end of their innocence and their entry into an adulthood that manages to remain quixotic and strangely untouched by cynicism or too much reality. The whimsical day jobs provide very funny ruminations on how to get ahead in the world; as well, in the course of performing these jobs, the twosome offers up lovely nonsensical bits of business. One of the boys falls in love with a local beauty, but, of course, nothing much happens on that front. I loved the detailed observation of small town rhythms, and the ordinary village folk who, upon closer examination, are revealed to be mesmerizing. When the love-lorn fledgling filmmaker talks of his beloved, the considerably older beauty, one understands and empathizes with his plight completely. Seemingly exotic cultural practices and lifestyles become entirely understandable when stripped down to their basic human underpinnings. One of the boys and his mother live in an adobe house with a room containing the grandfather's grave, which, one must concede, is not the most common of living arrangements. At each crisis, however, both mother and son are shown alternately confiding in, haranguing, or cajoling the dead man. Though long gone, he continues to be the spiritual and moral head of their household; after a while, it did not seem the least bit odd that extended bits of dialog are addressed to a mound of earth. Utterly beguiling.

This is movie depicts the typical characteristics of Turkish villages and draws attention to the social relationships between people engaging in humor. Another pro for this movie is that although it is a local movie, it draws attention to pure feelings such as love and innocence.

Especially Turkish people should see it as soon as possible, that is because this movie is referred to the Turkish audience firstly. I do not know if another versions of this movie in other languages exist, but if it does, then everybody who sees cinema as an interpretation of pure feelings must watch it.

Personally, this movie provided me with the knowledge about the life outside the urban areas and gave me a great happiness.

Thanks to the director for such an admirable movie.