Image Acts: Translating Ulysses 2023

Translating Ulysses screening followed by a Q&A with the directors

Turkish title: Ulysses Çevirmek

Kurdish title: Wergerandina Ulyssesê 

70 min, 2023

Directed, edited and written by Aylin Kuryel & Fırat Yücel

Kawa Nemir is like a walking dictionary of the Kurdish language. He incessantly records new words and idioms in his mother tongue. He considers language his home as he wanders from one exile to another. With its vast, infinite range of words, symbols, and anti-colonial resonance, translating James Joyce’s Ulysses into Kurdish becomes his burning passion. Leaving political turmoil and his loved ones behind he moves from Turkey to the Netherlands. Kawa takes refuge at Anne Frank’s former house in Amsterdam, where she started writing her diary, now serving as a residence for exiled writers. Will he be able to publish the translation of Ulysses?

Aylin Kuryel is an Assistant Professor at the Literary and Cultural Analysis department at the University of Amsterdam. Her research areas are nationalism, image politics, aesthetics/resistance, and politics of emotions. She is the co-editor of Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Possibilities (Rodopi, 2010), Resistance and Aesthetics in the Age of Global Uprisings (Küresel Ayaklanmalar Çağında Direniş ve Estetik, Iletisim Press, 2015), Being Jewish in Turkey: A Dictionary of Experiences (Türkiye’de Yahudi Olmak: Bir Deneyim Sözlüğü, Iletisim Press, 2017), Essays on Boredom (Sıkıntı Üzerine Denemeler, 2020, Iletisim Press) and Utanca Bakmak (Looking at Shame, Cogito, 2023). She has been involved in projects as an artist and is working as a documentary filmmaker. Among her documentaries are Translating Ulysses (2023), A Defense (2021), CemileSezgin (2020), The Balcony and Our Dreams (2020), Heads and Tails (2018), Welcome Lenin (2016).

Fırat Yucel is a film critic and a filmmaker. He co-founded Altyazı Monthly Cinema Magazine in 2001. Currently, he’s working as the editor of Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema, focusing on freedom of expression in filmmaking. In 2016 he worked as the co-editor of the documentaries Welcome Lenin and Audience Emancipated: The Struggle for the Emek Movie Theater. In 2019, he co-directed Heads and Tails with Aylin Kuryel. Yücel and Kuryel produce films with their artistic duo collective called Image Acts, their latest work being March 8, 2020: A Memoir (2023), a short desktop documentary. Yücel is a fellow at BAK Fellowship For Situated Practice 2023/2024.