Mert Berdilek
"I grew up in the Northern Suburbs of Melbourne. I was born in 1990, upon reflection growing up through the ‘90s in the outer suburbs had it’s initial creative limitations. The internet wasn‘t as mainstream at that point, you maybe had dial-up but that was it. So accessibility to great cinema wasn‘t as decentralized & rich as it is now. We take things for granted now, however back then It just wasn‘t easy as it is today finding unique material or being exposed to work from key figures from different pockets of society"
"I was drawn to filmmaking early on in my life, purposefully alienating myself by consuming vast volumes of film when others were out playing. But my mother’s traditionalist virtues won over & I eventually went into engineering and then rode the inevitable parabola back into my one true passion: filmmaking. I‘ll put it this way, I‘ve been a student of cinema my whole life, ever since I was a kid. It just washed over me – much to the initial dismay of my parents. The aspiration, ever since that formative age, was to delve into the arts and into cinema. To contribute."
"However, and I think this is a caveat with coming from an ethnic background. My mom was a midwife nurse back in Turkey before she came here. My dad came here when he was about six. Her dream for her son was to go to university and have stability and so on and so forth. Of course, film was never in the picture – it’s not what comes to mind when you think ‘stability’. However little did they know, that when I went to Turkey for that small period of cultural effervescence, in order to cling onto what I called home i.e. Australia – my journey into discovering the roots of Western cinema began, all located in an ironic small room with a laptop in the heart of Anatolia"
"Graduating from high-school, and plunging into the heavy binary choice of ‘your future’ - I went to RMIT University to study Aerospace Engineering. Mathematics & physics came natural to me, so it seemed like a degree to best capitalize on those natural skillsets. However what intrigued me & continues to do so, was the natural dichotomy of something as resolute as mathematics & something as open & un‑resolved as art could co-exist at the same time in a person. I guess that realization made the concept of Schrödinger‘s cat a very real manifestation in my life"
"I did various different electives; things like Cinema Studies or Philosophy. These were of actual interest to me. And that was, I guess my attempt at keeping the flame alive at a time when I wasn‘t directing or I wasn‘t studying film formally. Yet when I entertained the concept of studying film formally, I found solace with the fact that most of the people I admired and looked up to, never went to film school either. So I had that feeling of comfort which added to my resolve that; ‘You don‘t need to go to film school to understand cinema.’ You need to go to cinema itself. You just need to go watch films – a lot of it. And that‘s what I did."
"It’s funny however, at university, life was dropping small hints and trickles of opportunity that kept fanning the flame within me. From small filming requirements at university, to international competitions that required a film/video component to communicate the next big idea in Aviation & Aerospace. Soon after, inadvertently I became the resident filmmaker on campus. There was even a moment when only me & a certain professor shared a secret that no-one knew, that only I had uncovered – That he was the lead documentary character for one of Werner Herzog’s subjects! I happened to be watching the documentary while procrastinating during exam studies of the very same professor’s class to have a surprising revelation! You can’t help but look back at moments like that and say, ‘coincidence or not, that must’ve stimulated me somehow’"
"After university, there was a moment when I formally took the plunge. A leap of faith. It was late 2016, certain things were occurring within the socio-political climate of Turkey, Syria, etc, it was very tense times and I started writing a short film, but it grew. It grew into a multi-national ambitious feature film. I thought ‘It needs to be made now, it needs to be made in this time.’ In order for it to be a harsh mirror so people can actually see what‘s actually happening in that region of the world."
"It was called Winter Solstice. Given this is at a time when prosumer technology, cameras and lenses where getting to a degree where you‘re like, ‘You know what? You can actually shoot a film and not compromise on any quality, there are a myriad of cameras and lenses that you can now afford.’ So I used my salary and all the money I had, at that point, in order to fund my first attempt at a feature. I basically took one and a half months off work and flew over to Turkey. I‘d already briefed some people that I wanted to work with, and most of them were non-actors. Some of them had experience in short films and theatre."
"I went into this project trying to shoot a feature film, by myself, with no crew and completely autonomously in a country that I didn‘t live in and in a country that was in actual physical turmoil that I was documenting. It was happening at that very time parallel to the production. In fact, the week that I landed there, certain bombings had happened in Istanbul, which is where I was shooting. So, it was very gonzo filmmaking. It was almost like my coming of age story, that month and a half changed everything for me. It made me shift my focus and perspective. I was like, ‘No, this is what I should be doing – this is my contribution in life.’"
"When I look back at those memories, I was depressed after I came back because I didn‘t have the right resources and time to complete this feature. It was the best one-on one time I spent with my mother. She came over to assist me and I think she really understood what was going through my mind at that point, and for the first time embraced her son as an artist."
"I think up until that point, she just thought that I was interested in cinema and I was obsessed with cinema, but after that trip I’m pretty sure she thought No, he‘s actually got things in his mind that he can only communicate through cinema and we can never understand him, unless he makes his films. – it’s fascinating seeing people who have known you your whole life, having the epiphany of discovering this invisible world submerged within you – and being content with that unknown. Life is usually a fear of the unknown – so you shouldn’t fight the resistance of those around you, they will come around at one point or another, but only if you honour yourself & your journey in this world"
"There was however a point of when I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker, that ‘film’ is not just entertainment. I was about nine or ten years old, I was very young, and we had cable television at the time. They were showing 2001: A Space Odyssey and I watched that film and I can tell you, I didn‘t understand a thing. But I knew that I‘d just witnessed that cinema is not mere entertainment, it‘s a social document. It‘s art. This film was saying or showing more to me than I could ever comprehend, it changed my relationship with cinema entirely. That‘s when I understood what an art form was."
"After having that revelation, I realized that I just witnessed something transcendental, where it became more than just a two/three hour past time, it was something more than that. And this is so unanimous with every other filmmaker out there, but Kubrick, just Kubrick as an influence, was paramount. It was transformative."
"Others that have influenced me are Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Pierre Melville, those guys. Hugely influential for me. And again, I‘m just rattling off names that everyone‘s influenced by, so it‘s not going to be something unique. Masaki Kobayashi, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Bresson, Yasuhiro Ozu, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Thomas Anderson everyone, right? Like I said, I‘m just a student of cinema. I wouldn‘t be able to narrow one person down. And I wouldn’t be here without them"
"Obviously, when you‘re writing, or when you‘re directing, especially visually, you‘re definitely going to have influences from the films that you‘ve seen and the directors that you’ve admired. When I shot Crossfire I consciously referenced a few Bergman shots, there‘s a Tarkovsky frame in there, even a Haneke. I‘m consciously & subconsciously inspired by the cinema that came before me. It‘s like a pastiche or a homage to their work, but only because of what it evokes, as well. When you’re referencing, what you’re actually doing is adopting technique – technique that has a specific function. As in it evokes a certain emotion, you’re chasing that feeling. You attempt in utilizing that technique in crafting your own narrative and crafting your own story. It’s important that you extrapolate & deconstruct every choice you make, because every decision should reciprocate an intellectual or emotional context for the story at large"
"That‘s why it‘s interesting when I hear from people who don‘t like the masters. I don‘t think I would have ever been a filmmaker if I didn‘t love the forefathers of the artform. I don‘t understand why people do become filmmakers if they don‘t appreciate pioneers of cinema. I‘m a by-product of their visions and I share a vision with them, because of what they‘ve tried to evoke, and what that in part has evoked in me. It‘s given me the tools to view art in a certain way. It’s given me the tools to view life in a certain way."
"A great Turkish filmmaker, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who is also a very big influence, said something very poignant, and a lot of other filmmakers share this idea. ‘You‘ll spend a whole year on a project, or even more than a year, two years, or whatever, and you‘ll watch the film that you‘ve made and then you might go back to that first draft that you‘d written, and it‘d be completely different. But that‘s okay, because that‘s the journey of cinema. That‘s the journey of creating.’"
"It‘s almost like you have to undertake the creative friction, that journey, for you to understand even your own self. The whole thing is just like your own subconscious, you coming to terms with the questions that you‘re trying to ask. And sometimes you don‘t even know what those are. You might know preliminarily what they are, but you don‘t confidently know what they are."
"So the journey of writing is actually the most liberating journey of all. When you write that story, it‘s actually the Rosetta Stone of your own mind and spirit, that you hadn’t deciphered in the first place. It‘s the way you‘ve been able to transcribe your thoughts and feelings into this piece of work, that is an extension of yourself at that point. Honestly, you can have so many pleasures in life, but I actually don‘t believe any of them could equate to making a film, at all."
"Now, for me, the very essence of creativity in art is not to tick any prerequisites. The whole process of art is pure creative liberation. I‘m not writing into my script a certain character because it supports a certain agenda, that‘s not what I want to do. I want to write the script as naturally and organically as possible and every single character in that script has a meaning and purpose, beyond any other external criteria that I have to fill. The industry landscape sometimes feels like people are writing themselves into a corner – which goes against the very thing that is so precious in this art-form"
"Currently I have a lot of different stories that are finished & half finished. These range from features to shorts, but what‘s in my immediate view right now is this film called ‘The Fall’. It‘s about a Syrian mother who as a refugee comes to Australia and in the first couple of weeks of her time here she faces an unforeseen tragedy."
"We’re currently in pre-production for it right now, which I’m very excited about. The core creative team coincidentally has formed of people of complete middle eastern ancestry, including our lead actress who is a Syrian refugee herself. I feel “The Fall” is an important story of our times, but also a story that has been inherent in the human condition for as long as humans have walked this earth. Like Crossfire, we are self-producing The Fall – paying all the bills of every single expenditure, however in the ideal world we would want to be funded & financed in order to best honour the stories we’re trying to bring to life. There is big difference in vision from when you’re working on a micro-budget to when you have industry support. We’re keen to have industry partners on-board for a project like “The Fall – if anyone would like to be involved I’d advocate to get in touch with myself or Alper Kasap on behalf of our independent company District Films."
"For me, the end goal is to be writing & directing stories in the medium I’m most familiar with & well-versed in: Feature Films. However until that day comes, I’ll still be continuing my journey as a storyteller albeit on a smaller scale. And again, as long as I’m contributing to the sphere of social discourse, the flame will continue flickering."