Erol Mintaş

Erol Mintaş is a filmmaker who was born in Kars and based in Helsinki. He completed his graduate studies in cinema—his MA thesis was about the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky. His first short Butimar, and second short Berf (aka Snow) received many awards, and competed in various important film festivals around the world. In 2014, Mintaş’s first feature, Song of My Mother, made a major splash on the festival circuit, playing around the world and being awarded plenty of prizes, including the Heart of Sarajevo award for best film and best actor, and numerous awards. He moved to Helsinki in January 2017, where his new project (“Earth Song (working tittle)” with collaborator Mikko Viljanen) is currently taking place, supported by the Finnish Film Foundation (Suomen elokuvasäätiö) scriptwriting grant. His documentary film, “From Mesopotamia to The North: Dzamil Kamangar”, received funding from Kone Foundation, and is in production.

For more info about my previous films you can visit HTTPS://WWW.MINTASFILM.COM/FILMS”

At the Saari Residence, mainly I will be working on these two projects:

HUMAN GAZE, which is an experimental film and video installation about the history of the human gaze. What if the first part ever of the human being was an eye? In the beginning there was only one eye and then this eye got a disease and because of this disease all our organs started to appear and we ended up with what we consider today a normal human body. This film tells us the experimental story of the human body from the point of view of an eye.

FROM MESOPOTAMIA TO THE NORTH: DZAMIL KAMANGER – The documentary film tells the story of Dzamil Kamanger, the grandson of the Khan (a title for a ruler in Kurdish society) born in 1948 in a small village in east Kurdistan- part of Iran-, became a well-known international artist in Finland, even though he had to start his life from the beginning many times. The film focuses on his life journey from Kurdistan to the Finland.

On the other hand I will be busy with doing many works for Academy of Moving People and Images as the founder and the artistic director of the academy.

Academy of Moving People and Images (AMPI) is a platform in Helsinki for mobile people. Our aim is to design a new learning model and a sustainable pedagogical platform where people who have arrived in Finland from different backgrounds get to contribute to the film industry, and initiate change.

We provide 1 year of hands-on, fee-free courses for participants. They will make their own short films under the guidance of mobile filmmakers and Finnish film industry professionals, performing all the essential roles necessary to release their films.

For more info about AMPI, you can visit our website: WWW.ACADEMYOFMOVINGPEOPLEANDIMAGES.COM