Asli Cavusoglu: In Diverse Estimations Little Moscow

The film In Diverse Estimations Little Moscow (2011), by Turkish artist Aslı Çavuşoğlu, stages a series of fragmented, forgotten, and at times painfully remembered histories from a violent political suppression in the Turkish town of Fatsa in 1979 and 1980. Çavuşoğlu shot the film in Fatsa, enlisting untrained locals as actors, crew members, and information sources. Their presence adds a layer of naïve enthusiasm and increased intensity to the reenactments, as the actors are confronted with events from what are often their own families’ recent histories.

The film opens as two dogs wander the interior of a dilapidated former factory building that was used by the military as an interrogation and torture facility. Çavuşoğlu edits the series of short, disjointed vignettes that follow into a non-linear narrative that is visually and palpably coherent. Capturing the inconsistencies and mythologies that arise in the gaps between personal and collective memory and written history, she achieves a visually de-historicized estimation of the human experience of remembering events and forming memories.