Visual Campaign Statement by Zelah Latteef

The London Kurdish Film Festival has returned this year with its 12th edition, celebrating its 20th anniversary with a significant commitment to uniting Kurdish film festivals around the world by presenting the first ever Global Kurdish Film Festival Online Edition. 

Faced with many challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cinemas and cultural events around the world came to a halt, and with it, our festival as well. Adapting to these new challenges has provided the London Kurdish Film Festival with a new opportunity to reach out to a global audience, most importantly to showcase our selection of films to our new audiences from Kurdistan and beyond. 

Having established our festival in the diaspora 20 years ago, the visual design campaign of this year aims to celebrate the history of LKFF, our dual identities and nostalgia, meanwhile signifying the importance of Kurdish cinema, sharing and celebrating our cultural identity as Kurds within the multi-cultural communities of London and UK. 

To kick off the important month of March for the Kurdish people with the official poster, we will celebrate the Kurdish New Year of Newroz with the official trailer.

TRAILER & POSTER

The visual concept of the Global Kurdish Film Festival Online Edition trailer and poster encapsulates the story of four young Kurdish individuals wearing traditional Kurdish attire that represent various regions of Kurdistan as they attempt to get to the film festival at Rio Cinema in London. Along the way, they encounter different hurdles that delay their journeys. In the end, they all manage to successfully unite at the venue where they sit down to watch classic Kurdish films on the big screen, celebrating the best of Kurdish cinema. 

The poster depicts the four young individuals in traditional Kurdish attires inside a central line train carriage, usually regarded as a distinctive feature of London. The colours highlighted are blue and red, therefore combining classic Kurdish and British symbolic features. The train is significant to the overall story as it continues to reflect the themes of time and travelling. In-turn the poster is also a reflection of our audiences and their continuous support for the past 20 years. With every festival, the LKFF has brought people together, and more so Kurdish people in the diaspora who come from different regions of Kurdistan with different backgrounds joined together in this one event that represents each and every one of them. 

Therefore, the aim of this year’s trailer is to show the unity of all parts of Kurdistan as we attempt to persevere through cancelled film festival events. This is emphasised within the trailer as all the London stations, signs and billboards are replaced with Kurdish cities and past LKFF posters, to signify that although we are in the UK, our backgrounds are an extremely important aspect of our life that travel with us wherever we go. The traditional clothing symbolises the Kurdish image, arts and culture. The struggle in their journeys reflects the struggle of cultural events around the world and the struggle of Kurds to express their culture. The cities highlighted in the trailer are locations that are under threat, from colonization to forced assimilation to archaeological site destructions, therefore, the destruction of the Kurdish history and art. The films screened at the Rio Cinema are of the history of Kurdish Cinema, showcasing some of the most iconic scenes from renowned Kurdish classics. 

This year, we will showcase two curated programmes of films. These films will be divided into two categories including the Best of Kurdish Cinema and New Selection Films. The themes will be defined through our colour campaign that aim to establish feelings of happiness, hope and unity. 

I believe that film and cinema is a fundamental medium that is necessary for humans to tell our stories. This medium enables any group to reflect and represent their tradition, cultural characteristics and creativity. It is a form of interaction and peacebuilding. Additionally, in the case of the Kurdish people, it is also a powerful means for existence and resistance. Through this medium, we continue to keep our language and culture alive, but also introduce and establish ourselves with the world by sharing and inviting everyone to experience our diverse perspectives. 

I would like to thank Zoran Veljkovic, a renowned cinematographer with who I had the pleasure of directing and executing the official poster and trailer. I would also like to extend my thanks to the LKFF Film Collective, a highly dedicated and creative team. Together, we successfully managed to bring this idea to life.

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London Kurdish Film Festival (LKFF)

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