March 8, 2020: A Memoir

A desktop documentary about the Feminist Night March protest in Istanbul in 2020, entirely created with screen recordings of the event and its aftermath, deconstructing and repurposing touristic and surveillance images.

'It is a film that speaks about surveillance not in terms of personal rights, or private data protection, as it's usually done, but in terms of collective rights. The state and corporations do not only surveille our private data, they also monitor the movements of the masses, in order to prevent people from coming together to protest. This film turns this state logic on its head: we use the images of surveillance to tell our own story, the story of the Feminist Night March, thereby turning surveillance into sousveillance; watching from below, in this case from our laptop's monitors. The film suggests that by using desktop documentary strategies, we can write our own histories from below, with footage that is supposedly state-owned. In fact, it's the footage of our own city. It belongs to the people, not to individuals but to masses, to the public.' - Firat YÜCEL