Under the main title of "Recent History" panel, which was moderated by Başkent University Faculty of Communication Member Assoc. Dr. Nihan Gider Işıkman, a short section screening of the "Village Institutes" from the documentary series produced by Nazım Alpman took place. The documentary describing the village institutes, from the establishment to the closure, accompanied by living history witnesses, received full marks from the audience.
In the interview that took place after the documentary, Alpman talked about the village institutes documentary; "The Village Institutes Foundation opened up all its possibilities to us in Ankara. It allowed us to connect with living teachers, opened its archive, and allowed us to shoot interviews at the foundation center. Prof. Dr. Oğuz Makal mobilized all the means at their disposal for our documentary from New Generation Village Institutes Association, Tonguç Foundation and Tonguç Documentaries. Director Ali Adnan Özgür and producer-actor Erkan Can, who brought the Village Institutes to the cinema and made the movie "Children of This Land", appeared in the documentary as "good sons". The Village Institute teachers we talked to had one thing in common; Despite their advanced age, their memories were sparkling. They explained many things that are easy to be surprised, such as history, name, geography, on the spot. It would not be wrong to say that the Village Institutes are the system of the future. Because this method of education in western countries began to be implemented after the Second World War. Many good adjectives can be attributed to Village Institutes, which there are already. We are adding our documentary next to them: The Light of Anatolia Village Institutes!”.
Talking about his experiences in documentary production to the students who attended the panel, Alpman explained how he started documentary making; “I worked at Milliyet for many years. I started on Iz TV in 2006 with the call of Coşkun Aral. Coşkun Aral is the person who brought the documentary idea to life in Turkey. He achieved this both by what he did and by opening perspective to his friends. Until then, I had prepared 24 files for National Geographic Turkey. I started doing these with the camera on Iz TV,” he said.
The bond that documentary filmmaking establishes with life from his words; “We are the witnesses of time, we rely on the witness of the period we live in. Especially the recent history of Turkey is full of big black holes and unknowns. Wherever we go, we encounter a reality other than what we know. In fact, we have to face facts that we do not know at all. Spending time in second-hand bookstores constitutes our nutritional resources. There's also walking around. When we chat with the people of the region in the regions we visit, huge doors can be opened in front of us. Journalism is a race against time. If you are working for recent history then you are competing with Azrael. It is a great loss for people aged 75-80 and over to leave without telling anything. The Japanese have a proverb: "When an old man dies, a library burns." We have to be quicker than library fires. The main feature of our recent history work at Iz TV is that we always take care to shoot with first witnesses.”
After the panel, Dean of the Faculty of Communication Prof. Dr. Özcan Yağcı thanked Nazım Alpman and presented a plaque.
