Even while speaking about the worst days of her life, or its after-effects, her positive outlook is not something Lisa Calan would discard.
She holds it close to her, as much as she holds her fighting spirit. When she makes a reference to the IS bomb attack on an election campaign of the People's Democratic Party in Turkey, in which she lost both her legs, it is to talk about the way it has changed her viewpoint and cinematic framework.
"Now I have got new eyes to see. Before the attack, even though I have been an empathetic person, I used to look only at the upper levels of society. Now I am mostly on a chair. I look from this level, see people's lives and I can understand them more clearly. So, the attack and its aftermath has brought a big change to my framework and how I see," says Ms. Calan.
But the years after the attack in 2015 have not been easy. Although she got a job at the Diyarbakir City Hall later, she was fired as part of the Government repression of 2016. Through crowdfunding initiatives, she got multiple surgeries done and began walking with prosthetic legs. The Turkish government, meanwhile, has not been keen on providing compensation to her and the other victims of the bomb attack, in a sign of the tacit understanding between Turkish president Erdogan's government and the IS, for whom the Kurd people are a common enemy.
"Still, there is some level of resistance between the government and the Kurdish people. The government really doesn't care about people like me. It seems they want me to remain scared and hungry. I can stand on my legs because of the resistance of the Kurdish people," she says.
Turkish cinema gets considerable representation at the International Film Festival of Kerala every year, but according to Ms. Calan, most of the Turkish cinema are not very political and do not reflect the Kurdish viewpoint.
"When we look at the history of Kuridsh cinema, it is still somewhat new. Because, the Turkish government has abandoned our cinema, our language, our land, and everything else. Yet, there is a cinema of resistance being made by Kurdish people. We are speaking about our language, our people. Because of our situation, we cannot escape from speaking on political issues in our cinema. But Turkish cinema does not have such a political viewpoint. Their work is not radical," she says.
Her short film 'The Tongue of Mountains' is set to be screened at the IFFK, which honoured her with the newly introduced 'Spirit of Cinema' award as a tribute to her resistance. She has also recently made a Virtual Reality (VR) film.
"Now I want to make a film about the bomb attack and the attacks faced by Kurdish people," says Ms. Calan.
