Vizontele

Vizontele is a 2001 Turkish comedy-drama film, written and directed by Yılmaz Erdoğan and co-directed by Ömer Faruk Sorak, based on the writer-director's childhood memories of the arrival of the first television to his village in the early 1970s. The film, which went on nationwide release on , won three Golden Orange awards and was one of the most successful Turkish films to that date. A sequel, entitled Vizontele Tuuba, involving the director and most of the original cast followed in 2004. Production The film was shot on location in Gevaş, Van Province, Turkey. Synopsis The mayor (Altan Erkekli) of a small village in Southeastern Turkey in 1974 bitterly opposes the activities of sleazy opportunist Latif (Cezmi Baskın) who runs open-air film screenings and seeks to break his monopoly over village entertainment with the introduction of the first television (called Vizontele by the locals). However, the TRT team sent to deliver the television leave in a hurry after the delivery, leaving them clueless as to how to set it up. The mayor recruits an eccentric electrician called Emin (Yılmaz Erdoğan) and some of his office staff to help him to set up a television transmitter. While Latif seeks to undermine his efforts by convincing the local imam to decry television as the work of the Devil and a slap in the face of Islamic tradition, the Mayor and Emin's team are initially subjected to ridicule with their initial failures to get a signal until they get it atop the highest peak in town. However, they are disheartened when the television only receives channels from neighboring Iran.