Museums often resemble cemeteries, where we rarely contemplate the stories behind the displayed objects and the individuals who once used them. This short documentary is the outcome of the director's encounter with a car phone from the 1980s, exhibited in the Foça History Center (Izmir, Turkey). Intrigued by the car phone's owner, known as Kara Vicdanlı – in English, ‘Hard-hearted’ – the director takes the phone on a walk through the streets of Foça, unraveling the memories associated with Kara Vicdanlı among the locals.
Dilek Kaya is a director who is fascinated by all things left behind. Her 2019 documentary Yıldız Tozu (Stardust), which was screened during Foça Film Days 2019, takes a nostalgic look at the Yıldız Cinema, a once-popular spot in Basmane that closed in 1988. (A 2022 exhibit to which Kaya contributed aimed to re-establish the venue as a permanent part of the social and urban memory of Izmir.) In Kazım (2018), a film sparked by discarded letters Kaya encountered at a flea market, the director becomes entranced by the search for the letters’ owner In addition to directing short documentaries and making remix videos, Kaya is also the author of The Midnight Express Phenomenon: The International Reception of the Film Midnight Express (The Isis Press, 2005; Georgias Press, 2010) and various essays on the extra-filmic aspects of Turkish cinema, including cinema exhibition and reception, movie stardom and fandom, and film censorship in Turkey. She is currently a professor and head of the Visual Communication Design Department in the Communications Faculty of Yaşar University in Izmir, Turkey.
