Last week the Hungarian Cultural Center in Istanbul hosted "The Shawkat Mystery" premiere that would bust the myth that "documentaries are boring." Embarking on a literally "mysterious" journey, a team from Hungary strives to trace the life of half-Turkish half-Hungarian Seif Eddine Shawkat, a writer, poet, screenwriter and film director who is erased from people's minds enigmatically. Who is he actually?
Lorand Boros, an ethnographer from Kolozsvar (Cluj-Napoca in Romanian), receives a call from his friend Ferenc Breda about Shawkat's "Madonna of Kalotaszegi," which features a folk dance specific to Kolozsvar. Living in Egypt at that time, this analogy draws Boros' attention to discover more about the mysterious figure. With the few memories left in people's minds and information from dusty archives, Boros sets out to form a picture of Shawkat, who is a prominent figure of both Hungarian and Turkish heritage.
During the shooting of the documentary, Boros discovers that Shawkat was born in 1913 as the son of the contemporary Turkish Consul General of Koloszvar, Ahmed D. Celaleddin Bey and a Hungarian actress from Cluj-Napoca, Gabriella Incze. He was very well educated but was strongly attracted to the theater and film world. He wrote the screenplay for Madonna of Kalotaszegi, a 1943 film directed by Endre Rodriguez.
Kolozsvar carries significant importance for the life of Shawkat as well as a starting point for where the "The Shawkat Mystery" documentary is shot. Think of a place that one day was a part of the Kingdom of Hungary, then you woke up to another governance under Romania around the 1920s. Besides being a documentary of this important figure, "The Shawkat Mystery" reveals a great part of Central European history between the two world wars. In that sense, what makes this documentary unique is that it is more than presenting facts and history. It is an art transformed from facts and history.
In 1945 he was the secretary of the Turkish Embassy in Budapest. In 1947, to flee from communism, he settled in Egypt where he became a renowned director and filmmaker. His films debuted Omar Shariff and Dalida, the most famous Egyptian actors of the time, who played leading roles in his cinematographic works.
Everything happened by chance during the shooting of the documentary, said director Agnes Maksay. When Lorand Boros calls Agnes, she says that it would be very difficult to shoot this documentary. However, the mysteries of Shawkat were revealed to Agnes thanks to a chain of coincidences. Even the third wife of Shawkat, who provided information to the team in the documentary, was only found during the last days before her death. At the same time, even the daughter of a musician who was a friend of Shawkat at the time, trusted by his family and bequeathed to the burning of the archive, died after the documentary, Agnes said. Otherwise, it would be almost impossible for the team to access this information.
Another mystery is that his brother, Muzzafer Jzsef Shawkat, was one of the top sports car drivers in Romania. At that time, Galatasaray, one of the clubs in Turkey, was to compete with Kolojvar, which was the champion of the Transylvania region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Seif Eddine Shawkat was also on the bus transporting the Kolojvar team to Istanbul, Agnes said.
Boros says that Shawkat established the bond between Hungary and Turkey, which are brother countries even though they fought for some years. His literary works also show how much these two cultures reconcile within themselves. In some of his poems, he refers to his grandmother as a "Turkish anterior." There is no doubt that Shawkat blended these two different identities that he proudly carried.
Still, the documentary team leaves the story with a triple dot. Surely, more things are waiting to be discovered about the genius who has not been recognized so far. I hope at least years after, and thanks to the movie team, the legacy he left behind can start to be appreciated.
