There are some interesting connections between “Hanka” (1955) by Slavko Vorkapic and “Dry Summer” (1964) by Metin Erksan.

Both take place in a rural community. In “Hanka” it is a village in Bosnia & Herzegovina dominated by the timber industry. In “Dry Summer” it is a farming village in Turkey. Both of these locales ground their respective films in a very lush naturalism that comes to bear its effects on thematics and formal aspects.

Both feature a beautiful young woman at the center of a power struggle between two men, one younger and the other older. In “Hanka” it is the title character, a passionate Gypsy woman (Vera Gregovic) who craves freedom but also the affections of a strong Gypsy man who works as a logger and who eventually marries her. In “Dry Summer” it is Bahar (Hulya Kocyigit), a teenage village girl who marries her sweetheart Hasan (Ulvi Dogan), who tends to the irrigation channel and crops on his family farm with his older brother Osman (Erol Tas).

Both women are violently attacked at the end of the film. Hanka is strangled to death by her husband in a fit of rage when she reveals she has cheated on him because he does not love her anymore. Bahar is shot by the obsessive and jealous Osman who has usurped his brother’s place in the marriage (though it is revealed in the conclusion that the rifle shot was not fatal).

Both feature the younger man going to prison and losing the faith of his wife. Hanka’s husband is sent to jail for destroying the property of his older rival as a result of the struggle for control over her. In the process he is released from jail with the help of another woman and ultimately begins living with her. Hasan in “Dry Summer” takes the blame when his older brother shoots and kills his neighbor in an argument over the irrigation channel they control. Osman selfishly takes the opportunity to feed Bahar a steady diet of lies as to Hasan’s well-being, eventually convincing her that he is dead so he can have her for himself.

Both feature the death of the older man. In “Hanka” he is killed by her even older father figure who is protecting her from his cruel advances. A rock crushes his skull and he is quickly disposed of in the river beneath the farm. In “Dry Summer”, when Hasan is released from jail he returns home to reclaim his wife and to get revenge on his brother. He drowns him after they fight in the very irrigation channel Osman used to viciously oppress his neighbors in the farming community. After both of these men die they are dropped into a river and swept away by the tides. The images of their floating corpses haunt the films with an elemental fury, returning them from whence they came.

Both films feature spoken Turkish. The Bosnians in “Hanka” use the familiar Turkish “merhaba” as a greeting, not to mention their utilization of traditional Turkish dress and customs. Bosnia & Herzegovina was part of the Ottoman Empire as recently as the beginning of the 20th century so the cultural heritages of the two films are connected on a deep level.

Both films are of historical importance. “Hanka” was Vorkapic’s only feature film, which he made after a distinguished career working as a theoretician, special effects maestro and avant-garde filmmaker in Hollywood. Surely one of the first films to focus on gypsy life and characters, it was chosen to represent Yugoslavia at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956. “Dry Summer” won Erksan a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1964. This cemented his status as a master of Turkish cinema and he continued to direct films into the 80s.

A unique double feature, both films placed in front of my eyes by chance only days apart. Vorkapic and Erksan are cinematic soul mates, as attested to by the nuanced vision they share in these two wonderful films.

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