As Milk Makes Money

Boğatepe village of Kars, whose economy is based on milk and cheese production from the past to the present, is one of the success stories that stand out with the reverse migration. Documentary focuses on the preservation of biological and cultural diversity, local seed reproduction, botanical-ethnobotanical studies, preserving the food culture in rural life and traditional food production, solidarity tourism which gained an organized structure with the establishment of Boğatepe Environment and Life Association, that was carried out predominantly by women after 2000. The film makes a practice in local development visible through the testimony of different actors.

  • Özcan Yağcı
    Project Coordinator
  • Nihan Gider Işıkman
    Director
  • Senem Gençtürk Hızal
    Producer
  • Gizem Akgülgil
    Editing Director
  • Semih Delil
    Sound Design
  • Naz Almaç
    Assistant Director
  • Semra Ay
    Assistant Director
  • Irmak Kabadere
    Camera
  • Sinem Sülüki
    Camera
  • Sertan Yalçınkaya
    Camera
  • Furkan Yılmaz
    Camera
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Süt Para Edince
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    38 minutes 48 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 1, 2020
  • Country of Origin:
    Turkey
  • Country of Filming:
    Turkey
  • Language:
    Turkish
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Nihan Gider Işıkman

Nihan Gider Işıkman is still a faculty member at Başkent University. She teaches courses such as Documentary Cinema, Documentary Film Production, Directing in Cinema, and Production in Cinema. Her work focuses on cinema, documentary cinema, which is an important field in the creative industries, and different narrative forms in documentary cinema within the framework of the re-presentation of reality. She won awards with the documentary films she produced and directed, and took part in international festival programs.

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Director Statement

The documentary was produced as part of a Scientific Research Project realized with the support of Başkent University. It is an output of the online format that is on the website www.yuzlervesesler.com. The project contributes to the Boğatepe process and the Ecomuseum as an important memory record and provides visibility. The project was also considered as a practice project carried out with undergraduate and graduate students that took an active role in the production processes of all outputs. The project is planned as a series, for models on the local development, with its website and documentaries. "As Milk Makes Money" is the first film in this series. The documentary was designed in a plain structure in order to clarify its subject and to reflect the natural life in the location, and it relied on the memory-building function of the documentary with the direct narratives of the witnesses.