December 2023
Konya, Turkey

A film by Vincent Moon
Produced by Petites Planètes, Rana Gorgani, Souffle Collectif
Images by Vincent Moon, sounds by Julien Colardelle
Recorded at the Dervish Brothers, Konya

« At some point of the Seb-I Arus week, all the various performances and rituals going around Konya during the day seemed to be leading to an evening at the Dervish Brothers house. A sort of musical pilgrimage taking place every night, with many (many) people queuing in the entrance and the corridor, hoping to finally enter the large salon where were happening the music and dances. You wouldn’t know what to expect - it could be a local Turkish ensemble or a lost Persian poet, an exceptional tanbur player accompanied by a more chaotic daf rhythmic section, up to Western European neo-Sufi dancers engaged in an impromptu zikr, with massive head-banging and shouts. The audience was in large majority from Iran - a Persian hub in itself, where men and women could mix, dance and play together, different to what’s possible to do back in Iran, where sufi practices are more chased than revered. Filming in such a packed space was always a challenge - not only for the very few movements I could do, also for the disturbing presence of a larger camera in an intimacy already filled with cellphones. I had to become a show myself, adding and not trying to disappear, going with the dance and smiling at this bit of Sufi filmmaker cliché. The memory of those long evenings will stay with us, trancing and losing ourselves in the crowd. A true experimental Sufi space, like no other. »

WATCH THE COMPLETE PLAYLIST - • IMPRESSIONS FROM KONYA •  

10 films from the official and impressive Sema ceremony with 37 whirling dervishes to the long nights of dancing at Hiçhane or outside the mausoleum, from various collaborations of Sufi dancer Rana Gorgani with Ozgur Baba or Sadegh Azmand to entrancing circles all over. A cinema trip into the heart of modern and ancient sufism.