E-Mail This Article to a Friend ZWISCHEN DEN STERNEN|BETWEEN THE STARS / KURZ UND SCHMERZLOS|SHORT SHARP SHOCK

TURKISH + GERMAN | 89 MINUTES | MFA: NOVEMBER 27

TURKISH + GERMAN | 100 MINUTES | MFA: NOVEMBER 27

East meets West in Turkey. And now in Germany, where filmmakers of Turkish descent have nurtured a vital hybrid cinema. Two films in the "Turkish Filmmakers Abroad Series" at the Museum of Fine Arts, part of the 10th Annual Turkish Film Festival, demonstrate this blossoming in its earliest growth.

Both feature the theme of cultural conflict and reconciliation. Seyhar Derin’s Zwischen den Sternen|Between the Stars (2001) begins with the old saw about lovers in separate countries united by looking at the same night sky. The star-crossed Romeo and Juliet also get a nod as Deniz, an assimilated Turk aspiring to law school, gives her passport to Umut, a young man she meets while visiting the old country, so he can join her in Germany. Nothing matters but love to these starry-eyed kids, but the realities of "artificial identities and boundaries" prove hard to overcome, not to mention the objections of parents and the demands of bills, exams, housekeeping, and proper personal hygiene. Derin relies overmuch on glib motifs, but the crisp storytelling, engaging performances, and wise avoidance of melodrama elevate the film to creditable if not celestial heights.

Testosterone, not true love, unites the pals in Fatih Akin’s Kurz und schmerzlos|Short Sharp Shock (1998). Costa the Greek, Bobby the Serb, and Gabriel the Turk have sworn to cover one another’s backs in the mean streets of Hamburg’s Altona. But they don’t figure on Muhamer the Albanian, the local mobster whom Bobby joins to further his dreams of becoming another Al Pacino in Scarface. These kids have watched too many movies, and Akin himself leans on his viewing of Scorsese and Tarantino in this tale of tortured loyalties, madcap spirits, abrupt violence, and macho stupidity. Nonetheless, a stylistic exuberance and weighty authenticity add substance, qualities that will bear fruit in Akin’s brilliant 2004 film Gegen die Wand|Head-On.