All language subtitles for 5 - Pehlivan.ENG

ASPECTS OF TURKEY,
PAST AND PRESENT

The announcer calls the men to the fight,
"Pehlivan! Pehlivan!"

Wrestler, paladin, knight.
It's the same word.

The battle will last for three days.

It's the "yagli gures" championship,

which literally means "grease wrestling".

In summer in the Ottoman Empire,

in the days when Edirne
was the capital 600 years ago,

when troops got together for recreation,

soldiers started fighting
in the confines of the camp.

Yagli gures is an ancient tradition
a thousand years old.

Nomadic ancestors,
Turks from Mongolia,

used to floor each other
the way today's pehlivans do,

but in front of a yurt in short grass
on a high plateau in Asia.

The name inscribed
in the leather of their trousers

is "pehlivan" meaning wrestler or knight.

Like the remains of a suit of armour,

these black leather trousers
are stiff and shiny.

The pehlivans come
from all over Turkey,

from Kars, from the borders,
from the vaunted plateaux,

from dark Konya or green Bursa,

the cold banks of the Black Sea
or the scorching banks of the Aegean,

from closer by in Istanbul,

or from here, Edirne in Thrace.

The ritual warm-up to the fight.

A military parade.

Pagan moves.

Incantations to the earth and the sun.

Peasant offerings
and religious genuflections.

There are ten rounds of fighting.

A hundred strangleholds
on these oiled-up bodies.

No holds are barred,
but the hands slip all over the place.

The only really effective holds
are to the backs of the knees

and between the legs.

That's why the fingers cling on
to the bottom of the trousers

and the arm is plunged
below the belly and the thighs.

The wrestler has taken care to dampen
and oil the inside of his trousers

to stop his opponent's hands
from getting a grip there.

You just need to get him belly-up.

More often than not,
it happens quick as a flash,

the loser's back
barely brushing the grass.

The fights last three days.

One can grow weary
of male exhibitionism.

A complementary show is laid on
at the entrance to the stadium.

These young Gypsy girls dance
for twelve hours in the overheated tent.

The most remarkable thing
about their show

is that they manage to avoid
the rusty nails sticking out of the stage.

These silent, discreet Turkish women
contradict all the fuss.

Their strength lies
in their self-effacement.