The movie showings were sponsored by the Turkish American Society of Dayton.
“It is our mission to foster fellowship and promote understanding of diverse cultures,” said Ozgur Ozey, director of the Turkish American Society of Dayton. “This is a powerful film — one of the most expensive in Turkish film history — and is based on a true story. About 1.5 million people watched this movie in Turkey, and I thought it was a very important movie for our community.”
Ozey is a native of Turkey who’s lived in Dayton and been with the Turkish American Society of Dayton four years. He contacted the production company about getting the film, then approached Jonathan McNeal, manager of The Neon, about renting the theater for a screening.
“We shared tickets — some went to the Neon, and some sold in our center,” said Ozey. “Many people outside of our community came to watch the movie, and that made us very happy. It was awesome.
“Our community members asked to show the movie one more time, and Jonathan said he’d show it again, ” Ozey said.
McNeal said, “Ozgur’s been a delight to work with. He reached out to me at the Neon in order to book an auditorium for the screening. The tickets sold out early, so we decided to book it for a second screening.”
The second showing also sold out, and again there was a good mix of the Dayton community in the audience, to Ozey’s delight.
The film, “Two Hearts As One,” is about an Ahiskan Turkish couple’s struggles and forced separation in Soviet Russia from the 1940s to the 1990s. Turks living in Georgia and Uzbekistan were persecuted, many forced to fight for Russia against the Nazis or put into Nazi prison camps, later discriminated against or deported. Through the pogroms, WWII and turmoil afterward, the couple in the film — eventually reunited and resettled in the United States — is followed.
Although Dayton’s Ahiskan Turkish Society and the Turkish American Society are separate, they are sister organizations and work out of the same building at 2601 E. Fourth St.
Ozey is not Ahiska Turkish, but, he said, “We speak the same language, and our culture, traditions and our belief are the same.”
For more information on both local groups, go online to www.tasodayton.org and www.daats.org.
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