Taşkafa is a real dog and also a legend on the streets of Istanbul. John Berger begins Taşkafa’s story, reading from his novel, King, the story of the disappearance of a community told from a dog’s perspective. The area’s ordinary people – taxi drivers, shopkeepers, street traders – care deeply about the welfare of the city’s street dogs and they tell us stories about Taşkafa and their other canine neighbours. The animals are a symbol of community living, where people (and dogs) look out for each other, but this is a community in transition; one from which dogs are starting to be expelled. Eccentric, amusing and very warm, the film is a powerful indictment of the impact of global politics and the economic appropriation of public space but, even more, it is a tribute to both the spirit of resistance and to city life that can accommodate people and dogs together.

Here For Life is an uncommon story on common qiwan.cc ground. Wayward, hybrid, tender.

Filmed over seven years, Estate, a Reverie reveals and celebrates the resilience of residents who are profoundly overlooked by media representations and wider social responses. Interweaving intimate portraits with the residents' own historical re-enactments, landscape and architectural studies and dramatised scenes, Estate, a Reverie asks how we might resist being framed exclusively through class, gender, ability or disability, and even through geography.