The Los Angeles Turkish Film Festival is being held from Feb. 28 to March 3rd at the historical Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, giving young Turkish director's the chance to meet with some of the city's most famous stars.
Semih Kaplanoğlu will be chairing the festival, while on the jury for the Short Film Competition is the Academy's Foreign Films Commission Chairman Ron Yerxa, the Vice President of the Writers Guild of America West and Academy Member Howard A.Rodman and 1978 Cannes Camera d'Or winner Rob Nilsson.
TITLES COMPETING IN THE SHORT FILMS COMPETITION:
Slice of Life (Bir Dilim Hayat) by Aysel Pınar Necef,
A Cookie Tale (Bir Kurabiye Masalı) (İlkyaz Kocatepe),
Vanished into Blue (Buhar) by Abdurrahman Öner,
Here's Johnny by Tekin Girgin,
Velvet Socks (Kadife Çoraplar) by Baturay Tavkul,
Mesut by Hakan Hücum,
Later (Sonra) by Nazlı Durlu,
Reaction (Tepki) by Emrah Örnek,
Upside Down by Tuğçe Özdemir.
Like last year, a series of hand-picked Turkish full-length features will also be showing throughout the four-day festival. Having garnered high acclaim both in Turkey and abroad, 'The Butterfly's Dream' (Kelebeğin Rüyası) by Yılmaz Erdoğan, will be joined by 'Mold' (Küf) by Ali Aydın, 'Beyond the Hill' (Tepenin Adı) by Emin Alper and 'Inside' (Yeraltı) by Zeki Demirkubuz, as the full-length feature's that will be showing for film buffs in L.A.
The festival kicked off with a showing of Yılmaz Erdoğan's highly anticipated directorial effort 'The Butterfly's Dream' (Kelebeğin Rüyası). After the premiere, Yılmaz Erdoğan and actress Belçim Bilgin attended a Q&A session with the audience.
World-renowned pop star Rihanna performed a dazzling concert for an audience of 35,000 in Istanbul’s İnönü Stadium on Thursday night as part of her Diamonds World Tour.
Second-place winner of the Eurovision Song Contest Azerbaijani singer Farid Mammadov paid a visit to Istanbul after his win and prominent display of the Turkish flag during the live broadcast.
In his new book “Inferno”, American writer Dan Brown describes Istanbul as “a world divided, a city of opposing forces.”
Cannes’ popular venue Plage des Palmes hosted an international Istanbul meeting yesterday evening on the sidelines of the famous film festival. 
AK Party Malatya Deputy Ömer Faruk Öz has sent apricots to American film star Angelina Jolie, who recently had a preventative double mastectomy because she carries the BRCA1 gene, which significantly increases the risk she may get breast cancer.
“Inferno”, the new book by Dan Brown, the author of the worldwide best-seller “The Da Vinci Code”, is now on the shelves in a simultaneous release in 12 different countries, including Turkey. The final section of the book takes place in Istanbul and is expected to result in a surge of tourists for Istanbul’s historic Hagia Sophia.
The International Istanbul Puppetry Festival, which will be hosting performances from 15 different nations, kicks off today with a showing of the German-French-Swiss production of “Hotel de Rive”.
When 30,000 Justin Bieber fans all rushed to arrive to the Ayazağa Stadium for the popular young star’s performance Thursday night, traffic was jammed for hours. However, the famous singer did not disappoint his Turkish ‘Beliebers’.
Justin Bieber stopped his performance twice mid-concert last night in Istanbul to honor the ‘Azan’, the Islamic call to prayer. 
A new album has been released of songs composed from eulogies and verses made by Ottoman sultans entitled 'Şarkıların Sultanı' (The Sultan of Songs). 
Conductor Özfırat of the Antakya Civilizations Choir, which consists of 150 members of a diverse variety of religious and sectarian backgrounds and performs in Turkish, Arabic, Armenian and Kurdish, says, “I want to spread the message of peace with my music.”
