New Cinema In Turkey

New Cinema in Turkey: Filmmakers and Identities between Urban and Rural Space focuses, with a very precise overview, on Turkish cinema that, since the mid-’90s, has seen the emergence and consolidation of a strong and original authorship, which has been accompanied by a growing recognition at the international level. This is a personal cinema, which, with a wide variety of styles and approaches to storytelling, addresses the issues of identity in a country that is in a crucial phase of its history, in both social and political terms. The book presents a critical assessment of the last twenty years of the “New Turkish Auteur Cinema” by comparing the so-called “third generation”, the directors born in the early ’60s, to a fourth generation of directors, born in the ’70s and ’80s, who, in the great majority, made their debut in the last decade. As such, this study represents the most up-to-date English language book on Turkish cinema.

Victor Nunez writes and directs this noirish, Florida-set drama. Timothy Olyphant stars as Sonny Mann, an ex-con who is released early from a three-year prison sentence and returns to his home town in the hope of turning over a new leaf and putting the past firmly behind him. There he makes contact with his former best friend Dave (Josh Brolin), who is now a police officer married to Sonny's old flame Ann (Sarah Wynter). However, despite his resolution to lead a quiet life, Sonny soon finds himself in trouble once again as both his criminal past and his unresolved feelings for Ann catch up with him.

This volume presents varied approaches concerning the relation between cinema and politics which focus on policies, eras, countries, mainstream and art cinema productions, transnational examples, changing narratives and identities. Both cinema and politics have actors and directors for their scenes, and in this sense their discourses intermingle. The performances of the “actors/actresses” in both arenas attract particular attention. The actors, directors, and producers with ‘hyphenated/creolised/hybrid identities’ such as German-Turks, directors of Balkan cinema, or Italian filmmakers of Turkish origin give a wide and refreshing perspective to the discussion of Europe in the media. What these ‘mediated identities’ represent goes beyond the limits of the old Europe, towards the different sensitivity of the New Europe. Scholars and advanced students of Film Studies, European Studies, Identity Politics, Migration / Emigration and Gender Studies will find this volume of integral importance to their work.

This volume covers approaches concerning the relationship between innovation in cinema and the politics of filmmaking in new cinema practices in Turkey. The contributors focus on historiography, genres, mainstream and art cinema production, and transnational cinema, as well as changing narratives and identities. The new cinema movement in Turkey is here analysed from perspectives of new technologies, new production and distribution structures, the impact of film training, the televisual industry, new actors in commercial and art cinema, as well as the impact of the film festival circuit. Additionally, recurring themes of memory, trauma, and identity are dealt with from multidisciplinary angles. The volume covers in depth analyses of the internationally renowned filmmakers Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Fatih Akın, Semih Kaplanoğlu, Reha Erdem, Zeki Demirkubuz, Yeşim Ustaoğlu and Derviş Zaim. A timely study on the centenary of Turkish cinema in 2014, students of Middle Eastern Studies, Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Urban Studies, Gender Studies, and Identity Studies will find this volume extremely relevant to their work.

In the mid-1990s Turkish cinema experienced a remarkable revival. However, what is particularly unusual about this revival is the emergence of a new representational form: silent, inaudible characters. Equally unusual is the fact that this new on-screen silence had a gender(ed/ing) aspect, since, for the most part, the mute(d) characters were female. This book focuses on these newly emergent silent female characters in the new cinema of Turkey, and explores the relationship between the ‘new’ female representational form, the ‘new’ cinema of Turkey, and the ‘new’ socio-political climate in Turkey after the September 12, 1980 military coup. It investigates two central questions: what are the functions, formations and operations of these silent female characters, and why did this female representational form emerge specifically in this timeframe? Bearing a cinematic function of instrumentality and exposing, one way or another, a close association between point of view and discursive authority in the films studied, the silent female representational form in the new cinema of Turkey is a cinematic symptom of the on-going struggle over the disrupted orders of gender, nation and national memory due to an increase in thus-far silenced or marginalized voices in Turkey. The silent form not only functions as a cinematic instrument to reveal crises in hegemonic power positions, but also becomes a battleground within a struggle for (re)obtaining a position of discursive authority in the realms of gender, nation and past. The silent form in itself becomes an instrument on the discursive level, which enables a response to Turkey’s crises in these three interconnected realms in the post-1980s.

After the collapse of Turkey’s domestic popular cinema, also known as Yesilcam, in the late 1980s, cinema in the country entered a new phase. Following this painful collapse, after a relatively long period of silence, a new generation of independent directors along with a few members of the older generation directors who insisted on making films despite the unsuitable conditions, emerged. This book brings together ten different articles published for the first time each written about a film made after 2000 in Turkey and argues the emergence of a New Wave in the country’s cinema. In this book you will find: A Dead Father and His Children: An Introduction by Tage T. E. Luxembourgeus and Mumin Baris A Brief Descent into Liquid Fear in Emin Alper’s Abluka by İlknur Bilir Albüm: A Photographic Representation of Stillness and Social Life in the Provinces by Saniye İnce With or Without You: Ana Yurdu in the Context of Existentialist Feminism by M. Elif Demoğlu Bahoz: A Breeze to The Third Cinema by Mehmet Güldoğan Baskın: The Horror of the Scapegoats by Sertaç Koyuncu When the coin lands on its edge. Yazı Tura: A critical look at a critical film by Tage T. E. Luxembourgeus An Ecocritical Reading: Yurt as a Story of Pillage and Homelessness by Aygün Şen The new Milli cinema: Semih Kaplanoğlu’s Yusuf Trilogy by Mumin Baris Zenne: A Movie That Stands Far From The LGBTI’s Struggle in Turkey by Bawer Çakır 9: The Metaphor of Mahalle (Neighbourhood) as Country by Zehra Cerrahoğlu Zıraman

Films often act as a prism that refracts the issues facing a nation, and Turkish cinema in particular serves to encapsulate the cultural and social turmoil of modern-day Turkey. Acclaimed film scholar Gönül Dönmez-Colin examines here the way that national cinema reveals the Turkish quest for a modern identity. Marked by continually shifting ethnic demographics, politics, and geographic borders, Turkish society struggles to reconcile modern attitudes with traditional morals and centuries-old customs. Dönmez-Colin examines how contemporary Turkish filmmakers address this struggle in their cinematic works, positing that their films revolve around ideas of migration and exile, and give voice to previously subsumed “denied identities” such as that of the Kurds. Turkish Cinema also crucially examines how these films confront taboo subjects such as homosexuality, incest, and honor killings, issues that have only become viable subjects of discussion in the new generation of Turkish citizens. A deftly written and thought-provoking study, Turkish Cinema will be invaluable for scholars of Middle East studies and cinephiles alike.

Introduction -- CONFIGURATIONS OF STEREOTYPES AND IDENTITIES: NEW METHODOLOGIES. Daniela Berghahn: My big fat Turkish wedding: from culture clash to romcom -- David Gramling: The oblivion of influence: mythical realism in Feo Alada's When we leave -- Marco Abel: The minor cinema of Thomas Arslan: a prolegomenon -- MULTIPLE SCREENS AND PLATFORMS: FROM DOCUMENTARY AND TELEVISION TO INSTALLATION ART. Angelica Fenner: Roots and routes of the diasporic documentarian: a psychogeography of Fatih Akin's We forgot to go back -- Ingeborg Majer-O'Sickey: Gendered kicks: Buket Alakus's and Aysun Bademsoy's soccer films -- Nilgan Bayraktar: Location and mobility in Kutlu Ataman's site-specific video installation Kuba -- Brent Peterson: Turkish for beginners: teaching cosmopolitanism to Germans -- Brad Prager: "Only the wounded honor fights": Zili Alada's rage and the drama of the Turkish German perpetrator -- INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS: STARS, THEATERS, AND RECEPTION. Randall Halle: The German Turkish spectator and Turkish language film programming: Karli Kino, maximum distribution, and the interzone cinema -- Berna Gueneli: Mehmet Kurtulu and Birol Ünel: Sexualized masculinities, normalized ethnicities -- Karolin Machtans: The perception and marketing of Fatih Akin in the German press -- Ayìa Tunì Cox: Hyphenated identities: the reception of Turkish-German cinema in the Turkish daily press -- THE CINEMA OF FATIH AKIN: AUTHORSHIP, IDENTITY, AND BEYOND. Mine Eren: Cosmopolitan filmmaking: Fatih Akin's In July and Head-on -- Roger Hillman and Vivien Silvey: Remixing Hamburg: transnationalism in Fatih Akin's Soul kitchen -- Deniz Gukturk: World cinema goes digital: looking at Europe from the other shore.