Facing the Windows

"Alternative Perspectives on Turkey’s Cinematic Landscape"
Edited by G. Carole Woodall

In recent years, Turkish cinema - be it produced by Turkish, European companies or joint ventures - have garnered more attention in international film festivals and competitions. Internationally recognized and awarded films by directors, such as Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Fatih Aki¦n, have been instrumental in situating Turkish cinema within a European cultural arena. One aspect of this resurgence reflects a trend both in scholarship and cultural production which counters dominant nationalist narratives. One need just be reminded of the recent controversy surrounding noted authors, Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak’s cases against the Turkish state on the grounds of freedom of expression, or for “insulting Turkishness.” (1) These examples only allude to tension stemming from the overwhelming, albeit dwindling, demand of the Turkish public for European Union membership and the country's politically fraught history. It is against this backdrop that Turkish cinema has recently tackled a variety of controversial topics, i.e. migrant communities in Istanbul, the Turkish army, relocation of the Greek community, and political corruption. As this edition of Arteeast’s online journal coincides with the 8th Annual New York Turkish Film Festival organized by the Moon and Stars Project, each contribution seeks to address an aspect of the contemporary Turkish cinematic landscape from the local, regional, and international realms.

Whereas each author takes a different point of entry, each article succeeds in complicating the Turkish cinematic landscape. Hilmi Maktav’s article provides a critical appraisal of the genre of “historical movies” and situates these films within a broader context of representations of the Turkish army on celluloid. Maktav considers the ways that directors treat the military institution in lieu of the political turbulence of the 1970s and 1980s coups and current globalizing and internal variables. The position of Turkish films within the diaspora in Australia as well as New York is considered by Vanessa H. Larson and Catherine Simpson. Catherine Simpson’s article examines Turkish film festivals, specifically the 1998 Turkish Film Festival in Sydney, Australia to explore financial, political, and diaspora considerations in festival programming. Vanessa H. Larson provides a sketch of the Moon and Stars Project initiative and mission focused on the promotion of Turkish arts and culture thus situating the organization within a larger festival trend. M. Zeynep Dadak provides a sketch of multicultural Istanbul and its relation to an increase of ‘transnational’ interest to it. She suggests that this interest is correlated with particular representations in film by focusing on two documentaries, In Transit (Berke Bas, 2005) and Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (Fatih Aki¦n, 2005), thereby complicating Istanbul’s illusory multiculturalism. In an interview with Buket Sahin, Pelin Esmer, a new voice in Turkish documentary, discusses her experience making and working with the women who serve as the subject of her award winning documentary, The Play.

Most of the posters accompanying the articles are featured in this year’s film festival. For further information, go to www.nyturkishfilmfestival.com or www.moonandstarsproject.org.

G. Carole Woodall is a PhD Candidate in the Joint Middle East and Islamic Studies and History program at New York University. Her dissertation examines the cultural landscape of 1920s Istanbul.

1. The foreign press has extensively covered the cases of both authors. For further information refer to S_ebnem Arsu, “Istanbul Court Clears Author of Insulting Turkish Identity” in New York Times, 22 September 2006; Benjamin Harvey, “Novelist Elif Shafak acquitted, but Turkey remains a country where authors can be put on trial” in Associated Press Worldstream, 21 September 2001.

Excerpts from Homeland, Nation, Cinema
by Hilmi Maktav

In Turkey, the mention of “historical movie” conjures up images of “Turks battling against their enemies.” As a genre “historical movies” are supposed to be based on historical events which reflect reality. Yet, the emergence of the cinematic artform coincided with the period of nation state formations providing the subject matter for films.

INTERVIEW with Pelin Esmer, director of THE PLAY
By Buket Sahin, Moon and Stars Project
(Phone interview, Chile and Brazil, September 2006)

Getting ‘Out there on the Edge’: Reflections on the first Turkish Film Festival in Australia and Contemporary Cinematic Revival
By Catherine Simpson

A film festival weaves a narrative. Through their programming national film festivals tell a story about a country at a particular time. When we organised the first Turkish film festival in Australia in 1998, we deliberately set out to challenge and educate an Australian audience that had outdated notions of a country in rapid transition. We also hoped to counter prevailing perceptions of the approximately 150 000-strong Turkish diaspora for whom Turkish film production was still perceived as second-rate or irrelevant. The following paper is a reflection on the promotion and reception of the Turkish film festival in light of Turkey’s cinematic revival, underway since the landmark film Eskiya released in 1997.

The Moon and Stars Project: Representing Turkish Art
by Vanessa H. Larson

The Moon and Stars Project, the most prominent Turkish arts organization in New York City and the largest such arts organization in the U.S., has a challenging mission: how to be a non-political, non-profit organization promoting Turkish arts and culture, while representing a country whose identity tends to be defined more by outsiders’ views of it than by Turks’ views of themselves. But, although still less than a decade old, the organization has managed to transform itself from a shoe-string operation to one that produces professional-quality events that attract both Turkish and non-Turkish audiences, in particular to the New York Turkish Film Festival.

Transistanbul: Imaging the "Multicultural' City
By M. Zeynep Dadak

Is transnationalism necessarily a study of multiculturalism? Or is it a case of translating the transnational structures of nation, self, and community into “translational,” as Ackbar Abbas puts it? Here I offer a comparative approach to the representation of the so-called blossoming, multicultural Istanbul, particularly its relationality with the rising ‘transnational’ interest to it. Suggesting that this interest is correlated with a certain type of representation in films, which has become a trademark sense in between the spaces of ‘negotiated language, borderland being and bicultural ambivalence,’ I will mainly focus on two documentary films, In Transit (Berke Bas, 2005) and Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (Fatih Ak¦n, 2005).