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Yol directed by Yilmaz Guney
October 24, 2009 1:00PM
Winner of the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1982, Yol remains a masterpiece of Kurdish – and world – cinema. Written and directed by virtuoso filmmaker Yilmaz Güney from behind prison walls (through laborious directorial notes sent to his assistant Şerif Gören who did the actualshooting of the film), Yol paints a stark portrait of Turkey in the aftermath of the 1980 Turkish coup d'état the stories of five prisoners who are given a week's home leave.
Post film discussion with Professor Sibel Erol, New York University.
Filmmaker's Biography
Yilmaz Guney was born in the south-eastern city of Adana. Guney’s films are often discussed within the context of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey. Although Güney is thought of as an actor-turned-director, his beginnings in film were initially behind the camera, as an assistant and screenplay collaborator to the director Atíf Yílmaz on the 1958 films Bu Vatanýn Cocuklarý (This Nation's Children) and Alageyik (The Fallow Deer); he would also take a lead role in the latter film. His onscreen intensity immediately struck a chord with viewers: by the early 1960s, despite (or partially because of) his 18-month prison sentence, Güney had become a star, making as many as 20 films a year in the drunken heyday of the Turkish film industry. Most of the films he appeared in were cheap, violent genre knockoffs that proved inordinately popular in Turkey's rural Anatolian heartland. Some of their English titles are quite revealing: I'll Plug All Three of You, The Bullets of Damnation, I Swear By My Gun, The Bodies Float in a River of Blood, The Blood Will Flow Like Water, Güney Spreads Death, My Signature is Written in Blood.
Credits
Director: Serif Gören (for imprisoned Yilmaz Güney), and Yilmaz Güney (by proxy)
Writer: Yilmaz Güney
Producer: Donat Keusch, Eliane Stutterheim
Co-Producer: Yilmaz Güney
Line Producer: Edi Hubschmid
Original Music by: Sebastian Argol, Zülfü Livaneli
Cinematography by: Erdogan Engin
Editor: Hélène Arnal, Yilmaz Gülney, Elisabeth Waelchli
Production Management: Kerim Pulli
Cast: Tarik Akan, Serif Sezer, Halil Ergün
Year: 1982
Duration: 114 minutes
Production: Cactus Film
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