Cinema and Politics: Turkish Cinema and the New Europe covers a wide range of essays by scholars from different corners of Europe like England, Italy, Serbia and Turkey and is enhanced with contributions from the USA. The themes mainly focus on films, directors and producers of the old European space and beyond. The volume categorizes the parts with the help of a virtual map of European cinemas. The essays on European film movements in part II ‘European Cinema: Politics of Past and Present’, with references to their political, social and aesthetic backgrounds, follows the first chapter by Ella Shohat ‘Sacred Word, Profane Images: Theologies of Adaptation’ that functions as a general introduction to the medium called cinema.
Ella Shohat explores in her paper ‘Sacred Word, Profane Images: Theologies of Adaptation’ the multifaceted relations between texts and images as shaped within a Judeo-Islamic space, and the implications of these relations for film as a medium and adaptation as a practice. In her opinion ‘an imprecise and reductive discourse about cinema as merely a visual medium, then, underestimates the potential of film language to transform ‘The Book’ into multiple realms in which the word, images, sounds, dialogue, music, and written materials all constitute, together, the complex space called cinema’.
Frank Tomasulo points out in his article ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Politics/Psychoanalysis’ that Caligari, as an early instance of a genre film, fulfills its major ideological functions: to be symptomatic of the psychosocial contradictions within a given culture. Hence he thinks that more than seeing Caligari as a direct reflection of the ‘real’ Germany –Weimar Germany– the film demonstrates how Weimar Germany attempted to signify itself. He concentrates his analysis through three modes of signification within the text’s discourse: the political, the psychoanalytical, and the aesthetic; in short: Caligari-as-Hitler, Caligari-as Freud, and Caligari-as-Filmmaker.
Giacomo Manzoli’s article ‘From Salo to Gomorra: The Influence of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Political Perspective on Independent Italian Cinema’ discusses the persistence of some Pasolinian ‘topoi’ in the view of prominent Italian contemporary directors such as Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone, Paolo Sorrentino, and Marco Tullio Giordana. He underlines the ability of Pier Paolo Pasolini to draw an interpretative view of Italian history.
In his contribution ‘Politics, Realism and Ken Loach’, John Hill revisits the question of realism and the political purposes to which it may be put. Using the work of the film director Ken Loach as his example, he revisits the debate surrounding the politics of realism that occurred in the 1970s, with particular reference to Days of Hope (1975), a series of television films dealing with labour history during the years 1916 to 1926, Hill indicates how the realism debate was largely conducted at a formal level and tended to ignore the specific political, institutional and artistic contexts in which the films appeared. He then goes on to show how the political significance of Loach’s work has changed due to the new political, industrial and aesthetic conditions under which more recent films, such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), have been produced and exhibited. Thus, while Loach remains one of the world’s most politically committed filmmakers, the political import of his use of realism, Hill suggests, cannot be understood in the abstract but only in terms of the specific circumstances in which it has been employed.
In her article ‘Dogville and Manderlay: In which we encounter Lars Von Trier’s’ America’ Elif Akçali draws from the history of European Cinema in her analysis of the meanings that complete narratives through the choices in the style of narration in Lars von Trier’s Dogville and Manderlay. She finds common stylistic features in both films that achieve the desired meaning of the stories and hint at Lars von Trier’s political point of view. Her article analyses how particular stylistic choices –the soundstages and the photographs– contribute to question the values of conformity and hypocrisy which shape the societies in these films.
The European Cinema nowadays is discussed in Part III ‘The New European Cinema: Politics of Migration, Creolisation and Hyphenation’ from the point of view of new discourses and styles. The essays on German-Turkish and Serbian film approach the complex problem of hybrid, creolised and hyphenated identities.
Nevena Dakoviç’s chapter ‘Creolised Cinema: Serbian Cinema and EU Integration Process’ explores the concepts of creolisation and hyphenation. Her title is ‘Subcategorizing and juxtaposing creolized versus hyphenated identity and Balkan versus Europe’. She explores the ways Serbian cinema has engaged with the politics and processes of EU integration. She points out that the Balkan, ex-Yugoslav and Serbian cinema at the turn of the century are exploring the ways films and their directors have often ‘pre-empted’ political developments –a shift from a politics of nationalism to one of Europeanization.
Levent Soysal in his article ‘Visual Travels to Other Places: Politics of Migration in Reel’ traces the shifts in our imagination of migration through a reading of Otobüs (The Bus,1974 ), ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? (What Have I Done to Deserve This? 1984), and Gegen die Wand (Head On, 2004). Since the arrival of postwar immigrants in Europe, migration has been theorized and visualized first as a labor story, then a culture story, and finally as a transnational story. Within this intellectual imagination, Okan’s Otobüs represents the beginning, the move to the West; Almodovar presents a complete theory of migration at the intersection of (inter)national spaces; and Akin takes migrants on a transnational journey of return and figuratively ends the migration cycle.
Deniz Bayrakdar’s article ‘Turkish Cinema and The New Europe: At The Edge of Heaven’ concentrates on Fatih Akin’s Yasamin Kiyisinda (At the Edge of Heaven, 2007) which was inspired by the director’s hyphenated identity –a search for a soil, for the characters’ hometowns, and at the same time an attempt to settle down in Turkey. Ak?n makes his male protagonist ‘Nejat Aksu’ into an ‘Einsiedler’. Deniz Bayrakdar argues that At the Edge of Heaven is based on a continuous loss, longing and search which itself becomes the new identity of these ‘postmodern cultural nomads’ (Çaglar).
Part IV ‘Turkish Cinema: Politics of Horizontal and Vertical Mobility’ considers two important filmmakers of Turkish Cinema: Halit Refig and Y?lmaz Güney. The articles discuss the directors’ personas, the representation of women in their films, and their political views, and bring up particularly notable ideas on the interplay between issues of gender, identity, and migration.
Zeynep Koçer provides in her article ‘Different Understandings of Modernity in Halit Refig’s Birds of Exile (Gurbet Kuslari)’ a textual analysis of Halit Refig’s Gurbet Kuslari (Birds of Exile, 1964) in order to investigate the ways in which the understandings of modernity in the 1930s and 1950s created different gender identities.
Murat Akser discusses in his article ‘Yilmaz Güney’s Beautiful Losers: Idiom and Performance in Turkish Political Film’ idiom and performance as the political discourse of Yilmaz Güney’s loser characters and how Güney’s political views and performance changes over time as he transforms himself from the ugly king of trashy adventure films in the 1960s to an auteur/political director in the 1970s and 1980s.
Eylem Kaftan examines in her article ‘Allegorical Failure in Sürü (The Herd) And Yol (The Way)’ how Yimaz Güney deals with power as a complex category which combines economic, political and cultural relations. Her article looks at the latent content of Sürü (The Herd, 1978) and Yol (Way, 1981) in terms of their allegorical qualities.
Part V ‘The New Turkish Cinema: Politics of Nationalism’, focuses more on the relation between cinema and politics, with analyses on representations of nationalism and anti-imperialism, on film as a medium of conflict transformation, and on the transformation of the caricaturized Turkish male protagonist.
Kaya Özkaracalar in ‘Representations of Imperialism in Turkish Cinema within a Pendulum of Nationalism and Anti-Emperialism’ first puts forward the representation of imperialism in a prominent sample of a round of new nationalist movies. Next, he analyses the representation of imperialism in another Turkish movie from a different era and compares these two representations with a view to linking these differences to different approaches to imperialism.
Müberra Yüksel discusses two films by Dervis Zaim with an interdisciplinary approach. Entitling her article ‘Film As The Media And The ‘Mediator’ In Conflict Transformation’, she points out that ‘films, as the third party, may reframe the audience’s perception of conflicts and enhance their self-reflexivity and moral deliberation to distant others so that they would become conscious about inventing the future with others from a constructivist standpoint.’ Yüksel defines Paralel Yolculuklar (Parallel Trips, 2004) and Çamur (Mud, 2003) as films ‘that have broken the ‘spiral of silence’ on the ‘Cyprus issue’.’
Hande Yedidal analyses in ‘Son Osmanli Yandim Ali (Last Ottoman Yandim Ali) and Kara Murat; The Transformation of the Image of Invincible Turk From Comic Strip to Movie Screen’ the transformation of the caricaturized, invincible, extraordinarily powerful, fierce patriot till his last breath –the macho Turkish male protagonist– from the 1970s to today and the concepts and values that are carried with these characters throughout these years. She utilizes comic strips and films made from them: Son Osmanli Yandim Ali, (The Last Ottoman Yandim Ali, 2006) and the Kara Murat (Black Murat) series of films from the 1970s, both of which aim to arouse nationalistic sentiments.
Part VI ‘The New Turkish Cinema: Politics of Ephemeral Identities’ focuses on important Turkish film directors and the film climate in Turkey from the 1980s onwards.
Zahit Atam explains in his article ‘Critical Thoughts on the New Turkish Cinema’ the reasons for, and the outcomes of, the crisis after the 1980 coup d’etat, through a look at the careers of two directors, Zeki Demirkubuz and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, in his essay ‘Non-conventional Observations on the New Turkish Cinema’.
Zeynep Tül Akbal Süalp analyses ‘The Glorified Lumpen ‘Nothingness’ versus Night Navigations’ –diverse and conflicting tracks in Turkey’s cinema after the mid 1990s. She points out that ‘on the one hand it is the cinema of vacuumed and sealed image subjects of the city with a glorified alienated, remote and lumpen ‘nothingness’, on the other hand it is a search for confrontations and encounters’ which she calls ‘night navigations and dream stalking’.
Asli Kotaman, in ‘Yazgi (Destiny, 2001) or Kader (Fate, 2006): Not of Great Importance or Taking a Stand against Kader’, focuses on the main characters of Zeki Demirkubuz’s films in terms of their political views and the role of freedom of choice.
The essays in Part VII ‘New Turkish Cinema: Politics of Remembering and Forgetting’, evokes creative discussions about the issues facing the new cinema in Turkey, like Islamic life styles, the dominating masculine discourse, and the sentiments of loss, remembrance and mourning.
Özlem Avci and Berna Uçarol Kilinç consider ‘Islamic Forms of Life Reflected on the Silver Screen’, focusing on the representation of Islamic life styles and the changes in those life styles in contemporary Turkish cinema which started with the definition of ‘Milli Sinema’ (National Cinema) in the 1970s, ‘Beyaz Sinema’ (White Cinema) in the 1990s, and ‘Yesil Sinema’ (Green Cinema) today.
Savas Arslan bases his article ‘Venus in Furs, Turks in Purse: Masochism in the New Cinema of Turkey’ on Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel Lecture –Babamin Bavulu (‘My Father’s Suitcase’) at the Swedish Academy, Stockholm. Pamuk’s reference to his ‘father’s suitcase’ is used as a metaphor for the new cinema in Turkey that has attempted ‘to open up the father’s suitcase and address masculinity and fatherhood at different levels.’
Övgü Gökçe’s ‘(Cannot) Remember: Landscapes of Loss in Contemporary Turkish Cinema’ studies loss as an emerging sentiment in contemporary Turkish cinema through two recent films, Bulutlari Beklerken (Waiting for the Clouds, 2003) and Sonbahar (Autumn, 2007). It focuses on the films’ aesthetics as the main site ‘that accommodates relationships between loss, remembrance, and mourning.’
With contributions on the politics of text and image, past and present, migration, creolisation and hyphenation, horizontal and vertical mobility, nationalism, identities and memory in European and especially Turkish cinema, this volume ‘begins its journey in the New Europe’.
Deniz Bayrakdar