Migrant Bodies in the Land/City/Seascapes of 2000s Turkish Cinema

In this essay, I explore the land-, sea-, and cityscapes in six films (five Turkish and one Turkish German)—Bliss, The Wound, Rıza, Broken Mussels, The Guest, and Seaburners—and their use of place and non-place. Hamid Naficy’s concept of transitional space and Marc Augé’s notion of non-place, based on Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, will be the basis of the theoretical discussion. I focus on what I see as a major shift in the representation of the migrant experience in the Turkish cinema of the early and late 2000s, a shift from the land- and cityscapes to films whose setting is the seascape. This shift, I argue, corresponds to changes in the phases of migration that flow within and through Turkey, and both government policies and the public perception.

Overview of the Gay Characters in the New Cinema of Turkey

Similar to the worldwide perceptions, gay characters in Turkish cinema are mostly perceived and used as elements of humor and comedy. They are also used as standards for measuring the masculinity of other male characters in some Turkish movies. And what about Today? What are the differences between the past and now? It is possible to say that Turkish cinema in 2000s involve more visible sexual identities apart from heteronormative understanding. This study will focus on the reflections and portrayals of only gay characters in New Turkish cinema.

Changes in Women’s Representations in Turkish Cinema from the 1980s to the Early 1990s

This article focuses on the representations of women alongside the social and historical background of Turkish cinema from the 1980s through the early 1990s. In the following section, I articulate the political events in the 1980s - the early1990s and its impacts on Turkish society and cinema. I delve into the modernist representations of women in the 1980s cinema to analyze women’s gender codes (based on social/cultural and cinematic codes). Finally, in the last section, I examine Atıf Yılmaz’s cinematic images of women in his films and analyze two of his films A Sip of Love (1984) and The Night, Angel and Our Gang (1994) in terms of gender codes.

MISE EN SCENE FILM CRITICISM IN THE CONTEXT OF THE FILM WAITING FOR HEAVEN

It is a need to tell, to share the experience. A human being is an entity that tells stories and also needs stories. Myths and tales have explained the world to human beings when rational mind was not used and science was not developed yet. Myths are the first teachers of humanity, and tales have continued to form new narratives with new tools in the later ages. By the 20th century, humanity meets with a new storytelling tool. Apart from narrative films, cinema, although there are genres such as educational films, documentaries or news films, primarily undertook the mission of 'storytelling' and attracted the attention of the masses by telling stories. The paradoxical relationships and distance presented by the contemporary world to humanity are presented to the audience through sounds and images, and the audience tries to make sense of the existence of its environment and itself in a critical framework. Director and cinema question themselves in contemporary cinema narratives. The greatest innovation brought by contemporary cinema is hidden in the feature that leads the narrative to questioning activism. In the study, Derviş Zaim's, one of the most important directors of modern Turkish cinema, film Waiting for Heaven, was used as an example. The film was evaluated under the titles of technical structure, light, sound, time and space, actor, movement and performance, decor, costume and make-up in order to gain a qualitative understanding of the work. Keywords: Cinema, Movie Criticism, Derviş Zaim, Waiting For Heaven

Postfeminism à la Turca

This essay analyzes how postfeminism is constructed on a visual level in the Turkish context. It uses theories of postfeminism to discuss new popular romantic comedies of Turkish cinema by comparing the new female protagonists with the women portrayed in Yeşilçam melodramas. Three films—Kocan Kadar Konuş (dir. Kıvanç Baruönü, 2014), Hadi İnşallah (dir. Ali Taner Baltacı, 2014), and Aşk Nerede? (dir. Semra Dündar, 2015)—are analyzed from a postfeminist perspective, opening up a new scholarly discussion about the place of postfeminism in the Turkish cinema. These films represent what may be termed “Turkified” postfeminism, which has been commonly discussed for the Western world but not sufficiently taken into account for Middle Eastern women.

AN ANALYSIS ON THE FILM “A TALE OF THREE SISTERS” WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME AND DETERRITORIALISATION

Modern human who has witnessed the rise of rational thinking and technique was drifted in limbo suffering from numerous essential anxieties and problems through deracinating by means of movements of urbanization and migration. In order to explain the social outlook of the event of deracination, the concepts of “deterritorialisation” which has become clear thanks to the intensive efforts of Deleuze and Guattari as well as Heidegger frequently gains importance. In this study, the film of “A Tale of Three Sisters” (Kızkardeşler) (2019) by Emin Alper which has been observed to have the effects of the motherland and home Turkish cinema of the latest period was analyzed. In addition to the sociological analysis of the film, the film was analyzed using the philosophical conceptualization of deterritorialisation and home (haimat) which were presented by Heidegger, Deluze and Guattari through focusing on them. In conclusion, the reflections of deterritorialisation on the rural area different than that in cities were turned into a movies and it was imaged through characters in which the concept of home almost disappears in the modern world. In the films, the longing of three sisters for the city and the life style that city represents equals to the deterritorialisation in terms of the perspective of Deluze and Guattari, the rural area itself, on the contrary to the modern and progressive city, was given to the audience as a slow and cyclic heterotopy of the time. Keywords: Cinema, Sisters, Heidegger, Delueze, Deterritorialisation