Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History

326 Pages·2010·47.954 MB·English

by  Savas Arslan

791.43094961
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CINEMA IN TURKEY
CINEMA IN TURKEY
A New Critical History
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OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Library of Congress Cata.loging·in·Publication Dain
Ar~lon, Sava~.
Cinema in Turkey: il nc"' c.ritical hisco1ry f Sav-a~ ;\rslan.
p, cm.
lncJudes bibliographical refcrcnct;..'S and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-537005-8: 978·0-19-537006-5 (pbk.)
l. Mo1ion pictures-Tutkcy-HiS<ory-20th century. 2. ~101ion picture
indus1ry-Turkey-History-201h cenlury. I. Title.
PN 1993.5.T8A77 2010
791.43094961--dc22 2010009158
98765 4321
or
Prin1ed in the United St:>tes America
on ocid-frec paper
To my da ugl11er
Acknowledgments
W hen a long process extending almost a decade comes to a conclu
sion, it comes down to memory. Like Zhuang Zi who dreamed
of a butterfly or the butterfly who dreamed itself as Zhuang Zi, this work of
memory and dreams involves making or carrying the traces of a history
of acknowledgments and oblivion. Human to buuerfly and gaze to identity
is this list that moves back and forth.
I would like to s1a1t by thanking my advisct; Ron Green, for sharing
my concerns and warmheartedly helping me in my graduate work; Ste
phen Melville, for his comments and intellectual support; and Victoda
Holbrook, for offering me the opportunity to do graduate work at the Ohio
State University.
In the Turkish academic world, I would like to thank Nezih Erdogan,
who shared my initial interest in film studies at Bilkent University; Deniz
Bayrakda1; who created a lively environment of discussion through Turk
ish film studies conferences. At Bah;:e~hir University, I am grateful for the
support of our university's administration and would like to thank Enver
Ylicel and Haluk GUrgen, my colleagues, and our teaching assistants and
students who helped me in various manners.
I also want to thank the staff and reviewers at Oxford University Press
who helped shape this manuscript into its current form, and Emily
Coolidge for copy-editing and for the camera obscura in the vicinity of
Yel?il<;:am Street.
The images used in this book are borrowed from Bur<;:ak Evren's Tti1·k
Sinemas1. (Turkish Cinema) and TORVAK's (Tilrker inanoglu Founclalion)
5555 Afi~le Tilrk Sinemas1 (Tm·kish Cinema in 5555 Posters). It is a plea
sure for me to thank both Buri;ak Evren and TU1·ker i nanoglu, as well as
Ezel Akay, for letting me use these images.
While I was doing research for this project, I received various travel
grants from the OSU, which provided me with funding to interview sev
eral filmmakers and critics including Yticel <;;akmakh, Safa 6nal, Kuni
•
Tulgar, Seyfi Havacri, Billent Oran, and Giovanni Scognamillo, and use the
collections of the Mithat Alam Film Center, Tiirkcr i nanoglu Foundation's
(TORVAK) Film Museum and Library, and the Scrmet c;:ifter Library.
Unfortunat.ely, three of these filmmakers, Oran, Ha,;aeri and <;akmakli,
are not among us anymore. As for friends and family who would have
liked to read this volume, Sadi Konuralp, Metin Demirhan, and my for
mer father-in-law embarked on eternal travel before I could share it with
them. As for those who have not yet departed, my friend tlker, my parents,
siblings, and Wendy are the backbone of this work. But this work came to
Ii fe only after the first letter.
There are a lot of others in this process whose names, organizations, and
institutions are not but kept here, in me, by persistently embracing
"~·iucn
the ground like couch grass and idyllically flying above it like a b\Jnerlly.
viii Acknowledgmems
Preface
The Heart of the Couch Grass
It was a couch grass living silently on the AnatoHan plain
Before the famine.
It thrived from the smallest things
Fom: example when a bird flew towards K1z1hrmak
It was happy as jf water had flooded its roots.
When a cloud passed overhead
It stopped being couch grass.
The earth, it would say, the earth
I would not change it for anything.
Now. it docs not want to live.
ilhan Berk
Gnrwo important developments that. fall within the reach of this book
-JIL
took place in 2008. llhan Berk' passed away in 2008 at the age of
ninety. Jn the same yem; the first of the two highest-grossing films of con
temporary cinema in Turkey. a sketch-based, episodic comedy film, Recep
ivcdik (dir. Togan Gokbakar; 2008}, was released and seen by 4.3 million
spectators. despite bad press from film critics (the other one is Recep
ivedik 2 [dir. Togan Gokbak<1r. 2009]). These two seemingly unconnected
occunences, one in the realm of poelIJ' and the other in that of popular
cinema, are illustrative of one of the premises of this book, that of a p·ur
ported contradiction between cultural forms in Turkish cinema. bet.ween
high art and low a1t, or art house and popular cinema.
My doctor.ii dissert.alion dealt with this dynamic through the analogy of
couch grass that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a species
of grass (Triticum repens) with long, creeping root-stocks. a common and
n·oublesome weed in cornfields." Like ci.nema, it is native lo Europe but
quickly spread to the world. Its .r:hizomic form and aggression strengthen
the analogy with popular cinema, producing links and connections across
ans, cinemas, genres, and borders. As I delved more into couch grass,
I also came across a painting by Jean Du buffet, the infamous painter of Art
Brut (i.e., raw art) titled Door with Couch Grass. For Dubuffot, the domi
nance of high culture over artistic cre111ivity produced a senst! of hiscory
that gave primacy to canonized works. at the expense of anonymous and
innumerable examples of simple creative activity (1988, 14). Door with
Couch Crass is a painting produced along these lines: it is made out of an
assemblage of numerous paintings cut and pasted together with layers
of paint and sand, and additional texture provided by the tines of a fork.
Like this painting, popular cinema of Turkey from the 1950s to 1980s,
Ye~il9am, can be characterized by a similar. assemblage- and collage-like
act of simple creativity.' Thus I took a specific form of popular cinema
similar to that of classical Holl)"-"OOd cinema and introduced Ye~il<;:am as
a comprehensive modality and form, growing and spreading aggressively
from rhizome joints-by creating imitations, adaptations, hybrid struc
tures, and cullural dislocations and relocations.
However, Lhe scope of this book is different. The dissertation thesis
pushed the analogy of couch grass to its limits. Instead, this book attempts
co look at the entire history of cinema in Turkey. To this end, it exam
ines how cultural forms, including cinema, have been exchanged, altered,
and unendingly modified at different times and spaces. This is not just in
relation to cuhural forms but also the very existence of Turkey, which is
chronically in-between and on the move. As I write these lines in Istanbul.
in a city asuidc two continents, Asia and Europe, divided by a strait yet
facing across, cinema in Turkey is also about Istanbul: it was born here, it
has been mainly practiced here, and it has at least for four decades been
named after a street in Istanbul. Yet Turkey, its culture, and its cinema have
often been considered by many in terms of its connections to the West.
Various accounts of cinema in Turkey have attempted 10 create passage
ways similar to those of Istanbul., connecting continents through bridges
or tunnels. Instead of attempting to connect or bridge things, this book
underlines separation-the separation inherent in the very in-l>etwccnness
of Turkey's cinema. It is neither Eastern, nor Western, but both and nei
ther simultaneously. As much as it is about connections and similarities,
it is also about clashes and differences because, a~ I will elaborate in the
following pages, at the heart of culture lays separation.
When I sta1ted to work on this book in 2006, the first part of the man
uscript's title was same witl1 that of the dissertation, "Hollywood alla.
'forca," and it was bon·owed from the lasL movement of Wolfgang Ama
deus Mozart's Piano Sonata in A, K331, Rondo a/la Turca, the Turkish
Rondo, inspired by the beats of the Ottoman Turkish janissary bands. This
analogy inscribes the eighteenth-centu1y interest in Turkey in European
music, opera, and theater, but also the movement and integration of cul
tural forms. Yet this analogy, while reiterated a few times in the follo\\~ng
pages, also fell sho11 of this volume's interests.
x Preface
In addition, since 2006. two new volumes on lhc cinema in Turkey have
been published; GonUl Donmez Colin's Ttu1dsli Ci11e111a: Identity, Distance
and Belonging (Reaktion, 2008) and the English translation of Asuman
Suner's 2006 book New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory
(TB Tauris, 2009). Both of these books focus piimadly on recent cinema in
Turkey through familiar tropes of identity and belonging by attributing the
adjective "Turkish" to the cinema in Turkey and imagining cinema in 1\11•
key as in search of an identity. Unlike these two volumes, thjs book deals
with the cinema of Turkey without necessarily considering it as Turkish
or expressive of national identity. Ralher, it uses cinema to examine vari
ous movements, exchanges, and transformations as a staple of cultural
production. The main theme of this book inscribes the multiplicity and
multitude of any given cultural form as not limited to a discriminatory
national framework, nor to Ye~il~am. Thus it addresses the histmy of cin
ema in Tun·key, which is not nccessadly covulenl with "Turkish" cinema.
Throughout the book, this rendering of cinema acknowledges both lhe
nation and its others und the different interpretations of cinema underlin
ing the coexistence and clash of the melodr.imatic and the realistic, the
popular and the artistic, the forced and the spontaneous.
The bulk of this book concerns films of the Y~ili;am era, which represents
the height of Turkish film production. However, this book goes beyond this
petiod, offering a critical look at the broader history of cinema in Turkey
both preceding and post-dating Y~il<;am. This hislOl)' can be pedodicized
roughly into three eras: prc-Ye§ilr;:am cinema until the late 1940s, Ye$ilr;:am
cinema from the 1950s through the 1980s, and posl·Ye~il~am or the new
cinema of Turkey since the early 1990s. Unlike tJ1e Ye~il<;am era, which
engulfed almost all filmmaking in Turkey. contemporary cinema in Turkey,
considered here under the rubric of the new cinema of Turkey, encompasses
a clear-cut distinction between popular cinema and art house or auteur
cinema: while the former is intended for Turkish·speaking communities
around the world, the latter may well fall in the realm of world or trans
national cinema often seen at film festivals and art house theaters by intct•
national cineastes. Perhaps the new cinema of Turkey is now the allegro:
the lively tempo of Turkey's cinema is nowadays beuer heard than before.
But 10 be able to accounl for this. it seems crucial to situate this cinema in
tcims of its history. As Berk said, the couch grass may not want co live any·
more; hence Ye~ilr;:am is passe. Howevei~ cinema in Turkey still persists and
as post· Ye~il<;am, it is inescapably set against Ye~il~m. Perhaps the death
of Berk and the birth of post-Yejilr;:am has a hidden meaning: regardless
of your will to live or die, death and birth are about the same thing, about
beginnings and ends; about a separation thal is an unending repetition.
Preface xi