The Evaluation of the Matters Regarding the Production of Biographical Films in Turkish Cinema from the Perspective of Audience, Ethics, and Copyright Issues

NİŞANTAŞI ÜNİVERSİTESİ SOSYAL BİLİM. DERGİSİ, 2019

Akser, Murat (2014) Towards A New Historiography Of Turkish Cinema. In: New Cinema, New Media: Reinventing Turkish Cinema. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, pp. 43-66. ISBN 978-1-4438-5688-1 [Book section]

For every generation of film historians, there are new discourses and methods of film historiography regarding Turkish cinema. The methods, periodization, and discursive practices of Turkish film historiography have evolved.

Turkish Studies Vol 12:1, 2011

In a social environment where Turkish guest workers have been depicted as isolated, incapable victims who could not speak for themselves or for their people, German directors were the first to provide portrayals of immigrants in Germany. Then emerged the second generation of Turkish filmmakers who brought along a breakthrough for Turkish‐German cinema. These filmmakers wanted to move beyond the cinema of duty and enjoy their double occupancy by interpreting their in‐betweenness as cultural richness. The third generation filmmakers are now no longer the silenced and disadvantaged members of the host society; instead, they have been active agents who are qualified, skilled, educated and thus self‐confident.

The film industry that developed at the end of the 19th century played a role in improving the masses, first visually and then aurally. The nation-states that became aware of this situation, especially Germany, began to use films in creating a collective national identity. As for Turkey, it became involved in the film industry with the contributions of Enver Paşa, who was under intense German influence. However, only documentaries, feature films, and films based on the Turkish national struggle were made until the 1950s. In the 1950s, there was an evolution in the film industry, as in every other area of Turkish life. Kostüme avantür films, a genre specific to Turkey using real or fiction characters whose stories were adapted into a film from comic strips, were introduced. These films based on historical figures attracted a great deal of attention between 1970-1980 along with the effect of internal and external political developments. Among these films, the Kara Murat series was especially prominent. The present study aims to look into the discourse on Turkish identity in the Kara Murat series within the scope of collective identity. In this regard, the Kara Murat series shown between 1972-1978 were subject to a discourse analysis based on such categories as identity, conqueror and Conquest, the “other”, and “us”. As a result of the study, it was seen that the Turkish identity discourse in these films was based on Ottoman history.

Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2017

As is known, various studies on the history and development of cinema have shown the reciprocal relationship between cinema and politics. In this regards, it is possible to assume that Hollywood cinema, is not the only cinema that draws attention. During the study, for the purposes of clarifying the interrelationship between "representation" and "ideology" as a modus operandi of Turkish cinema, the portrayal of Atatürk in "Mustafa" will be investigated. The main reason for analyzing this movie in particular it that it is one of the most widely criticized (ideologically) movies on Atatürk.

Discussing the debate and ideological background regarding national cinema, this form of art shall be compared to several other contemporary cinematic currents in Turkey. In this study, a content analysis comprising one of the rarer examples of national cinema, the film Güneş Ne Zaman Doğacak? (Mehmet Kılıç, 1977) will be conducted while scanning secondary sources on Turkish cinema to present a concise picture; of the phenomenon that is known as 'national cinema.' Distinctive characteristics of the artistic language and the ideological background of the post-1960 Turkish cinema will be provided, among those, the phenomenon of a very blurred line between creative expressions and underlying ideological affiliations and the non-static developmental nature of cinematic fashions in influencing each other.

Hollywood Abroad: Audiences and Cultural Exchange eds. Richard Maltby & Melvyn Stokes, BFI , 2007

This chapter examines the ways in which American cinema was represented in Turkey in the 1940s and the evidence for the existence of a growing connection between American cinema and the popular Turkish imagination during this period. It is based on an analysis of the popular film magazines of the time, as well as the memoirs and observations of writers interested in cinema. Issues of audience demand, of course, pose questions about the cultural identities involved in the experiences of identification and fantasy enjoyed by the film viewer. After describing the historical context in which American cinematic hegemony was established, the chapter will consider some of the ways in which Hollywood itself functioned as a kind of fantasy screen for the Turkish viewer. It will also touch upon European cinema since – as becomes particularly clear in the memoirs of film historian Giovanni Scognamillo – the tension between America and Europe, and thus between Hollywood and European cinema, is crucial to the men- tal machinery at work in the viewers’ cinematic experience in its broadest sense.

Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi The Journal of International Social Research, 2014

The study at hand relates to the history of Turkish cinema from 1895 to 1990 with respect to the accompanying political events and their analysis. Cinema´s upcoming in Turkey was initally staged by non-muslims, continued by the military and came under the one-man rule of Muhsin Ertugrul after the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. From the 50´s on it was generally referred to as Yesilçam. This name followed the screening of an Egyptian film in Istanbul in the late 1940´s as a label for a certain film genre and became a synonym for cinema itself. Tax cuts for domestic productions became a main reason for Turkish cinema´s thriving. The 60´s became its golden age and the 70´s were characterized by Yilmaz Güney´s work and art. Finally economic and socio-political circumstances lead to a crisis in the 80´s and resulted in the demise of Yesilcam.

While considering the present political scenario of Turkey, the ruling party AKP or Justice and Development Party have governed the republic for more than two decades. During this rule, the republic’s founding ideology- ‘Kemalism’ has been vehemently criticised and delegitimized. Departing from Kermalism, the governing AKP advocates a very different ideology, that is, the long lasting Turkish conservative centre-right tradition. The current AKP connects with the former radicals educated in Turkey’s own tradition of political Islam through a flawed concept of a modern society held together by conservative values. Whereas, the Kemalist version of secularism is “assertive and secularism”, which means, it does not only support the idea of religion and state as two distinct realms, but considers the state authority responsible to limit the influence of religion in social life. The shift of ideology can be observed in the aforesaid films and somehow these popular texts can become important focus of study of contemporary Kemalism. The films chosen for this study are are Nefes or The Breath (2009), Dag or The Mountain (2012), Dag 2 or The Mountain 2 (2016), Wolf (2018) and a web series Boru (2018). The important political events that the films try to address are being observed in this project in the light of the popular films and their reception both among Turkish and global audience. The explicit and implicit presence of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is observed and traced in this study. Before delving into the research I have decided to go through the history of the Republic for a better observation of the political events and their sources that are portrayed in these films and how under the rule of Mustafa Kemal a modernization process took place and what shape it took after his death. To observe the aesthetics of the popular war films and web series a study of the history of Turkish cinema and web series has been included in that chapter. The presence which has been discussed in this project is of a certain kind which can be detected for definite period. For this span of time, we have already seen in the first chapter the tumultuous situation Turkey is going through since the 2000s. It is a period of deep political polarization basically on two issues which became important unresolvable questions after the death of Ataturk- what role should religion play in the public square and what role should a powerful state play in the private life of the citizens. Even after 75 years of his death Mustafa Kemal is the ever present figure in the struggle of Turkey in search of its own identity.