h. nazan ışık—
20 April 2012—
If you are a Turkish film lover just a movie lover and want to learn more about Turkish cinema or a lover of both, good news, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Moon and Stars Project of The American Turkish Society present a program called The Space Between: A Panorama of Cinema in Turkey which starts on Friday, April 27and continues until Thursday May 10.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Kadir İnanır and Türkan Şoray in Atıf Yılmaz’s film The Girl With the Red Scarf (Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım)
The Space Between: A Panorama of Cinema in Turkey brings 29 award winning Turkish films from the 1950s to the present and is the largest United States retrospective of movies from Turkey.
The program opens on Friday, April 27 at 6:30 with Raşit Çelikezer’s film Can (2011) which won the “Special Jury Prize for Artistic Vision” at the Sundance Film Festival and closes on Thursday, May 10 with Özcan Alper’s Future Last Forever (Gelecek Uzun Sürer)(2011).
This largest retrospective includes films from legendary filmmakers from Yeşilçam era such as Atıf Yılmaz (O Beautiful Istanbul(Ah, Güzel Istanbul) (1966)), Metin Erksan (Revenge of the Snakes (Yılanların Öcü)(1962)), Memduh Ün (Three Friends (Üç Arkadaş)(1958)), and films of Yılmaz Güney (Elegy(Ağıt)(1971), Hope(Umut)(1970) and Yol (1982) , co-directed with Şerif Gören). And also, films from directors whom the Lincoln Center presented before, such as Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Zeki Demirkubuz, Ferzan Özpetek and Yeşim Ustaoğlu.
Directors Raşit Çelikezer, Özcan Alper, Ali Özgentürk, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Screenwriter Ali Özgentürk of The Girl with the Redv Scarf (Selvi Boylum Az Yazmalım) by Atıf Yılmaz will be present for Q&A after the screenings.
The program also offers a free panel discussion “The Space Between: The Trajectory of Cinema in Turkey” at the Film Center Amphitheater on Sunday, April 29 at 2:45 pm.
Here is the complete list of films and descriptions for
THE SPACE BETWEEN: A PANORAMA OF CINEMA IN TURKEY
OPENING NIGHT
CAN (2011) 106min
Director: Raşit Çelikezer
Country: Turkey
Winner at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for Artistic Achievement, Can begins as a contemporary couple, Ayşe and Cemal, struggle to find a way to conceive a child together. When modern medicine comes up short, they resort to illegal means, but the stress eventually causes the couple’s relationship to unravel. Meanwhile, a single mother is raising her little boy, Can, in something less than ideal fashion.
Friday, April 27 at 6:30PM
CLOSING NIGHT
FUTURE LASTS FOREVER (Gelecek Uzun Sürer) (2011) 108min
Director: Özcan Alper
Countries: Germany/France/Turkey
Sumru, an ethnomusicologist, leaves her university in Istanbul and sets off for Diyarbakır in southeast Turkey, where she plans to record the elegies of those (mainly women) who have lost loved ones in the ongoing Turkish-Kurdish conflict. Yet the journey has another purpose, even if Sumru can’t admit it to herself: to find the man she herself loved and “lost.” Along the way she meets Ahmet, also wounded by the war, a street vendor who sells bootleg DVDs. Each comes to recognize the ongoing grief in the other, and as they probe their respective wounds they provide an outline of the great wound that continues to bleed the nation.
Thursday, May 10 at 8:10PM
CLIMATES (Iklimler) (2006) 101min
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Countries: Turkey/France
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s NYFF hit Once Upon a Time in Anatolia was a favorite among audiences with a mournfully droll Turkish analysis of male melancholy. Ceylan moves metaphorically and meteorologically from the warmth of western Turkey to the snowy cold of its eastern border in this visually stunning tale of a couple’s break-up and the aftermath.
Monday, May 7 at 3:30PM and Tuesday, May 8 at 8:30PM
CONFESSION (Itiraf) (2002) 100min
Director: Zeki Demirkubuz
Country: Turkey
Screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Confession brings a chilling, Dostoevskian feel to its searing look at the disintegration of a marriage. Harun (Taner Birsel) and Nilgün (Başak Köklükaya) have been married for seven years. Their relationship seems uneventful enough, with little outward strife. Then Harun suspects his wife of having an affair, and he begins to draw apart from her. Yet he fears that confronting her might actually bring the affair into the open—or end the marriage.
Sunday, May 6 at 5:45PM and Thursday, May 10 at 4:10PM
CROSSING THE BRIDGE: THE SOUND OF ISTANBUL (2005) 90min
Director: Fatih Akın
Countries: Germany/Turkey
Crossroads between Europe and Asia, eastern and western cultures, as well as the former seat of a major empire—it’s little surprise that Turkey’s greatest city has developed an astonishingly rich and varied musical scene. Award-winning director Fatih Akın (Head On, The Edge of Heaven) takes us on a breathtaking tour of the sights and especially the sounds of Istanbul: you get to meet and hear Turkish rappers, Roma jazz musicians and traditional Kurdish singers, not to mention neo-psychedelic bands such as Baba Zula and various street performers.
Saturday, April 28 at 10:20PM and Thursday, May 10 at 6:15PM
DESPITE EVERYTHING (Herşeya Ragmen) (1988) 87min
Director: Orhan Oǧuz
Country: Turkey
Released from prison for unspecified offenses, Hasan (Talat Bulut) finds himself unable to reenter or even recognize the society into which he emerges. Even the most basic communication with other people is a challenge, and Hasan increasingly draws into himself. He finds a job as the driver of a hearse for one of Istanbul’s churches—a seemingly perfect job for someone trying to disappear in plain sight—but then he meets a woman and her son, and together they rekindle some kind of spark in Hasan’s life.
Saturday, April 28 at 5:30PM and Friday, May 4 at 3:00PM
DON’T LET THEM SHOOT THE KITE (Uçurtmayi Vurmasinlar) (1989) 100min Director: Tunç Başaran
Country: Turkey
When a woman is sent to prison for drug smuggling, Barış, her young son, is sent with her, as is the custom in Turkey. Inside this all-women’s penitentiary, Barış searches for companionship and guidance—and finds them both in the form of Inci (Nur Sürer), a political prisoner with whom he forms a very special bond.
Saturday, May 5 at 5:00PM and Tuesday, May 8 at 2:00PM
DRY SUMMER (Susuz Yaz) (1963) 81min
Director: Metin Erksan
Country: Turkey
Winner of the Golden Bear at the 1964 Berlin Film Festival, Dry Summer is the story of two brothers, Hasan and Osman, whose land contains the water source that irrigates all the surrounding farms. The land is fertile, and all is peaceful until an exceptionally arid summer puts pressure on the water supply. Osman decides to close down access to the water for his fellow farmers, who band together to fight him; although preoccupied with his upcoming wedding, it’s left to Hasan to try to reestablish peace before it’s too late.
Saturday, April 28 at 1:30PM and Tuesday, May 1 at 2:15PM.
ELEGY (Ağıt) (1971) 80min
Director: Yılmaz Güney
Country: Turkey
In this return to territory explored in earlier films such as Law of the Border, Yılmaz Güney–again working as director, writer and lead actor–offers a tale about smugglers working in southeastern Turkey. Çobanoǧlu is a former peasant who took to smuggling in order to survive, made notorious by his success in eluding capture. The locals compete with each other to give information on Çobanoǧlu to the authorities for a price, while the landowners aren’t above hiring him for some of their own dirty work.
Wednesday, May 2 at 2:00PM and Friday, May 4 at 6:45PM
40 SQUARE METERS OF GERMANY (40m Almanya) (1986) 81min
Director: Tevfik Başer
Country: West Germany
Established as a guest worker in Germany, Dursun brings his young wife Turna from Anatolia. Scared that she’ll get lost in the big city where she doesn’t speak the language or know the customs, Dursun demands that she stay home all day, making Turna’s experience of her new country the 40 square meters trapped between the walls of their tiny apartment. Brought up to obey men, Turna tries to adjust to her new life, her only communication with the outside world being shared gazes with a young girl who lives across the way.
Friday, May 4 at 5:00PM and Saturday, May 5 at 1:30PM
HAZAL (1981) 90min
Director: Ali Özgentürk
Country: Turkey
The wonderful Türkan Şoray stars as the title character in this internationally acclaimed chronicle of a collision between tradition and modernity. The son of a wealthy, respected family seeks the hand of Hazal; unexpectedly, soon after her marriage, her husband dies. According to custom, as the deceased family had paid dowry for Hazal, she must marry the next male sibling—which in this case, happens to be an 11-year old boy. Trapped by the obligations imposed on her and her own romantic stirrings, Hazal is forced to choose what future lies ahead.
Saturday, April 28 at 3:15PM and Thursday, May 3 at 1:00PM
HOPE (Umut) (1970) 100min
Director: Yılmaz Güney
Director: Turkey
With Hope, Yılmaz Güney—already a popular screen actor—became a major director as well, blending together several of the richest currents in Turkey’s socially engaged cinema into a work that remains as powerful today as when first screened. Cabbar (played by Güney himself) supports his family by driving a broken-down horse-drawn wagon, but competition from taxis threatens to put him out of business. At wit’s end, Cabbar starts to search for a hidden treasure with the aid of a hodja, a mystic.
Tuesday, May 1 at 4:00PM and Wednesday, May 2 at 6:15PM
JOURNEY TO THE SUN (Güneşe Yolculuk) (1999) 104min
Director: Yeşim Ustaoğlu
Countries: Turkey/Netherlands/Germany
Mehmet, a recent arrival to the teeming city, is fortunate. He has a shared room, a possible girlfriend and a neat job as a diviner for Istanbul’s municipal water system. He meets Berzan, a street music vendor familiar with the metropolis, and his moral education begins. Berzan is a Kurd, harassed by the authorities, and Mehmet’s friendship with him combined with his own “dark skin” puts Mehmet at extreme risk. Yeşim Ustaoğlu, an architect turned filmmaker, takes her characters on a journey east out of Istanbul into a ravishing and war-ravaged landscape close to the Iraqi border. Winner of the Best European Film Award at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival.
Saturday, April 28 at 7:50PM and Tuesday, May 8 at 4:00PM
KOSMOS (2010) 122min
Director: Reha Erdem
Countries: Turkey/Bulgaria
A mysterious stranger comes running out of a barren, snow-covered landscape; hearing screams, he heads to the river bank and saves a young boy who’s fallen in the swift currents. Although assumed to be dead, the boy is somehow revived by the stranger; later, the stranger, who calls himself Kosmos, is led by the boy’s grateful father and sister to a nearby town, where the locals greet him as a hero.
Wednesday, May 9 at 8:15PM
LAW OF THE BORDER (Hudutların Kanunu) (1966) 71min
Director: Lütfi Ö. Akad
Country: Turkey
On the surface, Law of the Border, is an action-packed, exciting smuggling drama with a powerful central performance by Yılmaz Güney. Yet beyond the genre elements lays a searing critique of social conditions in southeastern Turkey, where lack of education, joblessness and general hopelessness have left the population little choice but to become outlaws in order to survive.
Tuesday, May 1 at 8:15PM and Friday, May 4
MOTHERLAND HOTEL (Anayurt Oteli) (1987) 110min
Director: Ömer Kavur
Country: Turkey
Zebercet (a beautiful performance by Macit Koper) runs a small provincial hotel that’s seen better days but still exudes a certain charm. One day, a beautiful, somewhat mysterious woman from Ankara comes to spend the night. She and Zebercet engage in some light conversation, and she promises that she’ll return to the hotel “next week” for a longer stay. But the week passes, and then another, and time begins to weigh more and more heavily on Zebercet, driving him further into his own thoughts and fantasies.
Thursday, May 3 at 5:00PM
MY AUNT (Teyzem) (1987) 81min
Director: Halit Refiǧ
Country: Turkey
One of the giants of filmmaking in Turkey, Halit Refiǧ created one of his finest works with this searing drama based on a screenplay by respected writer (and later filmmaker) Ümit Ünal. Üftade (Müjde Ar) has long been the object of men’s fury. In childhood, her stepfather constantly abused her, and later her marriage descends into vicious psychological domination. Throughout the years, her suffering is witnessed by her nephew who, despite his warm feelings for his aunt, nevertheless feels helpless to do anything about her condition.
Saturday, May 5 at 3:15PM and Wednesday, May 9 at 2:35PM
MY BELOVED WITH THE RED SCARF (Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalim) (1977) 90min
Director: Atif Yılmaz
Country: Turkey
My Beloved with the Red Scarf begins as truck driver Ilyas (Kadir Inanır) hauls a load of sand and gravel to a construction site; along the way he meets Asya (Türkan Şoray), a beautiful young woman from the countryside. Smitten, the couple run off together. At first all is fine: a son is born, and they set about creating a life together. But then Ilyas loses his job, and starts to slip away, drifting into alcohol and the arms of other women. Asya leaves him and eventually meets Cemşit, an older man eager to marry her and adopt her son. But just at it seems life is settling down for Asya, Ilyas reappears.
Sunday, April 29 at 6:45PM and Wednesday, May 2 at 3:45PM
MY CINEMAS (Benim Sinemalarim) (1990) 100min
Directors: Füruzan and Gülsün Karamustafa
Country: Turkey
Nesbibe lives with her parents on the outskirts of Istanbul; the family is poor, and her consistently unemployed father often takes out his frustration on the rest of the family. Nesbibe knows that there has to be something more to life, and she finds it—at the movies. As she recalls her childhood and adolescence, her own memories merge with scenes from the dozens of musicals, melodramas and romances she saw to fill her days and to escape the desperation of her home life.
Sunday, May 6 at 1:30PM and Wednesday, May 9 at 4:15PM.
OH BEAUTIFUL ISTANBUL (Ah, Güzel Istanbul) (1966) 97min
Director: Atıf Yılmaz
Country: Turkey
The lovely Ayşe (Ayla Algan) moves from her country village to Istanbul in the hope of becoming an actress; there she acquires a boyfriend/manager/director who has other ideas about how she should use her good looks and talent. One day Ayşe meets Hasmet (Sadri Alişik), a grumpy, world-weary street photographer descended from a good family but having fallen on hard times. Haşmet takes it upon himself to cure the young woman of what he sees as her blind optimism, but some of it begins to rub off on the old cynic.
Friday, April 27 at 3:50PM and Monday, April 30 at 6:30PM
ON FERTILE LANDS (Bereketli Topraklar Üzerinde) (1979) 115min
Director: Erden Kıral
Country: Turkey
Three friends decide to abandon their poverty-stricken village and try their luck in Çukurova, a cotton-growing region in southern Turkey. Their search for better lives leads them from construction sites to factories to cotton fields, as they discover at every turn a system designed for exploitation and the frustration of their dreams.
Thursday, May 3 at 7:00PM.
REVENGE OF THE SNAKES (Yılanların Öcü) (1962) 108min
Director: Metin Erksan
Country: Turkey
A landmark in the history of filmmaking in Turkey whose importance has been compared to that of Open City for Italian cinema, Metin Erksan’s masterpiece cast a sharp gaze on the life in the backlands of Turkey’s eastern region. When the construction of a new house causes a dispute among neighbors, the fragile social fabric of a village comes undone, as rivalries, fears, and old, unsettled scores start to emerge.
Monday, April 30 at 8:30PM
SECRET FACE (Gizli Yüz) (1991) 115min
Director: Ömer Kavur
Country: Turkey
Adapted by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk from his novel The Black Book, Secret Face introduces us to a young photographer who spends each night haunting late-night Istanbul cafes, capturing on film the faces he meets in the shadows. The audience for his work is a mysterious woman, who scans his photographs in search of a certain face. At last she seems to find it, on a clockmaker working in a provincial town, and she sends the photographer off to find him. But soon this woman also disappears, setting the photographer off on a search that will bring him into an increasingly mysterious space made up equally of the physical world and the recesses of his own consciousness.
Friday, April 27 at 1:30PM and Sunday, May 6 at 3:30PM.
SOMERSAULT IN A COFFIN (Tabutta Rövaşata) (1996) 76min
Director: Derviş Zaim
Country: Turkey
Writer/director Derviş Zaim focuses his camera on a rarely seen side of Turkish life with the alternately darkly comic and unsettling Somersault in a Coffin. Mahsun, unemployed and homeless, steals cars to keep warm in winter and sponges off his friends for food. A sympathetic fisherman tries to help by paying Mahsun’s tab at a local café, and arranging a job for him there. But Mahsun’s attention soon drifts to Rumelihisar Castle, a tourist attraction of this very old neighborhood, and the fifty peacocks that occupy the grounds.
Friday, April 27 at 9:15PM and Wednesday, May 9 at 1:00PM
STEAM: THE TURKISH BATH (Hamam) (1997) 94min
Director: Ferzan Ozpetek
Countries: Italy/Turkey/Spain
The thin curtain of steam rising from the floor of a traditional Istanbul hamam (steam bath) provides an apt symbol for a film concerned with the permeable boundaries between nations, cultures and people. A Turkish director and longtime resident of Italy (frequently featured in our annual Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series), Ferzan Ozpetek burst on the international scene with Steam: The Turkish Bath. Francesco, a young Italian designer with a rocky marriage, discovers that an aunt whom he’d never met has left him property in Istanbul in her will. That property turns out to be a hamam, and although Francesco at first plans to sell it, the building, the city and a budding sexual attraction soon make him reconsider.
Sunday, April 29 at 4:30PM and Monday, May 7 at 1:30PM
SUMMER BOOK (Tatil Kitabi) (2008) 92min
Director: Seyfi Teoman
Country: Turkey
In a quiet, beautiful town on the Mediterranean coast, children play in the ruins of an old fort, and life goes on at its own pace. But beneath the surface, at least for the family of 10-year old Ali, tensions are brewing. His older brother is looking for a way out of military academy; his divorced uncle seems to grow more eccentric by the day. Meanwhile, Ali’s mother grows suspicious of her husband’s increasingly frequent business trips. And for Ali, something has to be done about the bullies forever picking on him. These narrative currents suddenly all come together when Ali’s father suffers a cerebral hemorrhage, and each member of the family has to redefine his or her role within it.
Wednesday, May 9 at 6:20PM
THREE FRIENDS (Ũç Arkadaş) (1958) 90min
Director: Memduh Ũn
Country: Turkey
Three friends live practically on the streets of Istanbul, cadging small jobs every now and then to make ends meet but mainly enjoying each other and the carefree life. Then they meet Gül (Muhterem Nur), a beautiful blind girl who has given up all hope. Trying to boost her spirits, the friends decide to pretend that they’re actually wealthy socialites who together share a classic villa in a posh part of town. The ruse works, for a while, but the friends begin to fear what will happen when Gül discovers the truth.
Sunday, April 29 at 1:00PM and Monday, April 30 at 2:15PM.
VIZONTELE (2001) 110min
Directors: Yılmaz Erdoğan and Ömer Faruk Sorak
Country: Turkey
Based on the childhood memories of co-director and star Yılmaz Erdoğan (recently seen in Once Upon a time in Anatolia as the police inspector), Vizontele chronicles the price of change in a small village in southeastern Turkey. The village mayor seeks to exert strict control over his electorate; his principal opponent is Latif, an opportunist who runs open air film screenings. But the villagers are growing tired of Latif’s recycled movies, and the mayor decides to break Latif’s monopoly by introducing the village’s first TV set—which is when the battle (and the fun) really begins.
Sunday, April 29 at 9:00PM and Thursday, May 10 at 2:00PM
YOL (1982) 111min
Director: Şerif Gören
Countries: Turkey/Switzerland/France
Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, this most famous of all Turkish films starts in a prison, where those prisoners who have served at least a third of their time are given a week’s furlough to go home. Yet, as the film makes shockingly clear, going outside the prison walls doesn’t necessarily end one’s personal incarceration. Directed from a highly detailed screenplay by Yılmaz Güney (who was in jail at the time) by his close collaborator Şerif Gören, Yol renders each of its five principal stories with sympathy and clarity, creating a vibrant, visceral sense of prisoners’ world, while offering insights into their dreams and fears. Thursday, May 3 at 2:50PM and Friday, May 4 at 8:45PM
© h. nazan ışık