Subject Librarian
Lucinda M. Hall
Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website Skype Contact: d1128r8@kiewit.dartmouth.edu
Internet resource(s)
- 100 years of Turkish cinema & what to watchTurkish cinema, which got a relatively late start, has had a tumultuous history at times intertwined with the country’s politics. Throughout the years, it has held an important place in Turkey’s arts and culture scene, driving creativity and innovation beyond the big screen. ...
- Turkish Cultural FoundationThe introduction of cinema in Turkey dates back to nearly a year after two young Frenchmen, the Lumière brothers held their first film exhibition on December 22, 1895 in a cafe in Paris. Initial showings in Turkey were private ones held at the Sultan's court, the Yıldız Palace in İstanbul. Afterwards a Romanian citizen of Polish descent Sigmund Weinberg screened films publicly at a beer hall in Galatasaray Square, İstanbul, thus introducing this extraordinary art to many more Turkish people. ...
Keeping up with Film Studies journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for all facets of Film Studies? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's, you can download and read the articles you want from the journals for which we have subscriptions.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's also available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.
Introduction
During the period leading up to and including World War I, Turkey was largely dependent on films imported from France. Domestic film production was limited to a handful of short propaganda documentaries made by the military, including Ayastefanos’taki Rus Abidesinin Yιkιlιşι/The Demolition of the Russian Monument at St Stephan (1914), which is claimed to be the first Turkish film. The earliest locally produced feature films, Pençe/The Claw and Casus/The Spy were both directed by Sedat Simavi and released in 1917. When Turkey became a secular republic in 1923 feature film production began on a very small scale. Worthy of note are two production companies—Ipek Film and Kemal Film—and the work of German-trained theatre director Muhsin Ertuğrul, who adapted popular Turkish and European plays and remade foreign films. Ertuğrul was a prominent figure in Turkish cinema, directing thirty-six films between 1919 and 1953, including İstanbul sokaklarιn/The Streets of Istanbul (1931), Turkey’s earliest synchronized sound film. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Turkey, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 24 Jan. 2021
In the library's collections/Searching the online catalog
You can use the following links to begin your research into Turkish cinema.
Introductory reading(s)
Cinema in Turkey: a new critical history by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .T8 A77 2011ISBN: 9780195370065With over six thousand films, Turkey has produced more films than any other country in the Middle East or the Balkans. Despite its prolific and popular nature, this national film industry has often been denigrated as imitative, simplistic, and underdeveloped. Taking up precisely these critiques, Cinema in Turkey provides a critical history of feature cinema in Turkey, considering how this cinema developed modes of communication reflective of both existing traditions and region-specific responses to modernization and nation-building. ...
Directory of world cinema. Turkey by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .T8 T87 2013ISBN: 9781841506203Since the 1990s, filmmakers in Turkey have increasingly explored notions of gender, genre, cultural memory, and national and transnational identity. Taking these themes as its starting point, this book--the first English-language directory of Turkish films--provides an extensive historical overview the country's cinema since the early 1920s. ...
New cinema, new media: reinventing Turkish cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781443856881This volume covers approaches concerning the relationship between innovation in cinema and the politics of filmmaking in new cinema practices in Turkey. The contributors focus on historiography, genres, mainstream and art cinema production, and transnational cinema, as well as changing narratives and identities. The new cinema movement in Turkey is here analysed from perspectives of new technologies, new production and distribution structures, the impact of film training, the televisual industry, new actors in commercial and art cinema, as well as the impact of the film festival circuit. ...
New cinema in Turkey: filmmakers and identities between urban and rural space by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .T8 O88 2017ISBN: 9781443812726New Cinema in Turkey: Filmmakers and Identities between Urban and Rural Space focuses, with a very precise overview, on Turkish cinema that, since the mid-90s, has seen the emergence and consolidation of a strong and original authorship, which has been accompanied by a growing recognition at the international level. This is a personal cinema, which, with a wide variety of styles and approaches to storytelling, addresses the issues of identity in a country that is in a crucial phase of its history, in both social and political terms. ...
Six Turkish filmmakers by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780299315405Examining the vanguard of New Turkish Cinema, Laurence Raw shows how these films reveal the effects of profound socioeconomic change on ordinary people in contemporary Turkey. In analysis of and personal interviews with Dervis Zaim, Zeki Demirkubuz, Semih Kaplanoglu, Çagan Irmak, Tolga Örnek, and Palme d'Or winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Raw draws connections with Turkish theater, art, sculpture, literature, poetry, philosophy, and international cinema. A native of England and a twenty-five-year resident of Turkey, Raw interleaves his film discussion with thoughtful commentary on nationalism, gender, personal identity, and cultural pluralism.
Selected book titles
Ideology in Turkish cinema by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .T8 M46 2014ISBN: 9781935295501Mencutekin takes on the role of ideology in the history of Turkish cinema critically analyzing the values and ideas that have shaped the message and stories of Turkish movies. This study is based on the thesis that to truly explore the specific issues currently vexing Turkish cinema, one has to confront the aesthetic, technological, and ideological assumptions in the deeply nationalistic and secular approach to Turkish cinema and how they engage with the real social values of Turkish society. ...
Imaginaries out of place: cinema, transnationalism and Turkey by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781443841337As new geographies of mobility and hybridity make the concept of national identity highly problematic, new questions emerge that challenge and destabilize our conventional ways of thinking. Where do migrants 'belong'? Are they members of a distant nation, or natives of the places in which they live? What kind of changes does the sense of 'Turkishness' undergo, and what does it mean to various Turkish communities living in various parts of the world? ...
Kurdish documentary cinema in Turkey: the politics and aesthetics of identity and resistance by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781443897983Without a doubt, this decades most discussed and developed documentary productions in Turkey come from Kurdistan, a name that provokes nationalist panic in Turkey, yet delineates distinct cultural, linguistic, and political boundaries nonetheless. Documentary film productions by Kurdish filmmakers from Turkey determine the major tendencies of this emergent genre, with such productions offering a unique opportunity for a nuanced understanding of national cinema. ...
Turkish cinema: identity, distance and belonging by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781861893703Films often act as a prism that refracts the issues facing a nation, and Turkish cinema in particular serves to encapsulate the cultural and social turmoil of modern-day Turkey. Acclaimed film scholar Gönül Dönmez-Colin examines here the way that national cinema reveals the Turkish quest for a modern identity. ...
Women and Turkish cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780415674652Since 2000, there has been a considerable effort in Turkish cinema to come to terms with the military's intervention in politics and subsequent national trauma. It has resulted in an outpouring of cinematic texts. This book focuses on women and Turkish cinema in the context of gender politics, cultural identity and representation. ...
Other library resource(s)
Turkish cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Beginning with the 1982 Palme d’Or at Cannes for Yilmaz Güney’s Yol, Turkish cinema entered into the international forefront. This recognition and the classification of Yol as a “Turkish” film (made by a Turkish and Kurdish filmmaker) underline the overriding challenge of defining and categorizing a national cinema. Scholars, students, and their research have reflected this interrogation. Contemporary study has approached the evolution of Turkish cinema from its depiction of a state’s desire to unify a newly formed Republic (1923), through to a golden era of popular entertainment (Yesilçam), and continuing with today’s “New Turkish Cinema”—reflection on a nation’s traumatic social, political, and cultural past symbolized by metaphoric personal narratives. ...
Finding scholarly articles and journal titles
You can find articles about Turkish cinema in a variety of publications. You can start your search in a subject specific index such as Film & Television Literature Index, use a more multi-disciplinary database such as Web of Science or use the search box at the top of the page.
Film & television literature index by Call Number: Electronic resourceUse this index to find articles about this national cinema.
Screen studies collection by Call Number: Electronic resourceA comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected movie titles
Find more Turkish films in the library's online catalog.
Almanya: Willkommen in Deutschland by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #15975When six-year old Cenk Yilmaz asks his guest worker family if he is Turkish or German, the entire family begins questioning their national identity. Further confusion arises when the grandfather who brought the family to Germany in the 1960s announces that he has bought a house in Turkey and wants to vacation there.
Bliss = Mutluluk by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #10162When a young woman is raped, village custom requires an honor killing. The son of the village leader is given the task, but at the last moment has doubts. He and the young woman go on the run, followed by local thugs intent on killing her. Luckily, they meet up with an ex-university professor who is embarking on a sailing trip, and needs a crew. All three set forth together on a voyage that will change all of their lives.
Journey to the sun by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #8455ISBN: 9781565804005Mehmet is a cheerful young man from Western Turkey, and Berzan is a Kurdish rebel in the underground, who become fast friends while living in Istanbul. Mehmet is unjustly arrested, but the experience makes him aware of his country's political realities. When the situation heats up, and Berzan is involved, Mehmet embarks on a sweeping, spiritual journey across Turkey to his friend's Kurdish homeland.
Lal gece = Night of silence by Call Number: Streaming videoThis film is about a regretful old man and his child bride on their wedding night after having been married to end the blood feud between their two families.
Mixed kebab by Call Number: Streaming videoBram lives a double-life, at once a dutifully religious Muslim, and also a casual drug dealer and closeted gay man. When Bram flies off to Turkey to meet his future wife he brings his stunning friend Kevin, and soon an illicit love affair develops between the two men. Faced with with no choice but to navigate between these two opposing worlds things soon come to an explosive crossroad.
Takva = A man's fear of God by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #7831ISBN: 9781417201884Muharrem lives a solitary existence, strictly adhering to the most severe Islamic doctrines. To his surprise, a religious leader hires him as a rent collector, where he is given Western-style suits, a cell phone and a car with a driver. Thrown suddenly into the modern world, the naïve Muharrem is exposed to temptations and hypocrisies, causing his fear of God to eat away at his senses and threaten his sanity.
