The renaissance of Turkish cinema

With its art-house cinema winning prizes all over the world, from Berlin to Cannes and beyond, and its realist sensibilities and rich language widely praised, Turkish cinema, after a century-long journey, occupies a unique place in global film culture, reflecting the country’s dynamic film industry. 

 

Its latest star is Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang, a contender in this year’s Oscar race for Best Foreign Language Film. Ergüven’s debut feature is set in a Black Sea village in northern Turkey. It is a co-production between Turkey France, Germany and Qatar. 

 

Offering an eclectic range of fare, talent and themes, in recent years new-age Turkish cinema has been defined by multiple award-winners Semih Kaplanoğlu, Nuri Bilgi Ceylan and Reha Erdem. They tell strong, intimate stories with their minimalist, beautifully crafted, almost poetic films that is restraint with dialogue.

 

The broad success of Turkish films, a good balance of arthouse films and box-office hits, lies in their universal themes, as their aesthetic and political subtexts reflect a certain global awareness of modern cinema. Interestingly, Yılmaz Erdoğan’s Butterfly Dream, Turkey’s 2014 foreign Oscar entry, struck that middle ground, doing well domestically and travelling widely as well. This Second World War period piece is considered a benchmark in the country’s hundred-year cinema history.

 

“We’ve got many young, talented directors, who are creating work on a very wide range of themes. It’s the variety of productions that makes our country’s film industry so unique,” says producer-director-festival programmer Ahmet Boyacıoğlu.

 

Big winners

As has been the norm over the past few years, Turkish directors added to its haul of festival prizes this year as well. Some of the awards Ergüven’s Mustang has raked in on its way to the Oscars include the Europa Cinemas Label Award at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and Heart of Sarajevo Award at Sarajevo Film Festival. In September, Mehmet Eryılmaz’s The Visitor won a Special Grand Jury Award at the Montreal World Film Festival, Emin Alper’s Frenzy picked up the Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival, Tolga Karaçelik’s Ivy, screened at the Sydney Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, and won the Best Feature award at East End Film Festival in London. 

 

But typically, the story of Turkish cinema is a story of rise, fall and revival – rapid growth in the 1950s, battling private TV channels in the ’80s, and resurgence in the mid-’90s, with a surge in independent cinema.

 

Notwithstanding its dominance in the region today due to a large population, the highest production levels and the most cinema screens, the Turkish film industry was relatively late to develop a local production base. After the documentary film Ayastefanos Abidesinin Yıkılışı or The Destruction of The Russian Monument at Ayastefanos, the country’s first film in 1914, it was Muhsin Ertuğrul, a prominent stage director and actor, who single-handedly constructed a national cinematic identity in the ’30s, adapting novels into feature films. 

 

The industry reached its full potency between the ’50s through the ’70s, known as the Yeşilçam era, producing milestones films, such as Kanun Namına. This period also saw the appearance of legendary director Atıf Yılmaz, who went on to make a hundred-odd films, and actors Ekrem Bora and Sadri Alışık. While Yılmaz Güney’s Arkadaş signalled the arrival of thought-provoking socio-drama, films like Hakkâri'de Bir Mevsim or A Season in Hakkâri and Sürü or The Herd won awards at home and abroad.

 

Sadly, political instability and economic crisis, TV’s widespread popularity and censorship contributed to the decline of Turkish cinema in mid-’80s. By the early 1990s, only two or three films were produced per year.

 

Since the mid-’90s, it’s been bouncing back, with a steep increase in the quantity and popularity of films. One turning point was Ceylan winning both the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes, and also best actor, for his drama Distant in 2002. Also, Faruk Aksoy’s box-office hit Fetih 1453 in 2012, the most expensive film in Turkish cinema history, opened the doors of a new era for Turkish cinema, with producers making big investments in film production. 

 

'Stories about themselves'

Belmin Söylemez, whose film Present Tense has won a string of awards, attributes the Turkish film renaissance to the success of award-winning directors such as Ceylan. “They have encouraged new filmmakers to make stories about themselves and their own worlds,” Cultural Weekly quoted Söylemez saying. 

 

“There were lots of social issues that needed to be addressed and many stories that needed to be told. We have a group, which we call The New Cinema Movement, where directors and the producers come together and talk about distribution and other problems.”

 

In addition, the Ministry of Culture has since 2004 started supporting Turkish cinema – arthouse and commercial – providing between 30-50 per cent of the budget for some films. It also organises Turkish film weeks as far afield as Paris, Hong Kong, Beirut, Vancouver and Havana. Turkish film festivals, which are growing in number across the country, remain the main venue for screenings of independent films. 

The number of Turkish cinema audiences increased constantly over the past decade to more than 50 million in 2014, and the size of the film industry increased to an estimated $2 billion.

 

“The Turkish film business has done really well. A decade ago, just 10 to 15 films were produced on an annual basis, but now it’s 70 or 80. In the last few years, Turkish films have reached a market share of more than 50 per cent. That makes us the number one in Europe, and number four in the world,” says Boyacıoğlu.

 

New themes

Interestingly, the new wave of directors, led by Alper and Orhan Eskiköy, are pushing Turkish film in a new direction, putting a more political edge. Eskiköy in his 2012 award-winning film “Voice of My Father” dealt with one of the most contentious issues in Turkish society – the country’s treatment of its Kurdish minority.

 

In September, speaking at Venice Film festival, Alper said, “I am a political guy and it influences my works. It’s not a must, but we are living in the same society and cannot isolate ourselves from it.”

 

Ceylan, who over the course of his seven feature films – the last five won prizes at Cannes – tackled many themes, from marital relations and politics to social issues, feels cinema need not necessarily be a reflection of the current events. “I don’t think a director should allude to current events in his or her country, because he or she has a duty to examine things on a broader level. I believe a filmmaker must speak to the viewer’s soul,” Ceylan said.

 

That said, Turkish cinema has certainly struck a very good balance between commercial-minded domestic cinema and its globally acclaimed art-house films. So far, it’s been a win-win situation.