While the political performances of Turkey have hit rock bottom, the art scene of this country bubbles with joy. Visitors to the city of İstanbul are encouraged to enjoy the competitive, creative art exhibition scene -- Picasso, Chagall, Dali -- as the younger crowd displays curiosity in finding new means of expression through abstraction and by seeking a new language. High art presents itself as a reminder that the city of İstanbul belongs to the grand tradition of other cities that were formerly the capitals of empires -- such as London and Vienna -- while its subcultures endure, spread and thrive.In that sense, it should come as a no surprise that the European -- or, rather, global -- movie scene is being inundated with a younger generation of Turkish moviemakers and eager, daring actors and actresses. Cinema here has, over the past decade, become a common language to highlight a will to understand the complex human geography of Turkey and its demons and angels. Since it has been closely linked with sub-cultural optics and articulations as an art form, the flourishing of these people has been inevitable and unstoppable.
Fatih Akın, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Serdar Akar, Ferzan Özpetek, Reha Erdem, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Pelin Esmer and Mahzun Kırmızıgül are the ones who immediately come to mind, but the one aspect that escapes foreign attention is the entry of comedies, watched domestically, that are almost all commercial successes.
Statistically, the last two years have also marked an explosion in Turkish movies. 2009 was, in a sense, a record year, with more than 70 movies reaching theaters, many of them in the genre of art house; but also others, such as “Nefes” (Breath), which, in a spirit reminiscent of fine Russian movies that deal with the bloody Chechen conflict, is praised (despite nationalistic undertones) for its meticulous storytelling and fine artwork.
The explosion in numbers can partly be explained by the fact that digitalization of moviemaking has made it much cheaper and more attractive. It has broken down old-style structures; the Turkish movie industry is no longer run by feudalism, the “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” sort of corrupt relations. The directors of older generations no longer have an influence in defining their genres; they are pushed back in defeat, in a fresh environment of diversity, individualism and a pursuit of free expression.
For a long time, until the end of the ‘90s, movies were under the domination of a rigid leftist ideology that limited the ways directors looked at the reality of Turkey and blurred its view. In a sense, it looked easy enough if a certain director could explain himself through the language of politics, but could, in return, get away with often horrendous flaws in moviemaking, more often than not scarred by amateurish editing and a sloppy approach to light, scenery and other things. In their ideological arrogance, it seemed, the director of the older generation was less interested in following the creative path in world cinema and in learning to be a better “technician” than imposing a worldview.
But as Roman Polanski, another winner of the Berlin Festival this year, once said, “It has primarily to do [with] how you master your skills to tell a story, any story,” and nothing else. Now more or less “liberated” from the chains of established and worn-out political templates, the new names stand for a “boom,” as proven again by Kaplanoğlu Saturday night in Berlin.
Some would shrug at the naïveté of “Bal,” but this may be illusory. The movie marks the maturity of this devoted and independent moviemaker -- whom I had met as an enthusiast in New York in the early ‘90s. This one is the last part of his trilogy, which began with “Yumurta” (Egg) and continued with “Süt” (Milk) (movies that had some weaknesses), and shines with its usage of sounds and vision. The story is a simple tale of a 7-year-old boy who seeks his lost father, a beekeeper, near the Georgian border. Kaplanoğlu continues a tradition of “man versus nature” themes, a path long tred by Japanese and American directors, and finds new things to tell beyond their abilities.
