Directors Alper, Karabey and Temelkuran recently participated in a panel discussion at the Mithat Alam Film Center at Boğaziçi University titled “Yeni Türkiye Sineması” which could be translated into English as both “New Turkish Cinema” and “The Cinema of New Turkey.” With the rapid transformation of Turkish society, new questions pertaining to the identity of members of society in Turkey and in the region in general are naturally reflected in cinema as well, and the debut movies of these three directors were analyzed from this perspective during the discussion. Alper's film, “Autumn,” tells the story of a political prisoner who returns to his hometown in the Black Sea region after being released from prison after 10 years for medical reasons. A person who was sent to jail because of his ideas about socialism, the main character meets a Georgian prostitute who fled to Turkey in order to make money after the collapse of Soviet Union. Alper connects his enthusiasm for filmmaking with being born in a country like Turkey. “I wanted to change certain things in the country, and I was always interested in politics,” he says, adding that he wanted to offer a new perspective through cinema in the very beginning and eventually this aim transformed into a desire to just produce movies for the sake of cinema.
In a similar vein, Karabey, who shot 10 documentaries prior to his first fictional work, “My Marlon and Brando,” also says, like Alper, he chose cinema to portray his stance in the world. His film also has a documentary-like aspect since it is based on a real-life story. The main character, Ayça, is in love with a Kurdish actor, but because of the US incursion into Iraq, the two lovers cannot see each other. For this reason, Ayça decides to embark on a road trip to see her boyfriend in northern Iraq. Asked why, as a documentarist, he decided to make a movie, he explains that over the years he thought that documentaries reflected the objective reality of life. “I believe that an important segment of this society is not portrayed in our cinema or on TV. I thought that if we show something objectively, the audience cannot be indifferent. But then I realized that people were not getting what I wanted them to understand from these documentaries and came to the realization that there cannot be any objectivity in this,” he explains.
Temelkuran, on the other hand, explains that he did not have a political motive at the beginning, but still his movie “Made in Europe,” which tells the stories of three groups of Turkish immigrants living in various parts of the continent on the night when the US military invades Afghanistan, can be considered political in many ways. He attributes this to the natural political responsibility of a Turkish citizen, his upbringing in his family and his conscience in general.
