New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2009

As with the iconography of exilic and diasporic cinema generally, the TurkishGerman cinema of the 1970s and 1980s featured images of captivity and claustrophobic spaces. More recently, in tandem with a shift away from the tendency to represent the migrant as victim, this cinema has portrayed its protagonists as on the move, either within urban environments or in transit between Turkey and Germany. Focusing primarily on this last category of film, the article will examine the significance attaching to such transnational journeys. In some cases they serve mainly as a means of narrative closure in the form of enforced (or even self-imposed) deportation; while in genuine road movies the journey from Turkey to Germany may be represented in miserabilist terms as one of pain and despair or more positively as one of quest and self-assertion. In Fatih Akin's films, particularly In July, Head-On and The Edge of Heaven, where the protagonists journey in the reverse direction (from Germany to Turkey), transnational travel entails a quest either for redemption or for new forms of identity.

The emergence of transnational cinemas has effected a shift in the existing paradigm of national/cultural identity. Critical work produced by writers such as Deniz Gktrk, Mahmut Mutman and Asuman Suner points to the possibilities that these films, made for the most part by directors with hyphenated identity, may offer. However, the popular discourse of newspapers and magazines appears to follow an entirely different path. Roland Barthes once said: Those who do not read a text twice are destined to read it everywhere. This essay seeks to observe how popular media discourse writes itself into the star director Fatih Akn, thus making him a symptom of its ideological structure.

Although narrative entertainment film is the dominant mode of representation for portrayals of the experience of migration, this essay focuses on the works of film-makers who have worked in an experimental mode: Aye Polat, Neco elik, Kutlu Ataman, the Kanak-TV productions and Aysun Bademsoy. These film-makers produce work largely out of the experience of migration between Germany and Turkey. They incorporate lyrical poetic styles, explore expanded cinematic and installation work, undertake engage interventionist projects and provide new documents of vibrant cultural complexity.

This article explores the critical reassessment of one particularly prevalent ethnic stereotype in TurkishGerman cinema: the stereotype of the oppressive Turkish partriarch. Comparing Yasemin (1988), a much-cited, early coming-of-age film made by German film-maker Hark Bohm, with three recent features made by young TurkishGerman film-makers Slbiye Gnar's Karamuk (2002), Ayse Polat's Tour Abroad and Zli Aladag's controversial Rage (2006) it examines fatherdaughter and fatherson relationships and traces how these films reaffirm or invert the clichd image of the domineering Turkish father who is out of touch with German majority culture. Drawing on Kobena Mercer's concept of the dialogic imagination, the article investigates whether these cinematic representations of the vilified or idealized father promote social change through a multiplication of critical dialogues or whether they simply reiterate dominant discourses of domination (Mercer 2003).

This article aims to discuss different modes of remembering in new wave Turkish cinema with a specific focus on the question of the representation of non-Muslim minorities in Turkey. It argues that in new popular films, questions of history and politics are often downplayed and the past is remembered merely in a nostalgic mode, whereas in new political films, subjective remembrance of the past is strongly interconnected with questions of history and politics. To this end, it examines two recent films as examples to the categories of new popular cinema and new political cinema: Serdar Akar's Dar Alanda Ksa Paslamalar/Offside (2000) and Yeim Ustaolu's Bulutlar Beklerken/Waiting for the Clouds (2003). Despite their differences, Offside and Waiting for the Clouds share a new perspective on the question of Turkey's traumatic past with regard to its non-Muslim minorities. Both films resonate with a sense of loss and a concomitant silence. Instead of offering an unequivocal picture of the past, both films direct attention to absences, gaps and silences in the stories. Finally, offering subjective memory accounts, they both provide alternative narratives to official historiography and nationalist discourses.

Cinema and other cultural forms reflect political tensions and conflicts, which provide the backdrop for Turkey's accession to the European Union (EU). This article examines contemporary cinematic reflections upon a distant past characterized by religious imperialism, a recent past characterized by secular nationalism, and the conflict between the past and present socio-cultural and political transformations. To do so, It will first outline the transition from popular Turkish cinema to the new cinema of Turkey. Focusing on three recent films, it will, on the one hand, trace the resurgence of nationalism and, on the other hand, the impact of globalization and post-nationalism. Finally, it will critically examine the concept of Turkish cinema and propose an alternative framework which reflects the multitude of voices and viewpoints in the contemporary cinema of Turkey.