Can’t comment too much on other Turkish directors but Ceylan’s Climates is brilliant. Great exploration of a marriage with some lovely stylistic touches.
Oh Turkey is a cinema hotspot now. On auteurs there’s the 1960s classic Dry Summer thanks to Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, and after him the left winger Yilmaz Guney was an important director; he was imprisoned and gave exact instructions from there on filiming. I would recommend Hope and Yol by him- the latter as an absent co-director-, and would like to see Turgul’s The Bandit. Along with Ceylan, in recent years there’s also been Journey to the Sun (by the female Yesim Ustaoglu) about 2 young guys with opposing political beliefs who end up on the road together when the more Conservative one falls foul of the authorities who mistake him for a Kurdish rebel. Her 2003 film Waiting for the Clouds is on auteurs but i can’t see it as it’s not available for UK viewers. I liked Times and Winds too. Yumurta, by Kaplanoglu, is an excellent quiet understated film about a man returning from the city to his mother’’s village after her death who befriends the young owman who’d been looking after her.
I think it’s time film critics and opinion formers turned their sights more to relatively neglected countries like Turkey, which are often surpassing what the biggies have to offer
a fine thread,you should all check out Zeki Okten’s The Herd!!!!magnificent epic family drama,and a great lead performance..
what’s great about old Turkish cinema is that they were all like a team,before the political comfuzio came out and smashed the peaceful unity,thus Guney had to protest…jail was always one step ahead of him,unfortunately…i must see Yol,have you seen The Wall?great stuff there too..
am pretty sure the dude of Dry Summer also made some corny low budget films later in his career,hehe.Turkish b-movies,hell yeah!
does Fatih Akin count in?
Kenji,obscure countries will never get the big publicity they deserve unless they become a small trend for a short period of time,as it always happens,it happened with China,Iran,Brazil,maybe now they’ll turn to India?and surprisingly enough,it always comes from North America,mainly U.S.A….the trend i mean…
Nuri Bilge Ceylan is the man…Faith akin…head on was ok but the latest one is extremely dissapointing…but three monkees is a masterpiece
3 monkeys is genius.
Best use of digital cinematography i think i have seen.
Reha Erdem’s last film “My Only Sunshine” is very good too. Use of music and sound is very interesting.
Ceylan with his crafty camera and Akin with cultural clash issues are the obvious ones.
Another director to look for right now is Zeki Demirkubuz. His hardcore drama “Masumiyet” and the sequel “Kader” are
remarkable.
Mikel, are you referring to Edge of Heaven as Fatih Akin’s “extremely disappointing” last film? I completely disagree. One of the best films I saw last year and definitely better than Head On. Is he considered Turkish or German or Turkish-German? I think he was born in Germany (but of Turkish ancestry obviously).
Midnight Express? (har har)
“Is he considered Turkish or German or Turkish-German? I think he was born in Germany (but of Turkish ancestry obviously).”
I think German of Turkish descent is generally phrased as “German Turk.”
Edge of Heaven
Ari, your most welcome to disagree..i think edge of heaven was dissapointing..its all subjective any way. Head on was and is far better for me..it’s in your face, kinetic scenes…instead of the unbeleivable coincidences of edge of heaven…but Nuri Bilge is the main master for me…
Give a try to Zeki Demirkubuz’s “Kader”. It is one of my favorites in terms of storytelling and dialogs between the main characters “Bekir” and “Uğur”.
sights more to relatively neglected countries like Turkey, which are often surpassing what the biggies have to offer
In what way are neglected countries …… surpassing what the biggies have to offer?
“In what way are neglected countries …… surpassing what the biggies have to offer?”
commercialism,lists,academic critics,Western dominance,distribution and the public’s fair with certain countries and/or languages,i’ll state these are factors in which “neglected” countries are being called neglected.
in other words,there shouldn’t be neglected countries at all,there should only exist Cinema and nothing else.
p.s.: Casey’s attempt of mocking this thread by saying Midnight Express says it all,even if it’s some months back.
I can say that Turkish Cinema has very older history more than most people guess. And the most shinning period for Turkish movies is 70s… At that times there were great directors such as: Metin Erksan, Yılmaz Güney, Gani Müjde etc…
After a poor period because of the military coup, Turkish cinema started to be succesful again. At last times we can see Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Fatih Akın, Ferzan Özpetek etc. started to win very important international prizes…
Here is my best Turkish movies:
1) Susuz Yaz (1964)
2) Sevmek Zamanı (1965)
3) Tosun Paşa (1976)
4) Eşkiya (1996)
5) Yol (1982)
6) Sürü (1979)
7) Güle Güle (2000)
8) Üç Maymun (2008)
9) Uzak (2002)
10) Duvara Karşı (2004)
If you liked Metin Erksan’s A DRY SUMMER then you must watch SEVMEK ZAMANI (TIME TO LOVE), an incredible film that is the match of any of the great european auteurs of the ’60s. Erksan made art films, melodramas, popular films, and even a remake of THE EXORCIST (called SEYTAN). There is an excellent new documentary called THE PASSION OF METIN ERKSAN that tries to make the case that he is the greatest of all Turkish directors and does so fairly convincingly, though as a westerner it is hard to make a judgment with so few of his films available for viewing outside of Turkey…
For Yilmaz Guney fans I’d highly recommend AC KURTLAR (THE HUNGRY WOLVES), which he directs and stars in. It is an Anatolian spaghetti western set in the winter in Eastern Turkey, a grey+white film filled with snow, snow snow; bleak and cold…
For those interested in investigating Zeki Demirkubus, I’d suggest starting with UCUNCU SAYFA (PAGE THREE), which is a fascinating NEO-NOIR in which the FEMME FATALE wears a headscarf…
I’d also highly recommend Cagan Irmak’s BABAM VE OGLUM (MY FATHER AND MY SON), which is one of the few Turkish films that is both an art film and a popular film.
To see an entirely different side of old Turkish cinema check out ONAR FILMS: in the ’70s Turkey had a low budget, down right wacko fantastic sinema scene in which directors used a Turkish sensibility to totally transmogrify popular films of the west, making their own versions of star wars, star trek, drakula, james bond, tarzan, along with their own bizarre creations. In my favorite, UC DEV ADAM, Captain America teams up with Mexican masked wrestler Santo to fight the evil Spiderman.
John M.
I lucked upon “Times and Winds”, by Reha Erdem, at Blockbuster. It was a nice. Simple, economical, the diagetic sound played a big role.
Is there a Turkish cinema movement? Nuri Bilge Ceylan is rad, are there any up-and-comers to check out?