Turkish cinema at the close of the 20th century is once again vital and auspicious, just as it was a few decades ago. Of course, comparisons shouldn't be made with the great era of the sixties and seventies, when an entire country swore by the three hundred features that were produced each year, faithfully flocking to the theaters to watch them. Since then, we have suffered the huge technological attack of American cinema, the invasion of television, video and cable, to the point where, in the early nineties, Yeilcam, Turkey's Hollywood, was pronounced dead. The annual production was down to about a dozen films, most of which never even made it to the screen. It is curious how, within the same decade, the rise came so close to the heels of the fall.
There were memorable films. Not masterpieces, but great popular successes, that gave the signal for this renaissance. These were films by both veterans and very young directors, that brought hundreds of thousands of filmgoers to the theaters. The growing interest of the public for what it considered "its own" films, can probably also be attributed to the rise of a certain popular culture, directly connected to television. Yet, among the young filmmakers, there are those who are more discreet, more personal, who are looking more for a personal means of expression rather than popular success. In his film Innocence, Zeki Demirkubuz portrays the eternal losers who live against the sordid backdrop of the big cities. Nuri Bilge Ceylan impressed with his film The Small Town, a hymn to nature and life in the country, which was screened at last year's Thessaloniki Festival, while Dervi‰ Zaim made the modest film Sommersault in a Coffin on a shoestring budget, winning respect as well as numerous awards at film festivals, including Thessaloniki (1997).
Then there are the Turks abroad, and especially in Germany, who recently gave us interesting films on the condition of being lost between two cultures: The Wound, Quick and Painless, Dealers, while KutluI Ataman made Lola and Billy the Kid, whose hero is a Turkish homosexual living in Berlin. Last, but not least, Ferzan Ozpetek, who has spent the last twenty years in Italy and who, after the deserved success of Hamam, continues his work in European co-productions with Harem Suare.
This year, the surprises continue. The new feature by Zeki Demirkubuz, The Third Page, once again portrays the world of those unfortunates whose sad stories only take up a few lines on page three of the papers. The second film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, The Boredom of May, is a meditation on the relation between art and life. An unequivocally political film, Journey to the Sun, was directed by Yesim Ustaoglu, a woman filmmaker who started off in short films and documentaries. Ustaoglu touches upon a more serious and more urgent problem: the fact that the political reality has made relations between Turks and Kurds more and more difficult, even on a personal level...