Content area
Full text
FILM Six Turkish Filmmakers, by Laurence Raw. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2017. 224 pages. $79.95 cloth.
Reviewed by Murat Akser
Upon receiving best director award at Cannes Festival for his Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys) in 2008, a somber Nuri Bilge Ceylan dedicated the award to his "lonely and beautiful country."1 Since then, Ceylan went on to win Palme d'Or for his Kış Uykusu (Winter Sleep) in 2014, becoming the first Turkish film director do so. (In 1982, Yılmaz Güney's Yol had shared this award with Costa-Gavras's Missing.) Ceylan and his contemporary, Semih Kaplanoğlu, are well known among film festival circuits within and outside the Middle East. They are considered transnational auteurs who can transcend the cultural specificity of Turkey and appeal to the human condition anywhere. Yet there are around 8,000 feature films produced within the last 50 years and hundreds of film directors actively making films in Turkey, very few of whose names are known outside their home country. Laurence Raw's Six Turkish Filmmakers is an important step in filling that gap. In addition to Kaplanoğlu and Ceylan, he includes Derviş Zaim (originally from Cyprus), Zeki Demirkubuz, Tolga Örnek, and Çağan Irmak.
A dedicated and self-taught expert, Laurence Raw has long been known in Turkish studies circles as a scholar who has studied popular culture in Turkey, ranging from humor to literature, for over 20 years. In this book, Raw offers a new and detailed study of Turkish cinema that builds upon his previous works. Six Turkish Filmmakers is an in-depth contemplation of his personal life, as well as...