#012 - Atıf Yılmaz: The Great Journeyman of Turkish Cinema

This week, Outskirts Film Podcast ventures into the catalogue of one of Turkey’s most prolific filmmakers, Atıf Yılmaz. A journeyman filmmaker to the bone, Yılmaz made more than a hundred films, ranging from melodramas and historical epics to musicals and psychological character studies. Through a selection of films that exemplify different periods and trends within his five-decade-long career, we only scratch the surface of his convoluted filmography, with numerous other films remaining to be discovered.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Welcome to the Outskirts Film Podcast. I'm Euku, and today I'm joined by my co-hosts. Hi, I'm Alam Zuler.

SPEAKER_04 0:23

Christopher. Always try.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

As you have probably guessed from these unfamiliar words, today's episode is about a Turkish filmmaker. The filmmaker we'll be discussing is an exceptionally prolific one. But again, when it comes to quantity, Turkish cinema has no shortage of directors who made hundreds of films during the golden age of the industry, officially known as Yeshilcham. Yet only a few, and I truly mean when I say few, managed to create enduring works across such a wide range of genres, including melodramas, musical comedies, social dramas, historical epics, folk tales, and psychological character studies. So without further ado, let us dive into the cinema of Attaf Ilmaz. Like many of his contemporaries, Attaf Ilmaz was a filmmaker constantly working under financial constraints and within the social cultural expectations of Turkish audiences. While juggling Odyssey friendly historical adventure flicks and soapy melodramas influenced by Egyptian cinema, he nevertheless tried from the very beginning of his career in 1951 to build a distinct authorist voice. But he was mostly known for his collaborative approach, particularly in his in his screenwriting partnership with major figures of Turkish literature, as well as for his creative collaboration with actors, musicians, painters, designers whose work is j was generously featured in his films. Not to mention his contribution to the careers of filmmakers such as Hali Trefi and Zeke Okten, who worked as assistants under his wing. With a body of work as large as Ilma's, it's difficult to rely on simple categorizations. But still, if we use broader brush strokes, we can say that his work throughout the 60s and 70s was marked by a formal and aesthetic ambition to give Turkish cinema a more localized and to a certain extent a nationalized identity. Through his films, he sought to resist, rather modestly, the non-critical appropriation of Western cinematic codes. Although some would argue that his greatest masterpiece belongs to the 70s, it was in the eighties that his cinema became more refined, more inward-looking, and to a certain extent more feminine. Given our limited time and the scarcity of subtitles for many of his films, our viewing experience this week remains far from encompassing the entirety of his filmography. Still, considering this mateshift periodization across genres and decades, I would like to begin our discussion by asking which vein of Wilma's artistic practice you found most interesting.

SPEAKER_05 3:16

I guess for me, there's like two particular uh moments that I think seem very interesting, which are like the I guess like the mid-60s and then like the late 80s, which seem to be totally different filmmakers. I got uh and I also it's like a little bit my fault because I kind of miss like some of the important 70s films perhaps. So I jumped from this kind of like very popular, kind of like uh populist as well, like kind of comedy filmmaker with some like genre elements. I can associate with a lot of like um popular cinema from like Latin America and other parts of like Eastern Europe. Uh like that that period to me is perhaps like the one I I vibe with the most. In Latin America, we got a lot of like you know, like imports of like uh Turkish uh telenovelas or like uh melodramas. And I see a lot of that in those 80s films, like this very ornate, like colorful, hyper stylized, but also like the acting register, like very exalted. Like those things are kind of there. If there's one consistent aspect that I think I perhaps sought throughout, that we can get into it, it's perhaps just the figure of like outsiders and outcasts seem to be like a recurring theme. Uh but again, I'm speaking just for a very, very limited sample. So Gilma's uh specialists might just like be frowning right now.

SPEAKER_04 4:21

My answer to your question is basically everything. I mean, there's basically any direction I could go inside this filmography and discover more. You know, there's sort of intimations just from looking at the films that are subtitled that I didn't see that suggest the whole other universe of this filmmaker that I didn't experience what whatsoever. The 160s film I did see as Alonso said was like completely different from anything else that we've seen. I can guess that probably the other films from that decade have a lot in common with that. At the same time, you know, the 90s wasn't a period that I touched, and I know that there's a lot of interesting changes there as well.

SPEAKER_03 4:59

I think while I was watching these films, my the co the question that kept like bugging me was like, do Alonso and Christopher really enjoy these films, or do they like look at these films as this like curios or this historical artifacts that are meaningful or like valuable from a certain point of view? And uh maybe this is also a question that is linked to the the question of identity, because obviously these films are made to reflect or to appeal to a certain identity. And uh I I kept wondering like, do these films really like cross or cross the borders or like uh achieve a certain universality, or do they really need to?

SPEAKER_04 5:45

I wouldn't use the word kind of universal universality. I think you know these films are like simultaneously very specific, and I think a lot of the shabby subtitles that we had to suffer with let down the films in a lot of ways. Um but but also you know they they they look and feel like a lot of films that from other countries. Like I commented that a lot of these films to me seemed kind of Latin American in some character and in some moments, and then of course there are these other things, there are these other elements that I can see are kind of distinctly Turkish, but the the actual broader context, like the the background against which I could like set these films and try and you know make some kind of timeline, nothing. Really nothing. I mean, if you if I try to look at you know a film like Oh Beautiful Istanbul, uh up to um even the wretched ones, the film you made with Ilmas Goune or the girl with the red scarf, you know, which is basically made in a 10-year period. I mean, I have no I don't understand why those films are so different, you know, being made in such a short period of time, and I don't know anything about the background between them. Nothing. So it's a bit sort of like floating, floating free in that sense.

SPEAKER_05 7:11

Chris mentioned Latin American element. Um then I eventually saw like uh I think the film we were referring to is uh the saga of Ali of a Kissin. Actually, I think I think you're right, actually. We can get into that. What's my favorite film I saw? I think part of that is because it feels very much to like something that will be produced like in cinematography Calderon in 1957 as well. Like the same kind of like just general like a narrative itself, like this like folk figure, um this like semi-industrialized but also kind of like very like old school kind of environment, and a lot of like um this like screen time is just like devoted to this like very local traditions and expressions per se, of like taking some genre signifiers with like popular cinema uh from mainly like Hollywood, but also in this case you were mentioning like Egyptian cinema, and seeing that like reframed to like a local audience. Uh I guess that's like the perhaps the sense of universality I can I can get from them. Uh but I was engaged just by virtue of like playing with those like uh again, like the mannerisms and like the general structures are independent of context to be able to be enjoyed. But naturally you're losing a lot of what I assume is a lot of like the local humor, a lot of like the nuance of the dialogue that is perhaps like more localized. But at least from my experience, just like on textual level and like narratives themselves, uh, I feel like they're archetypical. So in that sense, they kind of work for me, regardless of not really knowing uh what exactly they're being based on, or the specifics of like the culture itself. So in that sense, I think the kind of film they are, and like that populist aspect of uh something that I can imagine perfectly being shown as it happens in Latin America with Mexican films, being shown like on like open television, like Sundays at 6 p.m. The movie of like older generation just says, Oh yeah, I remember this film, and it's just like playing on the background while people are just like doing something else. That element I think also helps kind of engaging with these films to me.

SPEAKER_04 8:52

Actually, that's interesting that you mentioned that because sometimes on this podcast, even with filmmakers that I love or I come to love, it can be kind of like homework watching these films, you know, especially if you watch 8 on 9 by a single director, and if the films are very abrasive as well. In this case, I mean there was just at some point when I was watching some of the films from the 80s, I was just like, this is such an easy watch, you know. This is like, you know, I there's things going on, there's levels of tension and so on, but it's like it's really designed for like an eat to be an easy watch. You know, there's there's not a lot, like there's there aren't a lot of barriers between you and the drama, and there's also, and maybe this is why I also make this association with with Latin America, is that there's not a lot of filter between like you and the drama, like it's so um like it's so willing to like go there all the time, and there's like there's not a lot of kind of things that are too untasteful to touch, too distasteful to touch. It's like no, we're gonna go there like for the sake of the story, we're gonna like change time, we're gonna jump forward, we're gonna do this, there's gonna be a voice over here, there's gonna be this, that so like on one hand you get this kind of like overplenty of um like formal craziness, and on the other hand, it's like totally easy watching, you know, for the most part.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

All these like accents are faked by um not necessarily the actor playing the person, they these are dub characters. So I think there's also this level of artificiality, like especially in the saga of Aliy of Keshin. And to add something about the easiness of the films, I think that's where uh the local context uh comes into play because some usually uh these are like adaptations of a like a Turkish uh novel or a Turkish uh legend, and then you add a or div discover a different layer of analysis or dialogue between the original text and the filmic text. And I think that's mostly true for Ataf Ilma's films because he uh often sought out to like collaborate with other other writers, and often his his films are adaptations or or comments or or maybe prolongations of existing material. So that's a different level, I think.

SPEAKER_04 12:21

One thing I I do sometimes is I open the filmography on letterboxed and I sort by release date. And then I scroll and I can just see you can just see the different kinds of posters for different eras, almost like marking the different shades of a filmography. And in his case, um it's just so different, like just that visual element, you know. Like at the start, it's sort of almost like these Soviet-style posters, so very kind of old-fashioned and heroic, also kind of like Mexican, you know, like uh whatever. And then at some point becomes a bit more sort of very populistic. Like I know he made a few films with Janet Orkin, uh, and those are kind of these yeah, ridiculous 1970s posters of topless men, you know, and big block characters. Uh, and then it's like the 70s, and suddenly it's these arty, sort of tasteful posters and whatever. And then finally it gets to the 80s, and it's like basically these kind of like soapy telenovellas, lots of women's faces, and so I don't think these this is like a chronological progression.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

That's the thing, because it's like simultaneous branches that open up at the same time. Because when you see like Oh Beautiful Istanbul is also in the 60s, and you would also find these like heroic uh films at the same period. So it's basically like doing all of them simultaneously. Uh but speaking of the posters, I think some of the posters that feature that are featured on letterbucks are added there by the users. So I think uh the one that is like uh for the girl with the red scarf, I that's not the official poster, obviously. That that some somebody just like designed that and that's or Ach Belinda, uh my love. Um what is the other? I I can't that's the problem. I know of the Turkish titles, uh, but uh not the English ones. And many of them are not like the original version, so I would say like um like have to say Asieh or Belinda, all these posters are just fake, um, like at least like newly designed, maybe for restorations, uh, but I would say like to me the most coherent or like cont thematically coherent period period is the 80s because we you have all these like a films that he made with Muj Dear and Hale Sorghazi that um that is uh around women. So there's a clear thematic concern that he he wants to like pursue and develop, and that's the only period that makes sense in his films, I think. And he goes way further in the 90s with Night Angel and Our Children.

SPEAKER_04 15:17

No, I mean you're you're right, like I was just looking at random um that in 1975 he made both uh The Poor or The Wretched Ones, so it's like multiple titles, the film with Yilmaz Gunet, which is this like very pathos-filled neorealist what's it? Uh, and in the same year he made this film called Dele Yusuf with Junit Arkin, where Junit Arkin is like topless in the poster, like punching someone and has like a shoebox shoebox physique. Uh, and he's it's like about like a local hero who rises up against a warlord and so on and so on. So it's like in the same year, just sort of randomly flipping between these two uh two poles of cinema.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

He um ambitiously tried to find a form that would relate the the aesthetic qualities of these um this period, like especially like how can I achieve the two-dimensional depiction of these more miniature-like figures through cinematic means. Not necessarily these films obviously reflect truly these uh um ambitions, but I think you can still find like in his writings or in his uh interviews he gave during these periods that he wanted to especially through this historical tales, want to achieve this. And also the the film we mentioned about Keshana Ali Destan, the saga of Keshan of Ali, also um uh is a condensation of the idea of myth, the legend, because usually the legend is something uh that depicts hero heroes, but uh uh even though this uh piece is an adaptation of uh theatre play that is also an the first epic pla epic theatre play in uh tur in the history of Turkish theatre, there's the still I the the the the idea that that kind of deconstructs the the figure of the hero. And I think to a to a certain extent from what I read this idea of deconstruction of the hero or the hero that is not necessarily fully full-fledged heroic is also present in his other historical adventurous films.

SPEAKER_05 17:36

Yeah, just looking at the filmography again, like uh what I thought about was when we were doing trying to establish some sort of logic to Lucio Fulci's like uh filmography, where we're kind of like, oh, this is when uh the Fulci we we know and love started, and then you immediately see like there's some like commedia italiana low routing just throwing in there. And it's kind of like this like kind of futile endeavor. If you put like a gun to my head, I couldn't really describe like what what is uh Gilma's like style, which also kind of makes the question to me of like just seeing like the most popular ones on letterbooks, because uh uh just like looking at the reviews as well, they're mostly from like seems to be like Turkish stenophiles. I was wondering like how were those films also kind of like relating to the viewing practices of the context? Like, are the most popular ones the most like legendary ones? Because I've seen that sometimes, particularly in platforms like letterbooks, you see like this like uh disconnect between what's popular in uh like the as uh internet space and what was actually the repercussion actually real life. Because I well in the Santo episode I saw that as uh a lot with a lot of like Santo films that were very, very popular in Mexico, haven't really gotten to like other spaces because again, like lack of subtitles or like other technicalities.

SPEAKER_03 18:42

I think definitely the films from 60s and 70s, because it was also the golden age of cinema. So the the social melodramas that is also have the rural aspect. Um that I think from the films that we haven't seen, um only probably Ali of Keshan would enter that category. His most like well-known and well-appreciated film was obviously The Girl with the Red Scarf, but that's to uh let's say a late that that can be considered as a late period film in terms of his filmography, right? Because it's in the 70s, 77 or something like that. So um I would say I think that part we haven't seen, but to from what I observe, um the 80 films, the woman films, are being rediscovered and reappreciated more by the contemporary cinophilia than they have been uh um to compared to the period when they have been released. Because it was also the the decline of cinema. There was already the television, there was already the sex film. So even if people were watching it, these films, they're not watching, they weren't watching for the the the sake of art, they were probably watching for the sexuality.

SPEAKER_04 19:57

Well also also I think those films are just kind of more ready-made for an audience of cinephiles now, and you know that's that's also why, you know, despite this guy having a mammoth filmography and having all these different aspects to his filmography, um, it's hard not to get the sense, at least for me, that that period was the one where he was the most himself in some way, but that also could just be an illusion. They are kind of like popular melodramatic films, but they have these kind of eccentric interests. Um, and for example, in um My Dreams, My Love and You, which is not a film I really liked, uh, maybe because it's I I just felt like it was a little bit like watching a filmmaker who is too much out of the cage, you know, because because he's making all these cinephile gestures that I found kind of annoying in that film, you know, that it's set in the context of cinema and you see projections and the what is living, what is real, the iconography of a star, blah blah blah, you know. So you feel like in that that moment is you know almost like the film he always wanted to make. Derogatory. Yes, derogatory. Exactly. But but then you know, you then you just think like, well, that totally makes sense why these films would be the ones that people would be discovering now because they're so open to those kinds of readings, you know.

SPEAKER_03 21:19

For example, when I see the A Lonely Woman, I feel like it's so embedded to do like a the sexual awakening or the like the the the idea of woman discovering herself, this kind of trend. So to me that film is very timely resonant. So when I watch that film from today's perspective, I watch it more as like a historical artifact, but then I watch Legend of Keshann Ali. That's a film that definitely like transcends the period because it's it talks about political corruption, it talks about mythmaking, it talks about the difference between uh rural areas and cities. So There's also a kind of paradoxical aspect to that as well. Or or the the girl with the red scarf. Like this it's basically the story of a woman who's like torn torn between two men. Like if you would strip to its bare bones, it's this story, and you can you can still feel its appeal from when you when you ignore the the whole I like this turk this the background of the 70s. I think he's more himself because he was he can be more playful with the textuality, like he can be more hypertextual, but also um maybe self-referential, especially in his musical comedies, like Ach Belinda is definitely uh I mean it's a gimmicky thing, but it's also creates an inner narrative within the narrative.

SPEAKER_05 22:48

From the outset, makes sense to me. Like those films have even started like are the ones most likely to close over with perhaps like some aspect of Western Cinephilia, because I think as Chris was alluding to, like they have this kind of like cinephile catnip of like uh self-reference referentiality, are like perhaps conceptually more like uh up there in terms of like either uh My Dreams, My Love and You and also like Avalinda. They're kind of like there to be like uh to be done some sort of like textual analysis in relation to like the like a female emancipation and all these kind of things, which I'm not saying in like a cynical way. Those kind of like readings are perhaps more available to those films, which are again like more universal, or kind of like you can see them like uh particularly after like second-wave feminism in the 70s, like kind of within that realm of like uh filmic analysis. So it kind of makes sense to me also like to those I don't know again, like the register is also perhaps more like a little bit more artsy, a little bit more like uh tasteful. If you wanted to sell to someone like a retrospective of Gilma authorist Gilmas, these were probably the films you would like show.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

Because they are limited or like um made because of certain restrictions or expectations, he has to like find he has to like find ways to circumvent them. So it becomes more inventive to a certain extent, maybe. I mean, maybe we can talk we can say that it was more dominated by the star star system. So often audiences would want to like watch a particular actor and actress and they would have like a very tight schedules, um, so they have to like navigate those schedules, and also production companies were uh quite limited in what they could offer to audiences because um the distribution networks obviously had some certain expectations from um the production companies, so the filmmakers weren't necessarily uh free in their artistic choices. So that's why I think like authorist readings uh during this period uh don't really work, because you have to play the game of the of the market, what they want for uh from you. So for example, in this context, to me, All Beautiful Istanbul is feels such a like a weird film because it I don't I don't understand. I can't situate that film within the Yeshilcham aesthetics nor formal nor narrative concerns because usually you would have like films where I think like some very basic formulas of melodramas in that film is taken to a different levels about like the the conflict between the traditional Turkish music and the Western influences. So to me, this is quite an like a UFO in that in that period. But you would also, I think, when you read a bit of his filmography, uh filmography and his biography, I think they would also experiment, and sometimes they those experiments would fail.

SPEAKER_05 25:45

Yeah, I think you can definitely tell that's the case with the saga of uh Aliyev Kishan, having just discovered Ikrit Hakan in in this film. I can imagine this being like a kind of a sub usual subgenre of films. Again, this is like very handsome, like mustached like Turkish hardrop, being like this is the race in the film exists. Just like the fact that this kind of journeyman filmmakers like have these like very specific like uh relationships to like I don't I don't know like as you were saying, like inspiration for novels, or like just the industry itself is in this kind of like voracious environment, consuming and repurposing like every other element that kind of makes them more interesting than they should be. At least that was my experience uh looking at this film, particularly like in the more like Western style elements where this is like the showdown between the characters. You have this like random shot that was from like below the characters, and you see like the the like facades in this kind of like shadow play. I'm like, what is happening in this film? It was like sort of like a 1920s like German film or something, going back to like the Latin American element of this, like I don't know, like like Kraftsmen like filmmakers with a with a lot perhaps like not really a lot of like filmic ambition in a traditional sense, but also like just by virtue of osmosis of being and all this like correlation, like uh popular signifiers in popular cinemas, almost by accident perhaps at times, just creating this like per like idiosyncratic films. Because again, this is a film, the Sekal Fali of Kishan, which I don't think like in terms of genre, I can really pinpoint to just one thing.

SPEAKER_04 27:09

Later, like these like the the films that he made, these more kind of like metatextual elements that we were talking about, these more consciously cinophile elements, uh even though those films are kind of still kind of popular melodramas, they're much more obvious, they're much more kind of raised to the level of text in those films. Whereas here, even though this is a film that is like very um conscious of what it's doing, very purposeful, um, very well constructed in a kind of classical sense, you know, for like just to take an example, like the the kind of ambiguity around this folk hero, particularly as it comes as bears fruit in the end, you know, the questions of like killing this person, not killing this person, courage, the image facing in the crowd, and so on and so on. There's clearly an interest from Yilma's in those things. That's clearly part of the film, but it's not quite text, you know. The film is still basically a genre film. Um, and that's also, I mean, this is that's what I love about popular cinema from this era. Like you can still have those things, you can still bask in those kind of metatextual elements, but they're not quite metatextual, you know, they're just like still embedded in the film, then they're not so self-conscious, and the film is like too busy being 10 different things at once to you know really focus on being that serious, but that element is in there.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

I mean, maybe maybe if maybe I'm be reading it too much, because I can still feel feel that in Aqus al Istanbul or beautiful Istanbul, even though these films are belong to like totally different reg registers, like because when you see Hashmed as a character, he has this like a idealized heroic vibe in him, right? Because he he's also comes from an aristocratic background, his family comes from the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, he really he so he's this like a uh almost fatherly figure to this young girl who comes from the village, but then he has bad habits. So he bad habits, he drinks, he's irresponsible, and he in a way, through the through the exposition of this his character, not necessarily through text, makes you understand that he's not the hero that you want him to be. He's just like a flawed as as the as this young girl who steals her money. And maybe that's why I I like this his this exploration better than his exploration of woman in some films, less at least in Lonely Woman. These are clearly films that uh comes from a concept or an idea that he imposes on his characters and you feel that. This is not like they don't come from the character inside of the character, but more m more like imposed. Okay, now I'm going to explore the condition of a divorced young divorced woman and how she she will behave around a young man.

SPEAKER_05 30:13

Yeah, I think you can definitely see like uh at least you know a beautiful Islam, like I don't know if this stars because again, like there's like just like a like gigantic like blind spots all around. But I can see that film perhaps that's I mean this more like a moral gray grey grey area, like even like in like a noirish sense at times when I was seeing like a film I was thinking about. It's like this this like const constant dialogue with the idea of morality, and like the like I think at this point it's like beyond heroism, and just like how these characters deal with that in the specificity of their context and how that kind of be like explored in like the different ways aesthetically as well.

SPEAKER_03 31:21

I have a question because I'm I'm I'm also mo more fascinated by like uh the saga of K uh uh Ali of Keshan than for example My Girl with the Red Scarf. So I mean this is the tradition of the pod of like not liking his most like renowned film, obviously, but what did you think of My Girl with the Red Scarf? Because it's definitely like the film, the the most the Artefield Must film, the greatest Artifield Must film of all time, considered by most of the people.

SPEAKER_04 31:57

I was afraid going into it that it would be horribly tasteful. But I don't know, maybe maybe it's also just a question of um sensibility because I mean I found this film really fascinating for a lot of reasons and in a way almost like this sort of middle ground between the two sort of uh if we can reduce it in that way, like the two spheres that we've been talking about, um like roughly the lowbrow and the highbrow. Um, because you know, for half of this film, it's a very kind of sensitive melodrama about a woman being fucked over horribly by a man in ways that are like continually shocking for a male drama, and then also it's just this kind of like borderline lowbrow comedy at times, you know, particularly in the early scenes when he's seducing her and he's like at one point he uses his truck to chase her as a way to like get her to fuck him basically.

SPEAKER_03 32:57

Come on, they they fuck after they get married, please.

SPEAKER_04 33:01

Of course, of course, sorry, sorry, how dare I? There's this tension in that film, almost like you know, he's not totally surrendered to a sort of more kind of balanced tastefulness. It's it's there's still this kind of wildness to the film in those early early parts, and he's trying to find different ways to show you know the act of seduction, almost like it's like a Raul Walsh film at some point, you know, like trying to express affection through brutality or something like that. The protagonist kind of suffering because of this terrible man that she was in love with, a very handsome man, obviously, and she falls in love with this new guy who's kind of nice but boring, and that that's the tension of the film. But but I mean it has these um pleasures that only melodramas can give you. Like in melodramas, sometimes the the play with time is so fascinating, and and a and a more tasteful film would never do this. Time in this film is so fascinating, you know, it will just jump years ahead in a in a moment, and you know, there'll be a sequence set in a year, and then it'll jump again and go here and go here and go here. Each of the characters has a voiceover that doesn't always like match with what they seem to be feeling. So it's very I mean, there's all these strange uh levels. So, I mean, to me, the fact that it's kind of a critically loved film, I mean I don't hold that against it.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

No, I I I I definitely love the inner monologue effect because I mean it's it's a pattern, it's like a formal choice that goes through the whole film because basically these characters don't express their feelings, they just like talk through inner monologues, and that's how you get to access their interiority, but they never tell that to each other. So I find that that choice to be very fascinating. It's more about how this change is lived by these characters, so it's more about effect than reason, logic. You know, it's also like quite a transgressive thing to do. Maybe it doesn't look like that, but like Juna um Kadir Inanir and Turkian Shora, like these actors are actors that are so big in Turkey, like these are the legends. So if you have like these two actors in the headline, you would want like the audience would want them to end up together. Either that would like end up in a tragedy that one of them would die or something which would like stop them to like be together, so you'd understand. But this is like a a character is choosing his character over uh someone else over him, so it's like a very transgressive thing to do, actually. And they were um quite worried if whether this would work or not.

SPEAKER_04 35:46

To go back to what you said at the start, I can totally see why um, you know, like if you wanted to get deeper into the Yilma's ology, like why this would just be like a kind of a superficial pick. But I don't know. For me, I was completely taken by this film because it is also a Frankenstein, you know? It it it it it's not a fully assimilated film in the way that, for example, A Belinda, which I could definitely appreciate and definitely loved watching. To me, that film is a little too I don't want to say well-made, but like well conceived is maybe the better idea, you know. I was just wondering if we could give a shout-out to um the wretched ones. I mean, it's a film that basically as I as you as I think you you mentioned earlier that it's a film that he took over from Yilma's Gunet when Gunet went to prison. And I mean it's it's one of those films, I mean, these types of films are so fascinating to me when you you will just have a very prominent film in a director's career that is another director's film in all the obvious characteristics, and yet you can never really take it away from this director that you're looking at, you know, in this case. Because I can you know easily see that this film is always considered a Gunet film, and he's in it, he's on the poster, he's like and it also, I mean, again, we've seen almost none no Yilma's films, but from what we've seen, there's nothing like this, and it's also very kind of arty and full of pathos and neuralists, whatever. But I don't know, I'm I'm always fascinated with these films, you know, these films that are kind of collisions of sensibilities, and that like Cinephile history is quick to dismiss the director who took over the job, you know, to say, like, oh, this is just a Yilmaz Gunet film, not the Atif Yilmaz film. But actually, I mean, to me, this is I mean, I'm not an expert, but there's there's there's a tension in this film that I find really fascinating.

SPEAKER_05 38:16

While Chris was uh describing uh some of the things that happened with the guy with the red scarf in terms of like having this like facade of like what kind of like artsy film it is, but but also having this like elements that would never be in that kind of film. I was thinking also uh alongs along those lines with the um the watched one, the watched ones, the poor, in a sense that again like has this kind of if you look at the poster, if you look at the plot description, and even uh if you look at uh some other Gunai films, like the only one I'm really familiar with is uh elegy. Also, just the fact that when it goes to like the physical altercations is perhaps like way more violent than I really expect a tasel film to be. Which uh again, those kind of subversions, like it never is truly the kind of film that uh is supposed to be in a sense.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

Since uh in that time Gunei was also in period, Zeke Ok then took over the direction because it was so critically acclaimed, there's always like the discussion of whose film is this. But I think this one is more of Atafil Mas than Ilmaz Gunay because it literally changed the script because he the the original version that Yilmaz Gunay had in mind wouldn't be made without him. So he had to change the sin uh the script to to turn it into like the flashback element, obviously I uh came into the play because he wasn't there.

SPEAKER_04 39:36

I mean I don't know in what context this film would have shown, but I mean it's very it's very strong stuff. I mean, as Alonzo said, I mean you see a lot of kids getting beaten up in this film uh and things like that. And it's so it's like it's very, very harsh, but then there's also I don't know, this is also kind of a bit of an outsider's thing, but just to me, just seeing the city and seeing these restaurants that they're eating in is like such a pleasure. I mean, you know, there's like the kind of these bums hanging around the huggia Sophia and smoking cigarettes, and I don't know, there's there's for all that film's harshness, there's also just kind of a pleasure of you know, your life sucks, you don't have any money, you're hungry, but you know, you can sit around smoking cigarettes and talking shit about people.

SPEAKER_03 41:21

Because if we would ask like um cinephiles, at least like a Turkish Cinephiles or Turkish uh critics, I think they would would want to talk more about the films that he made with uh Mujdar, for example. Because like when you think about it, like the the female sexuality is uh was still a taboo taboo at that time. So even after so many years, this idea of like sexualized figures stick with uh Mujdar, for example. So I think those those films are quite bold in like in comparison with their time, like in depictions of their sex uh of the sexuality.

SPEAKER_04 42:04

Why didn't you guys like a lonely woman, which I didn't see? Because I know this is Alonzo's first experience and was kind of this.

SPEAKER_03 42:10

I I didn't hate it. I see why it's important.

SPEAKER_05 42:14

I I didn't expect this film, like in this I guess like now as you've seen like the other 80s films, kind of understand why, of being very like tame and like I like I don't understand what uh Oiku was saying about like the importance perhaps contextually of this film, like addressing like a film on the style and sexuality in that sense, but I don't think it really translates to like what the film is going for, like cinematically. Like uh to me it's like very and I guess I'll we eventually might get into like the transition to the the kind of like misunderstanding he's doing in these films, which is uh sometimes a very static and very prosaic, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Uh but in this film, like I didn't even feel like the kind of like appeal uh I get from like when the melodramatic elements and like performances go to like the arts level, they kind of like elevate what's around him. In this case, it was like everything to me felt very uh contrived and perhaps like um well thought out thought out. I don't feel like it was like as good confident conceptually with the other like quote unquote female film films he was he did later on. Doesn't feel like that's playful and as like uh high concept being.

SPEAKER_03 43:19

I mean it's a a lonely woman, it's not the exact translation because it's like a uh a white it's like actually a widow. So the woman is a widow, that's why she's lonely, basically. She has a uh um a daughter, and the society kinda expects uh her to marry someone else, but she also lives or a part of this, let's say, artsy society. She has like a middle upper middle class, she belongs to like a upper upper middle class, and she's always she has friends from this artsy circles, and she meets this photographer who's this I don't know, like a fuck boy. I'm I'm a I'm a bad guy. I'm a bad boy.

SPEAKER_04 44:00

I'm I'm I want like a I I only engage in situationships kind of guy comes uh into his her life and she he pushes her into like uh this kind of transgressive like relationship that she ends up going outside the boundaries of of sexuality that she set herself into for herself and to parallel to that she has a friend who pursues a man who's married but she desperately wants to be with him so she no matter what how he treats her he just like she just follows him we have a scene I don't know Alonso if you remember that scene where she runs uh naked to to embrace to uh hug her friend so there's also this kind of lesbian undertone not necessarily overtly explored at least that's how I interpret that uh part in the film and it actually ends up like this utopian uh scenario where two friends just like happily hang out with the with one's daughter also playing with them so it's it's like low key suggesting that like without men these two women end up having this very um happy and uh harmonious reality at the end so maybe that's what appeals to the modern audiences in in that film this idea of potential female friendship such because we know that Atofil Maz explored queer sexuality at least like hinted at queer sexuality in his some of his other films like two ships side by side from 63 also has like a female like two uh two female characters kissing or with uh night angel and our children there's also a lot of different queer sexualities ex being explored so why not maybe that's the appeal of this film like uh unrealized potential about lesbian representation thinking about that in the context of uh Arbe Linda which is not I mean you know it it is still pretty melodramatic um but it goes back to what I was saying before that I feel like the film is like very very well conceived and I find that a bit of a burden on the film you know even though the actual experience of the film is very light and I think this is kind of the film that I was referring to earlier when I said that you know just watching it is like very light and enjoyable to me because it's it's very clear and very watchable and so on. But you know I can see how in that film I mean which is kind of has this legendary um premise which is that this this woman actress uh single childless woman goes uh to shoot a shampoo commercial and as she's like shampooing her hair she opens her eyes and she realizes that she's in the world of the shampoo commercial so she's married to the horrible man she has the two little sprogs uh she's in the shabby apartment those are the most interesting parts of the film to me which is when you see her kind of playing again with her previous reality so she goes to the theatre and she um starts to kind of perform again and wins over the same people with the same skills that she had before uh has this kind of like trashy neighbor friend and when she brings that friend to the theatre you see these interesting moments where that friend feels judged by her old f theatre friends so they have this more like kind of upper arty affect and she's this kind of lowbrow working woman who never gets out and when she tries to talk to them they look down their nose at her. So there there are these like kind of elements buried within the film like that about class about um the fact that she's stuck with this horrible husband the way he treats her even though like he's trying to be compassionate but he's basically always trying to fuck her. Almost I can see why people are so interested in this film because the premise is so easy to grasp in a kind of feminist sense, you know?

SPEAKER_03 48:34

I think there's also a tension between the social roles that are attributed to woman and how if a how if a woman is expected to like go out these roles the society or her circle would punish her like this kind of I don't want to say determinism but there's definitely uh an exploration of or or like a pushing the boundaries of like social determinism in his films.

SPEAKER_05 49:00

How can a woman to what extent a woman can push these boundaries go outside the the roles that define her as as she as such and I think Achbelinda does that you haven't seen it but uh how um Asian Kurtular how to say ASIA also does that to some extent the woman has no name explores the the several stages of woman in uh a woman's life and the roles like attributed to her daughter lover uh writer grown up like those kind of things I think is a maybe I don't know to what extent he consciously like makes this decision of exploring these themes but I think it definitely um is a recurrent theme to to defend uh Valinda if if if I if I might uh I do think like uh again I also kind of struggle with the film being too clever almost like on a screen screen like script level of it's very clear and I I'll say even like heavy handed what it's doing like with the social um context of the film but I think like there's enough of the like far skill elements particularly when like the the fictional like TV like like a commercial world around here is kind of being like displayed and also I think towards the climax when it goes like beyond like the drama there's like a lot of like comedy elements that perhaps in a more um conventionally good film wouldn't necessarily be there that are kind of like like appealing to me and shows that even in this more like revered work there's still those populist impulses in in there we can like make it still be a film that I see like transcends just like that signify of interest perhaps classicism of like the 60s films is like nowhere to be found here but I kind of like think it kind of fits with what the film is going for and perhaps that artless presentation of looking almost like uh like television uh I don't know it was kind of like uh appealing to me in in what was kind of like foreshadowing at the beginning like that that just like purely telenovela kind of look and feel which is very somewhat jarring like very like high contrast colors and saturation and a lot of like very like static filmmaking um which again like I I have I kind of like have a soft spot for uh in in this period in particular I think it's just kind of occurred to me though we've we've been speaking for quite a while about Yilmaz and we've never really spoken about a style about these films.

SPEAKER_04 51:55

Probably just because there's so many to to to grapple with but I think also you know even in um his best films like um in uh the the saga yeah even in I mean that that that film has like definitely these sort of like high style flourishes but he he always seems to me to be a film kind of um like a craftsman filmmaker.

SPEAKER_03 52:23

You know there aren't a lot of uh sort of ostentatious stylistic elements of uh film stock actually he he would always like compose his shots before how he wants to shoot so that he knows what he was doing. Like he would like a paint and like draw the camera movements the the mise en and the perspectives so it's not very um let's say spontaneous decisions he was he wasn't he would know what he wants to to shoot when he was shooting.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

It definitely has that I mean and I I really don't want to say it in a derogatory way but it definitely has that Uber competent craftsman vibe you know where where just like everything's flowing uh there's there's not a lot of sort of odd bits and pieces like the the things are flowing it's easy to watch it's it's not stupid it's not uh just super conventional but there's a kind of just natural flow to the images and I think that's something that basically unites all of them you know there's not a lot of sort of high art in terms of like a a scene unfolding in an entire shot or a uh sort of languorous pan in this direction or whatever it's like very sort of to the point.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

His films because he you often makes adaptations kinda um resist the otterist reading of his own films.

SPEAKER_04 53:56

Yeah it's also interesting that we sitting here um are imposing all these readings on the films and all these interpretations which are completely off which is enjoyable too I I guess it was only you who saw the night angel and our children.

SPEAKER_03 54:13

I mean I think it's a fascinating historical document to like witness this period like totally gone by gone period and night life nightlife of Istanbul to me was so shocking and then also felt bad about like not knowing about this film more that this film existed like because you always think that oh I mean yeah it was basically this period and these identities these sexualities weren't represented you I would assume I would have assumed this and that's why I feel bad about not knowing about this film basically that the story the life of three women converge paths cross and there's also this older um sex worker who's obsessed with this man called Osman who's just released from the jail and he wants des she wants desperately to find her and be with him but he categorically uh rejects her because she literally stabbed him.

SPEAKER_04 55:17

So this really tragic path of Artifaz basically puts us in this web of relationships, this unrealized uh uh love stories and tragic uh paths and it's more of a I think choral story or like a portrait of a period then um um unique and uh coherent storyline so I think narrative wise it's not that really it's not that convincing but you find yourself more interested in the depiction of the the 90s the the nightlife the the actual scenes the the the trans people walking down the street their interactions the language they use I think these elements become more interesting than the storyline strikes me it's kind of incredible that this film exists um and then also the fact that it's basically his last major film you have these incredibly prolific filmmakers and at some point whether it's health personal life family whatever just drops off and I think Yilmaz is like that you know until I mean what is it like 1988 he's still making you know two films a year one film a year at least and then suddenly you know around I mean this is basically like the sort of last major film and then he just makes a couple of things after that and then he dies in 2006.

SPEAKER_03 56:46

But that's also because of the industry like you you you no one was making that many films per year. So it's not just about him but also I think the the reality of the film industry of that time. Because you had the means of making films before and now you just like can't afford making it.

SPEAKER_04 57:04

Doing a little project like this in two weeks is completely absurd of course but you know it's very interesting to me because I think this is probably of the subjects that we've done the one that I was kind of least familiar with. Not just him but also like the kind of context that these films were made in. So so I was kind of you know experiencing it on two levels. I was experiencing experiencing it as a kind of artefilm deep dive but also as this sort of exposure to a certain way of making films over a few periods. So you know like I feel like I use this when we sum up every episode but it feels like you know we just scratched the surface and we now we need to just keep digging and digging and digging.

SPEAKER_03 57:50

There are some like I think interest for historical adventure flicks in Turkish cinema but I also don't like that these films are only framed as oh terrible bad like uh ripoffs of I mean that people like approach these as bad taste films. I mean we we also joke about it but to a certain degree it becomes I think uh oh June Tarkin so bad it's so funny.

SPEAKER_05 58:17

Like perhaps that's going back to the like Latin American reference like a little bit like for a long time we were speaking in the Santo episode of like how like local audiences were taught like these films are bad and you shouldn't take them seriously and at the same time they kind of like transcend these discussions just by being there all the time in this context being shown in TV and being shown in these like less prestigious spaces. So to me that's also interesting of doing this very exploratory and very initial dive into um into Gilmith's career just like seeing like the all like different avenues and possibilities of what his work could entail and like also having like that taste particularly of the 60s of like uh area that we'll definitely be going back to that was the surface of Altofilmas filmography. What else have you guys been watching uh this week I was in Brussels uh last weekend and um saw I mean I the Brussels cinematic is amazing so I just went to see basically whatever they were showing over a few days and I mean I saw The Terminator I saw Knight of the Hunter uh Buster Keaton's Three Ages um and Yojimbo by Kurosawa which I'd never seen all of them on 35 on various levels of good prints so I don't know like for for me sometimes it's also just really necessary to do that you know just to spend some time with the classics um I've seen almost all of those films except your jimbo so you know it it's also just a process of rediscovery and so sort of basking in these beautiful prints you know it's like such a luxurious place that just has three films three screenings a day very cheap tickets and you just go and I don't know I of course I love watching the the Arte of Ilma's films the homework for this podcast but then also you know it's nice to see Knight of the Hunter after fifth 15 years I don't know I I I I I feel like I would lose my reputation on this podcast if I described that as a palette cleanser but but I I mean Knight of the Hunter I mean I haven't I haven't seen Knight of the Hunter since I was god 16 and I mean it's such an amazing film such a singular film in every way and also seeing films from that time especially these films that are kind of canonized and now if you want to see Knight of the Hunter you have to see Blu-ray I guess um seeing it on the print and seeing that kind of like vibrating quality of the images in 35mm was really really special what about you guys what have you been watching a couple screenings of uh Query East which is kind of like a queer um East Asian film festival that's in London there's two discoveries I think I had very different in in register uh one is the the uh Xu Kamping film called The Outsiders which is kind of like uh in contrast to like the tasteful uh Elber Jiang uh like like new wave of Taiwanese cinema style this kind of like more like a popular film um it was done like in the mid 80s and he was apparently from what I could catch in his uh career kind of like uh like gone by Harry filmmaker he has kind of like an early uh like horror wush yeah some like samurai films some like abroad comedies but this film was based in uh Crystal Boy which is apparently a very important like uh queer uh like novel that was written in the 80s in Taiwan and the film was heavily censored originally so actually it's only starting to do the rounds in recent years uh because it's like a new restoration that was showing and uh the film is kind of like this um it has some melodramatic elements but it plays most of the time as like this like a broad comedy because uh one of the of the actors and perhaps like the star vehicle is uh Sunjue which was a like very famous and popular like a Taiwanese uh comedic actor in the 1970s and 80s so here he plays some sort of like very flamboyant and colorful uh kind of like even perhaps problematic in retrospect kind of depiction of like a homosexual character and he had kind of like becomes this motherly figure to this group of like outcast uh like teenagers and like old like uh young like gay men who are doing like cruising and selling like and uh doing prostitution like in the park they kind of like create this like dysfunctional family dynamic so it plays a lot of like uh humor around the fact of like the society's reaction to like just people being like openly gay but also it has like some very weird like mannerisms so like dream sequences that look straight at like 80s action 80s Hong Kong action films uh which again like he did some of those films that uh like it's inspired by those and like the um like the Taiwanese variant of co-production of those films uh and also like a lot of like this kind of like 80s uh youthful exploitation kind of uh film style of like a lot of like leather jackets and like uh synth soundtrack like uh gay bar dance sequences so it's like I kind of kind of like looks to be uh I can see why this film will perhaps eventually become more of like a cult classic uh despite not having a lot of like cinophile like hardcore tourist interest just like it's a pop film I think it's like very very valuable uh for what it's going for and just like the like crass value of his humor and the things it goes for. And on the other side of the spectrum uh totally other side of the spectrum uh perhaps even like a well seemingly seemingly well known filmmaker in some like experimental circles uh Hirojoki Oki which is kind of like um also like a queer filmmaker from Japan uh mostly doing like diaristic and like a sadistic uh films around uh framing like his like uh partners' bodies in different uh like ambiances and like playing a lot a lot with like a male desire and the film I just wanna mention is like a melody for Body Matsumi which basically basically it's like 50 minutes and like uh chronicles 10 days each sequence is essentially like five minutes uh just like seeing uh like Minusha and like going around town and like looking at like uh his partner and like then again the second half of the film it's just like this like very like intimate like uh eight millimeter uh textures of like the absence of the figure we saw during the first part of the film so there's like almost like an structured element but also always framed within this a very like tender and affectionate and intimate look into uh again like almost kind of like a love letter to uh the figure of a buddy what about you or you could maybe our listeners would remember that we talked about Edward Yang in the previous episode and I went to Taipei and I actually like had an experience of like uh worthy of film itself but that's another um topic of discussion but um I was um invited to cover the Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival and um one of the side sections of this uh festival was called

SPEAKER_03 1:06:00

Taiwan Spectrum. Um and they they had they they featured like films from a of war period and uh archival um documentaries and one of the the most interesting the most fascinating ones was called archive slash li guanghui sorry for the pronounce terrible pronunciation but it's actually um an archival compilation film uh about um indigenous Taiwanese uh who become a soldier uh in Japanese army and uh who disappeared for almost 30 years after the World War II and lived in Indonesia and came back presumed death and then found and came back to Taiwan after 30 years. So it's basically his return to his homeland and it's it's an it's basically a newsreel, but the way he's welcomed, the way his identity is totally shattered is so vivid in this film that you just like watch it with comp like blown away because his family welcome him, this man who was completely away, presumed death, like this a man who doesn't exist basically, and he's not the same man. The the image of the family or the whole community reflects on him is totally different from his own being after so many years. And um there's obviously the a voiceover uh comment that explains what is going on in the futus, but in a very uh uh comprehensive way because it's also supposed to be listened. So you get all these like descriptions of details, what he's wearing, what the cigarette, the the the brand of cigarette that they offer to him to his smoke, like they they they describe everything that's going on in the frame, and he's welcomed with so much enthusiasm and and uh vivid emotions that you feel his overwhelmed reaction, but also dissociation, like who am I? Who who is this person they're cheering for? And there's this one particular scene that he's like welcomed by the kids of the village or his family, the kids that he does barely he doesn't know, like who he he doesn't know the who these kids are, and he has to like hug them, uh like show love and affection to them, and the you the camera zooms to his hands, the children's faces, and it's so disorienting and disturbing to watch these moments. And from the Q ⁇ A, I couldn't understand what they were saying, but from the Q ⁇ A I learned that the his wife, thinking that he died, married someone else, and then upon his return, he got so angry that he didn't want to meet her first, and they convinced him to meet her, and also they asked the new husband to like go away because he returned. I'm sorry, it's so uh incredible this story. And like a couple of years later, like barely a couple of years later, only four, I think, he passes away from lung cancer, and the guy, the new husband, comes back continuing to live with the wife. Such a crazy story, basically. This is one of the more highlights of the whole festival.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:41

So that was it for this very introductory approximation to the work of Atifig Gilmas. Next week we'll be touching upon the work of uh Jocelyn Sub. If you have any comments, uh complaints, or any form of like dialogue you want to establish with us, you can reach out at allstreetfilm magazine at gmail.com and be sure to follow the podcast every two weeks on your favorite streaming platform.