Movies Features
Up for Cannes award, but Turkish industry seeks stability
By DPA
May 8, 2008, 14:45 GMT

Ankara - The nomination of the Turkish film Uc Maymun (Three Monkeys) for Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or was greeted with glee by the Turkish film media, but at the same time shows the huge gulf between auteurs and those in the film industry seeking to hit the big time.

News that Nuri Bilge Ceylan was nominated for the Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or certainly received coverage in Turkey, but far more Turks would have heard of the other directors in competition, such as Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh and Wim Wenders, than the home boy.

Not surprising really despite this being the third time Ceylan has been nominated for the Palme d'Or. Ceylan's last film, Iklimler (Climates), was seen by just 20,000 people in Turkey. Four times as many people saw the film in France.

This is not to say that Turkish cinema goers shun local films for US blockbusters, but on an industry-wide scale the Turkish film industry has taken a battering in the last 30 years.

In the 1960s and 70s Turkey had an enormous film industry for such a poor country with some years seeing more than 300 films being released. In 1972, 247 million cinema tickets were sold for a country with a population of only around 35 million.

The coming of television resulted in the almost total collapse of the Turkish film industry. By 1990 only 10 million tickets were sold. By 1999, the industry managed to produce just 20 films.

In recent years however, the Turkish film industry as a whole has seen a revival both in the independent scene and the big-spending end of town.

Along with Ceylan, other independent film makers have been winning awards at film festivals around the world but the industry itself was tiny compared to the past, according to Turkish film historian Ahmet Gurata.

'1996 though was a turning point with the release of Eskiya (The Bandit),' Gurata told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

'Thanks to a mixture of the Culture Ministry sponsorship, the rise of suburban multiplexes and a new breed of mainly television stars moving into the films with big budgets, the industry as a whole has picked up.'

The success of Eskiya led to more and more big budget films being made. While a few were well reviewed, very few received critical acclaim and one in particular, Kurtlar Vadisi Irak (Valley of the Wolves Iraq), was ripped to shreds by the reviewing elite.

That didn't stop the film, an extreme nationalist story which lambasts US actions in Iraq and which also has anti-Semitic undertones, from being an enormous hit.

Independent film makers are a long way from those who make blockbusters such as Kurtlar Vadisi Irak. Independent films are shot on minuscule budgets and tend to focus on some typically Turkish emotions of not belonging, of a yearning for the past when life in a village was simple, as opposed to living in the uncaring metropolis of Istanbul.

'The problem for the Turkish film industry is that we have a successful independent art film sector and we increasingly have a successful big-budget sector,' says Gurata.

'What we are missing is the middle ground, the sort of films that keep technicians employed year-round, that keep and teach the skills needed for an industry to flourish,' he said.

This year's Cannes film festival is the third time Ceylan has had a film up for competition. In the first two films he used almost exclusively his own friends and family instead of professional actors.

For Uc Maymun though Ceylan recruited popular Turkish folk singer and actor Yavuz Bingol to play the leading role, exactly the same tactic that has led to the rise of the blockbuster film in recent years.

'It will be interesting to see if this move will lead to box office success,' says Gurata.