After a two-year military administration following the 1980 coup, Turkey entered a new stage of social change with the capitalistic policies of the new civil government. Among the major film trends in the 1980s were films dealing with the coup's psychological effects on individuals, especially intellectuals; "women's films" paralleling the rise of feminism in Turkey and depicting female characters in search of their identities and liberty; and films dealing with cinematic practice itself in terms of the filmmaker's social roles, creative desires, and disappointments.
Turkish cinema underwent another crisis at the end of the 1980s, mainly due to the expansion of color TV broadcasting, the video boom, increasing production costs, and declining movie attendance. Beginning in 1987 Warner Bros. and United International Pictures (UIP), the distributor of the films of Paramount and Universal, were given permission to set up exhibition and distribution agencies in Turkey. In 1989 only 13 of the 215 films shown in the country were Turkish films. By the 1990s Yesilcam had completely collapsed, having lost its audience to private TV channels and American blockbusters.
In 1990 Turkey became a member of Eurimages, the Council of Europe's fund for the joint production, distribution, and exhibition of European cinematographic works, and in the same year, the Turkish Ministry of Culture began to allocate funds to selected films. Those factors, combined with the relaxation of censorship beginning in 1986 and the expansion of private sponsorship, contributed to the resurrection of Turkish cinema in the 1990s. Several joint productions supported by Eurimages and the Ministry of Culture, such as Yavuz Turgul's Eskiya (The Bandit, 1996), were enormously popular with filmgoers. Another of these, Vizontele (2001), about the introduction of television in a small Anatolian town, topped the domestic box office with more than three million admissions. Today Turkish cinema progresses with a yearly production of ten to eighteen films. Heavy media promotion, the featuring of well-known celebrities such as showmen and models, and high production values ensure their popularity. Besides mainstream films that reveal the influence of Hollywood action cinema, films by new young independent directors such as Zeki Demirkubuz and Nuri Bilge Ceylan promise a bright future for Turkish cinema. Ceylan's Uzak (Distant, 2002) won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
SEE ALSO National Cinema
Erdogan, Nezih, and Deniz Gokturk. "Turkish Cinema." In Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Cinemas, edited by Oliver Leaman, 533–573. London: Routledge, 2002.
Ilal, Ersan. "On Turkish Cinema." In Film and Politics in the Third World, edited by John D. H. Downing, 119–129. New York: Autonomedia, 1987.
Robins, Kevin, and Asu Aksoy. "Deep Nation: The National Question and Turkish Cinema Culture." In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott Mckenzie, 203–221. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Woodhead, Christine, ed. Turkish Cinema: An Introduction. London: SOAS, 1989.
Dilek Kaya Mutlu