Cleveland Cinematheque | Young Turk: Yilmaz Güney

HOPE

Turkey, 1970, Yilmaz Güney

Show Times | Friday, August 19 2011 9:20 pm

With this pivotal work, Yilmaz Güney, Turkey’s most popular actor during the 1960s, embarked on the road to become Turkey’s most celebrated filmmaker. Hope saw Güney forsaking the mindless action melodramas that made him famous to take his work in a semi-autobiographical, socially-conscious new direction. In doing so, he struck a major chord with the long-suffering Turkish public. Hope stars Güney as a put-upon everyman named Cabbar, a debt-ridden cart driver struggling to feed his large family. When one of his two horses is struck by a Mercedes and dies, the desperate Cabbar has to work even harder to make ends meet, while seeking justice for the injury. Initially banned in Turkey, Hope evokes great postwar Italian neorealist works like The Bicycle Thief. “A magnificent achievement…Defines for the first time Güney’s universe with startling clarity.” –Derek Elley. New, imported 35mm print! Subtitles. 100 min.

THE HERD
Turkey, 1978. Zeki Ökten

Show Times | Saturday, August 20 2011 8:20 pm

Scripted by Yilmaz Güney while he was in prison for murder, and directed by proxy, this powerful social drama chronicles the disintegration of a family of naïve, nomadic shepherds as they transport their sheep from rural Anatolia to urban Ankara. “Abrasive, violent and lyrical.” –The Holt Foreign Film Guide. New, imported 35mm color print! Subtitles. 129 min.


THE POOR ONES
Turkey, 1974, Yilmaz Güney, Atif Yilmaz

Show Times | Sunday, August 28 2011 6:30 pm

Three impoverished convicts are released from prison to a bleak future, while flashbacks reveal their past transgressions. Co-star and director Yilmaz Güney was arrested and imprisoned in mid-production, so he asked his mentor, Atif Yilmaz, to finish this powerful portrait of societal outcasts. New, imported 35mm color print! Subtitles. 72 min.


YOL
Turkey, 1982, Şerif Gören, Yilmaz Güney

Show Times | Sunday, August 28 2011 8:05 pm

Yilmaz Güney’s best-known film (it won the top prize at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival) was actually directed by his long-time assistant Serif Gören—though Güney wrote it (in prison) and edited it (in Switzerland). The film follows five paroled Turkish prisoners who return to their homes only to discover that the backward, brutal outside world is another kind of prison for them. The title translates as “the road” or “the way.” “An exceptionally powerful condemnation of an oppressive society.” –The Holt Foreign Film Guide. New, imported 35mm color print! Subtitles. 111 min.