Sunday, September 11, 2011





Bride of the Earth

(Seyyit Han)
Turkey 1968. Director: Yılmaz Güney
Cast: Yilmaz Güney, Nebahat Çehre, Hayati Hamzaoğlu, Nihat Ziyalan, Sami Tunç
When Yilmaz Güney made the transition from tough-guy leading man to director-actor in the 1960s, he continued to specialize in the violent genre films that had made him a huge star in Turkey. Bride of the Earth is “the first film that Güney acknowledged as a fully realized effort ... With Bride, Güney began to explore revenge melodramas and crime films to examine the often feudal conditions that yet existed in Turkey’s rural regions ... Bride stars the director himself as a man separated from his bride-to-be by the superstitions and feudal conditions of rural life. The film’s attention to poverty as a barrier to happiness and personal aspiration looks forward to Güney’s more overtly political work while demonstrating his eye for striking images, particularly in his dramatic use of landscape, as well as more baroque, almost Bosch-like touches” (Harvard Film Archive). “Two works stand out from this period: Bride of the Earth and The Hungry Wolves ... Bride, though still in essence a rural revenge drama, contains surprising moments of quiet lyricism that suggest Güney was becoming familiar with the cinema of Satyajit Ray and Roberto Rossellini” (Bilge Ebiri, Senses of Cinema). B&W, 35mm, in Turkish with English subtitles. 78 mins.

Güney Series at Pacifique Cinematheque


Yilmaz Güney: From “Ugly King” to Outlaw Poet

OCTOBER 15-16, 20, 22-24,26-27
"It’s doubtful that any major filmmaker ever spent as long behind bars as Güney." TONY RAYNS, TIME OUT
“Güney was the most innovative, talented, influential, and internationally acclaimed director Turkey has ever produced. He became a source of inspiration of a generation of young directors.” YUSUF KAPLAN, THE OXFORD HISTORY OF WORLD CINEMA
The remarkable life of Yilmaz Güney rivals any of his films for drama.
A master of startling imagery, vigorous storytelling, and political commitment, Güney (1937-84) is a legendary figure in Turkish cinema and undoubtedly the best-known and most controversial filmmaker the country has produced to date.
Born to Kurdish parents in rural southern Turkey, Güney studied both law and economics before becoming active in the cinema in the late 1950s as a screenwriter, assistant director, and actor for the prominent filmmaker (and fellow Kurd) Atif Yilmaz. A gruff, ruggedly handsome man with a charismatic screen presence, Güney was by the early 1960s a huge star in Turkey, playing tough guys and outlaws in the restless, brooding mode of his Hollywood heroes Cagney, Bogart, and Lancaster, and earning himself the nickname “The Ugly King.” During the same period, he was imprisoned for what proved to be the first of several times, receiving an 18-month sentence for the “communist” content of a story he had written.
Güney began making his own films just as a lasting socio-cultural and political unrest began to take hold in Turkey. His early films as a director were fascinating genre exercises with subtle political undertones, using the forms of revenge melodrama and crime film to explore the feudal conditions that still existed in Turkey’s rural regions. Hope (1970), a depiction of hopelessness amongst the urban poor, proved an artistic turning point, and drew comparisons to Italian neorealism. Its original mix of realist detail, expressionism, and even darkly absurdist humour brought Güney international recognition, but also incurred the wrath of Turkish censors. The director was arrested and imprisoned for a week in the unrest that followed the 1971 military coup. After a period of intense productivity that produced a series of impassioned films, he was again imprisoned in 1972, for allegedly harbouring anarchist fugitives. Held for 26 months without trial, he was released in 1974 as part of a general amnesty. Within months he was arrested again, for the murder of a right-wing judge, apparently during a restaurant brawl. He received a 24-year sentence, later commuted to 18 years. Details of the crime remain obscure and controversial; Güney always maintained his innocence despite incriminating evidence.
Behind bars once more, Güney devoted himself furiously to screenwriting, completing scripts and copious notes which he sent to his proxies and collaborators and which resulted in some of his most acclaimed work, including Yol (1982), his most famous film. In 1981, Güney escaped prison — by simply walking away — and fled to France. Given that incarceration had only seemed to ratify his near-legendary status in Turkey; Güney’s claim that the government wanted him to escape, so that they could exile him, seems plausible. He was present (although as a fugitive) at Cannes in 1982 whenYol won the Palme d’Or. He directed a final film in France in 1983 before dying of stomach cancer the next year.
Güney’s mature works merge political ideas with a strikingly original approach to the image and a penchant for poetry and allegory. Influenced by Italian neorealism, which serves as a basis for their visual style, his films veer into mythopoetic reverie fired by profound anger at the plight of the oppressed. They also display a fascination with the tension and contradiction between his nation’s rural peasantry and rapidly modernizing society. His singular status in Turkey and astonishing life story led the American critic J. Hoberman to once describe him as “something like Clint Eastwood, James Dean, and Che Guevara combined.”   ADAPTED FROM HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE
 
Acknowledgements: Special thanks to the Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Culture and Tourism; Turkish Culture and Tourism Counselor's Office, Washington D.C.; Hüseyin Karabey, The Güney Foundation; Erju Ackman, Turkish Cinema Newsletter. All film prints supplied by the Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Culture and Tourism - General Directorate of Copyright and Cinema / Telif Hakları ve Sinema Genel Müdürlüğü, Dr. Abdurrahman Çelik, General Director. Our program notes for this exhibition rely heavily on three main sources, all of which have been duly credited where appropriate: film notes prepared by Harvard Film Archive for its presentation of this retrospective earlier this year; “Yılmaz Güney” by Bilge Ebiri in issue 37 of Senses of Cinema; and “Yılmaz Güney” by Derek Elley in International Film Guide 1983.

During his transition from tough-guy leading man to director-actor, Güney made this rural revenge drama, containing surprising moments of quiet lyricism.
Güney nods to Italian Spaghetti Westerns in this revenge drama about a bandit and bounty hunter (played by Güney himself) in the mountains of eastern Anatolia.
"Generally acknowledged as his first masterpiece," Güney’s artistic breakthrough crosses Bicycle Thieves with The Treasure of Sierra Madre.
One of several films that Güney supervised from prison, this feature won the Golden Leopard at Locarno and two prizes at Berlin.
Güney’s most renowned work — this tale of five convicts released from prison on a one-week furlough — shared the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1982.
"Perhaps the high point in Güney’s career ... A must for anyone interested in the quality and strength of Turkish cinema.”
This internationally lauded film is "in many respects Güney’s quintessential portrait of the noble savage."
Güney stars as a convicted thief from a troubled background in this fascinating mix of hard-bitten realism and florid melodrama.

Güney Series at Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2625 Durant Avenue #2250 Berkeley, CA 94720-2250


Coordinated at BAM/PFA by Kathy Geritz. Special thanks to Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism; Turkish Culture and Tourism Counselor’s Office, Washington DC; Hüseyin Karabey, the Güney Foundation; Erju Ackman, Turkish Cinema Newsletter; and Deniz Göktürk, UC Berkeley, for their invaluable assistance in making this series possible. The series features new 35mm prints, provided by Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Copyright and Cinema, Telif Hakları ve Sinema Genel Müdürlüğü.




 Anatolian Outlaw: Yilmaz Güney


September 17, 2011 - October 9, 2011


Described by the critic J. Hoberman as “something like Clint Eastwood, James Dean, and Che Guevara combined,” the Turkish actor/filmmaker Yilmaz Güney lived a life more dramatic than any fictional role. The son of rural Kurdish sheepherders, he worked as a cotton picker, assistant butcher, and film projectionist before being awakened by the power of politics and cinema. His imprisonment for writing and distributing communist literature led to a chance acting role, one which later (after yet another jail term) improbably blossomed into a full-fledged career as a rugged, atypical leading man (earning him popular success and the nickname “the Ugly King”).


Güney became a director in the midsixties, creating a cinema that took key elements of Turkish and Kurdish outlaw folklore and merged them into a hypnotic blend of Italian and Hollywood Westerns, Third World cinema, and social realism. In 1974, however, he was arrested for the murder of a right-wing judge, and sentenced to eighteen years (his fourth imprisonment since 1961). Miraculously, he still managed to smuggle out screenplays and precise directing instructions for three new films.


In 1981 Güney escaped from jail, and eventually went to France, where Yol (codirected by Serif Gören) was declared a masterpiece at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, transforming Güney into an international celebrity and symbol of resistance. Turkey immediately made Güney persona non grata, however. In 1984, at the height of his powers, free at last but exiled from his homeland, Güney died of stomach cancer; he was only forty-seven. “A tragic note to an incandescent life,” wrote Kendal Nezan in Cinemaya, “one completely devoted to a refusal of the fatalistic, the oppressive, and the unjust.”


Jason Sanders, Film Notes Writer


Saturday, September 17, 2011


6:30 p.m. Hope


Yilmaz Güney, Serif Gören (Turkey, 1975). New 35mm Print! Introduced by Deniz Göktürk. A street vendor experiences hope, despair, and finally madness in this politically committed, neo-realist critique of Turkish society and class divides. “A magnificent achievement…defines for the first time Güney’s universe with startling clarity” (Derek Elley). (100 mins)


Saturday, September 17, 2011


8:45 p.m. Bride of the Earth


Yilmaz Güney (Turkey, 1968) New 35mm Print! Güney adds some baroque, almost Bosch-like touches to this tale of a man separated from his bride-to-be by superstition and feudalism. “Contains surprising moments of quiet lyricism that suggest Güney was becoming familiar with Satyajit Ray and Roberto Rossellini” (Senses of Cinema). (78 mins)


Saturday, September 24, 2011


6:30 p.m. Yol


Yilmaz Güney, Serif Gören (Turkey, 1982) New 35mm Print! Five Kurdish prisoners are set free for a week, but their return home only offers a different kind of entrapment, in Güney’s remarkable critique of political, religious, and sexual oppression. Palme d’Or, Cannes, 1982. (111 mins)


imageSaturday, September 24, 2011

8:40 p.m. The Friend

Yilmaz Güney (Turkey, 1974) New 35mm Print! Güney turns his gaze away from the struggling rural poor and toward the alienated urban rich in this scathing Antonioniesque indictment of the class boundaries and glass ceilings of contemporary Turkey. Güney stars as a still-committed activist who reunites with a now-rich, debauched old friend. (100 mins)

Thursday, September 29, 2011

7:00 p.m. The Hungry Wolves

Yilmaz Güney (Turkey, 1969) New 35mm Print! Sergio Leone meets Glauber Rocha in this “ethnographic Western” about a mountain bandit on the run in a violent, snow-bound world. Taut with raw poetry and documentary-like realism amidst the gun battles, and starring Güney at his most Clint Eastwood/Lee Marvinesque. (70 mins)

Saturday, October 1, 2011

6:00 p.m. The Herd

Yilmaz Güney (Turkey, 1978) New 35mm Print! Introduced by Deniz Göktürk. The Herd has a simple premise that it utilizes to devastating effect: the economic survival of a Kurdish family depends on its herd of sheep. The constant threats to the livestock and the family serve both as ethnographic documentary and existential (and political) parable. (129 mins)

Saturday, October 1, 2011

8:45 p.m. Elegy

Yilmaz Güney (Turkey, 1971) New 35mm Print! A group of smugglers keeps one step ahead of the police in Güney’s tough Turkish Western, part Wild Bunch, part “hymn to. . . the freedom from oppression” (Fernando Herrero). Güney’s elemental combination of Hollywood action and Third World activist cinema is hypnotic. (80 mins)

Sunday, October 9, 2011

5:35 p.m. The Poor

Yilmaz Güney (Turkey, 1974). (Zavallilar) New 35mm Print! On a winter’s night, three convicts are released from jail. A fascinating mix of hard-bitten realism and florid melodrama. (72 mins)