Hope | Lincoln Center

HOPE
UMUT | YILMAZ GÜNEY, 1970
TURKEY | FORMAT: 35MM | 100 MINUTES


With Hope, Yılmaz Güney—already a popular screen actor—became a major director as well, blending together several of the richest currents in Turkey’s socially engaged cinema into a work that remains as powerful today as when first screened. Cabbar (played by Güney himself) supports his family by driving a broken-down horse-drawn wagon, but competition from taxis threatens to put him out of business. At wit’s end, Cabbar starts to search for a hidden treasure with the aid of a hodja, a mystic. Despite Cabbar’s frequent laments about the hand of fate that seems to rule his life, Güney is always careful to point out the very human causes behind his apparent destiny. Hope was banned in Turkey, but a copy was smuggled out to the Cannes Film Festival, where it caused a sensation; the official ban on the film would remain in effect on the film for almost twenty years.


SERIES: THE SPACE BETWEEN: A PANORAMA OF CINEMA IN TURKEY
VENUE: WALTER READE THEATER

Yol | Lincoln Center

YOL
ŞERIF GÖREN, 1982
TURKEY/SWITZERLAND/FRANCE | TURKISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: 35MM | 111 MINUTES
Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, this most famous of all Turkish films starts in a prison, where those prisoners who have served at least a third of their time are given a week’s furlough to go home. Yet, as the film makes shockingly clear, going outside the prison walls doesn’t necessarily end one’s personal incarceration. Directed from a highly detailed screenplay by Yılmaz Güney (who was in jail at the time) by his close collaborator Şerif Gören, Yol renders each of its five principal stories with sympathy and clarity, creating a vibrant, visceral sense of prisoners’ world, while offering insights into their dreams and fears.  Rarely has a film so effectively communicated an atmosphere defined by daily oppression, yet Yol is not without hope: grave as their family or romantic problems might be, each prisoner knows they must be addressed squarely.


SERIES: THE SPACE BETWEEN: A PANORAMA OF CINEMA IN TURKEY
VENUE: WALTER READE THEATER

The Films of Yilmaz Guney at Doc Films Chicago

The Films of Yilmaz Guney at Doc Films Chicago
Doc Films
University of Chicago
Ida Noyes Hall 
1212 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637


Schedule below, more information forthcoming.
Saturday February 11, 1 pm: BRIDE OF THE EARTH (Yilmaz Guney, 1968) 35mm 78m
Saturday February 11, 5 pm: THE HUNGRY WOLVES (Yilmaz Guney, 1969) 35mm, 85m
Thursday February 16, 7 pm: THE HERD (Zeki Okten, 1979) 35mm, 129m
Saturday February 18, 1 pm: ELEGY (Yilmaz Guney, 1972) 35mm, 82m
Saturday February 18, 3 pm: THE FRIEND (Yilmaz Guney, 1974) 35mm, 105m
Thursday February 23, 7 pm: YOL (Yilmaz Guney, 1982) 35mm, 111m
Saturday February 25, 1 pm: HOPE (Yilmaz Guney, Serif Goren) 35mm, 100m
Saturday February 25, 3 pm: THE POOR (Yilmaz Guney, Atif Yilmaz,1975) 35mm, 72m
About Doc


Doc Films is on record with the Museum of Modern Art as the longest continuously running student film society in the nation, looking back on a more than 75 year old history.
A Short History of Doc


Doc Films was founded in December 1940 as the International House Documentary Film Group, though its antecedents stretch back to 1932. Initially the group focused on "the realist study of our time via nonfiction film," but the documentary alone could not sustain the organization; within a few years, the group's programs expanded to include fiction and experimental films, a mixture that it maintains to this day.


Past film series at Doc have showcased diverse artists, genres and national cinemas or tackled subjects like feminism and human rights. Doc routinely shows prints from some of the country's leading film archives.

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.

Bride of the Earth

During his transition from tough-guy leading man to director-actor, Güney made this rural revenge drama, containing surprising moments of quiet lyricism.

The Hungry Wolves

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.

Hope

"Generally acknowledged as his first masterpiece," Güney’s artistic breakthrough crosses Bicycle Thieves with The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

The Herd

One of several films that Güney supervised from prison, this feature won the Golden Leopard at Locarno and two prizes at Berlin.

Yol

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.

The Friend

"Perhaps the high point in Güney’s career ... A must for anyone interested in the quality and strength of Turkish cinema.”

Elegy

This internationally lauded film is "in many respects Güney’s quintessential portrait of the noble savage."

The Poor

Güney stars as a convicted thief from a troubled background in this fascinating mix of hard-bitten realism and florid melodrama.

Dates Announced for 3 Venues

Cleveland Cinematheque

Pacific Film Archive

Pacifique Cinematheque

Check the updated schedule

Pacific Cinémathèque Dates

The Films of Yilmaz Güney
Pacific Cinémathèque/Vancouver
October 15-27, 2011
BRIDE OF THE EARTH – October 15 & 16
THE HUNGRY WOLVES – October 15 & 16
HOPE – October 20 & 23
THE HERD – October 20 & 24
YOL – October 22 & 23
THE FRIEND – October 22 & 27
ELEGY – October 24 & 26
THE POOR – October 26 & 27

Contact:Jim Sinclair
Executive + Artistic Director

Pacific Cinematheque
1131 Howe Street, Suite 200
Vancouver, B.C. V6Z 2L7

website: www.cinematheque.bc.ca
phone/fax: www.cinematheque.bc.ca/about/contacts

Print traffic:Sonya Williams
sonya.william@cinemathequ.bc.ca
T:604.688.8202 x 221

Series Venue | The Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque

Cleveland’s Alternative Film Theatre

The Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, founded in 1986, presents movies in CIA’s 616-seat, 35mm and SR stereo-equipped Russell B. Aitken Auditorium. Videotapes and 16mm films are sometimes shown in CIA’s 100-seat Ohio Bell Auditorium. Both are located within the Institute’s Gund Building at the corner of East Boulevard and Bellflower Road in University Circle. Free, lighted parking is available in the adjacent CIA lot, located on the north and east sides of the building off of East Blvd. Entrance to the building is through the rear door, just off the parking lot and only steps from your car. Smoking is not permitted in the Institute. Our facilities are fully accessible to the physically challenged.

Contact:

John Ewing, Director
Cleveland Cinematheque
Cleveland Institute of Art
11141 East Boulevard
Cleveland, OH 44106
ewing@cia.edu
Tel 216 421 7450

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.

Series Venue | Pacific Film Archive

Film Series

A place to explore cinema from every film-producing country in the world, the Pacific Film Archive reaches out through the art of cinema to the many cultures that make up the lively Bay Area community. With daily screenings—over 600 different programs are offered each year—PFA presents rare and rediscovered prints of movie classics, new and historic works by the world’s great film directors, restored silent films with live musical accompaniment, thematic retrospectives, and exciting experiments by today’s film and video artists, including provocative, independently made fiction and documentary films. PFA is an inspiring cultural environment for students and the general public; screenings are often enlivened by in-person appearances by filmmakers, authors, critics, and scholars, who engage in discussion with audiences.

PFA Theater Location

2575 Bancroft Way Between College and Telegraph

Mailing Address

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

2625 Durant Avenue #2250

Berkeley, CA 94720-2250

Contact

Kathy Geritz

Film Curator, Pacific Film Archive

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

2625 Durant Avenue #2250

Berkeley CA 94720-2250

t. 510-642-1413

f. 510-643-5211

kgeritz@berkeley.edu

http://bampfa.berkeley.edu

Print Traffic

Mariana Lopez

Print Traffic Coordinator

Pacific Film Archive

2625 Durant Ave, #2250

Berkeley, CA 94720-2250

U.S.A.

1 510 642 6696 tel

1 510 642 4889 fax

pfa_ship@berkeley.edu