Book Description

Tunç Okan (Bay Okan) is an independent emigrant filmmaker born in 1942 in Turkey. He started his filmmaking career in 1974 with his debut film The Bus, which he made in Sweden, and partly in Germany. He completed the film some seven years after he quit his short but hectic acting career in Turkey’s popular commercial cinema industry, Yeşilçam. A dentist by training, Okan’s cinema career started in 1965 after winning an acting competition organised by a popular film magazine. Starring in thirteen films in a period of less than two years, he achieved considerable fame. In 1967, Okan quit his career in Yeşilçam, which he accused of anaesthetising society, and immigrated to Switzerland.3 His debut film The Bus was followed by only three other films: Drôle de samedi (Funny Saturday, 1985), Mercedes mon Amour (The Yellow Mercedes, 1992), and Umut Üzümleri (Grapes of Hope, 2013). Okan’s films are products that can best be studied in relation to both the mainstream popular cinema of Turkey, Yeşilçam, in which Okan started his cinema career, and in relation to certain European filmmakers and cinema movements that have influenced his cinema. Naficy’s accented cinema concept ultimately focuses too much on Hollywood cinema, and for this reason, it is ill-equipped to study the cinema of filmmakers like Okan, whose works have little to do with Hollywood. Okan’s cinema requires a different approach and a vocabulary which will enable one to study his cinema in relation not only to Hollywood, but to a diverse group of personal cinemas and cinema movements. Okan is an eclectic filmmaker; his cinema is in constant flux. As I demonstrate in this study, Okan’s cinema is inspired by a diverse group of filmmakers and cinemas. In his films, one can find markers of, inspirations from, and references to a great variety of European filmmakers, ranging from Wim Wenders to Jacques Tati, Jean-Luc Godard to Jack Clayton, and cinema movements from Italian Neorealism to the Czechoslovak New Wave, French New Wave to British Free Cinema influenced New Wave kitchen-sink dramas. Although his films feature recurrent themes relating to im/migration, being the cinema of an independent filmmaker Okan’s cinema proves to be a difficult one to categorise because of the many neatly employed inspirations from, and references to, diverse sources. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why it has thus far received so little attention. Okan is not a “typical” Turkish film director. Only half of his films take place in Turkey, and even those films feature parts that were shot abroad. More importantly, he is not a film- maker who uses themes, cultural icons, stereotypes, narration strategies, and filmic aesthetics that have typically been used by filmmakers in Turkey. He is also not a filmmaker who has attracted the attention of international critics. His cinema is a cinema in-between; it is a cinema of tensions and competing identities, visions, and interests. It invokes a split reception on the viewer. On one hand, his films can be read in relation/reaction to tendencies in national/Turkish cinema, and on the other hand, in relation to international, particularly the European, arthouse cinema. Given this, the best way to understand and appreciate his works is perhaps to read Okan’s films in dialogue with developments in both cinema of Turkey and European (art) cinema, for his “signature” derives influences from a variety of sources in these cinemas. Okan’s own words, identifying himself as a “European Turk” could be seen as legitimisation, and encouragement to discuss his works in relation to both cinema of Turkey and European (art) cinema. Okan is neither a one-issue director nor a filmmaker who restricts himself to one format or genre. On the contrary, his films are always on the road, sometimes literally; his third film, The Yellow Mercedes, is a road movie, and The Bus, though not being a road movie in the strict sense, generously exploits the conventions of the genre. Figuratively, all of Okan’s films are in search of new ways of expression. Indeed, they are the products of this very search. This constant search motivates him to challenge, and often cross, many established conventions and boundaries of cinema. Okan’s cinema is what I call “transboundary cinema”.