Women in the Cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Year 2011, Issue: 33, 75 - 86, 01.06.2011

Olgahan Baksi Naylor

Abstract

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, one of modern Turkey’s most accomplished international film-director and widely known for his distinctive, slowmoving cinematic style, generates a certain amount of controversy over his screen representations of women. Some critics, such as Robin Wood, claim that his first three films - The Small Town 1997 , Clouds of May 1999 and Climates 2006 - are mostly male-dominated 2 , while others like Asuman Süner maintain that the absence of women in his films shows an alternative attitude to the issue of women in Turkish cinema 163 – a macho cinema where the only gaze is male. On the other hand, one cannot help wondering if this scarcity of female roles can be interpreted as a message to the audience – and if so, how? Can it be a subtle criticism of the current situation of women in Turkey? This article seeks to answer some of these questions and explore the implications and problematics of female film characters in the cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan; hence, one may conclude that Ceylan displays a highly critical attitude towards not only Western/American capitalism and its destructive effect on Turkish society, but also towards the patriarchal nature of that society and its subsequent subordination of women.

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