THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER AND THE MOON AND STARS PROJECT OF THE AMERICAN TURKISH SOCIETY PRESENT
“THE SPACE BETWEEN: A PANORAMA OF CINEMA IN TURKEY”
APRIL 27-MAY 10
THE LARGEST RETROSPECTIVE OF FILMS FROMTURKEY EVER TO BE SHOWN IN THE UNITED STATES
NEW YORK, NY (APRIL 5, 2012) – The Space Between: A Panorama of Cinema in Turkey is the largest retrospective of films from Turkey to be presented in the United States. The retrospective is produced by The Moon and Stars Project of The American Turkish Society and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The program includes more than 25 films and runs from Friday, April 27 through Thursday, May 10, presenting award winning Turkish films from the 1950s to the present.
Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Richard Peña said, “Turkey has an extraordinarily rich cinematic tradition that, despite the growing importance of that country on the world stage, has remained largely unknown to even the most dedicated American film goers. This 29-film series focuses especially on the many socially-engaged works–works often made under difficult and even dangerous conditions–that offered a counterpoint to Turkey's prolific commercial cinema.”
Opening night kicks off on Friday, April 27 at 6:30 p.m. with the New York premiere of Can (2011) directed by Raşit Çelikezer. The film was Turkey’s first ever entry at the Sundance Film Festival, receiving the “Special Jury Prize for Artistic Vision”. This modern day love story, based in Istanbul, relates a heart wrenching tale of a young couple faced with infertility, who plot to illegally buy a child. Their plan appears to be successful until the wife finds herself incapable of accepting the child as her own. The Closing Night film, Ă–zcan Alper’s The Future Lasts Forever (2011), will screen on May 10 and is the story of an Istanbul music student who travels the country to record traditional music and confront her past.
Other films chosen for the rare retrospective show how Turkish cinema, like the country, embraces both the East and the West. The filmmakers are influenced by American and European traditions while incorporating ideas from Egyptian – and more recently – Iranian cinema. Yeşilçam (“Green pine”) is a metonym for the Turkish film industry, similar to Hollywood. The name is derived from Yeşilçam Street in Istanbul where many actors, directors, and crew members were based. As in Italy and Japan, the existence of a thriving popular cinema inspired filmmakers to create more personal works. Several of the filmmakers moved back and forth between Yeşilçam and more personal projects.
Yeşilçam’s heyday was from the 1950s – 1970s, when 250 – 350 films were produced. The retrospective features notable films from this era including O Beautiful Istanbul (1966) by Atif Yilmaz, a bittersweet comedy about the chance friendship between a failed, but wise street photographer and a peasant girl, who has run away to Istanbul to become an actress. Other films from that period include Metin Erksan’s Revenge of the Snakes (1962), one of the first examples of social realism through its depiction of social injustices and economic hardships faced by a poor farmer and Dry Summer (1964) the bitter struggle between two brothers set in a rural farming community. Dry Summer won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival and signaled to the film world that Turkey was an important player on the international stage.
Films by director Yilmaz GĂĽney, who was one of the most iconic movie stars in Turkey in the 1970s (later to be imprisoned and forced to go abroad), include Elegy (1971) depicting the lives of four smugglers juxtaposed with the quiet determination of a woman doctor and Hope (1970) where a poor carriage driver invests all his hope in lottery tickets. One of GĂĽney’s darkest films, The Road (1982) is a co-effort scripted and monitored by GĂĽney from prison with the help of Şerif Gören. It tells the story of five prisoners who are given one-week leave to see their families. This “road movie” was smuggled out of the country and singled out for awards by the London Critics Circle, the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics and Golden Palm Award at Cannes. Another director of the GĂĽney school is Ali Ă–zgentĂĽrk, whose film Hazal (1979) shows the despair of rural life when a recently widowed woman is forced by her in-laws to marry her deceased husband’s twelve-year-old brother.
The program also presents the city of Istanbul as a beautiful, yet at times evil place, where dreams collide. The earliest of these films is Three Friends (1958) directed by Memduh Ç—n .It is a story of three young men living in a dilapidated mansion. They befriend a blind girl and plot how they will find a way to pay for surgery that will allow her to see again,
My Cinemas (1990) features the work of three women: director GĂĽlsĂĽn Karamustafa, writer FĂĽruzan, and star HĂĽlya Avşar. A young woman looks to escape poverty by losing herself in the movies. Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite (1989) directed by Tunç Başaran is a cult classic. It is a prison melodrama centered on women in an Istanbul prison from different walks of life and a little boy who grows up among them. In Somersault in a Coffin (1996), by Derviş Zaim, the Bosphorus is the city’s showpiece and those living on its margins tell their stories.
The literature of Turkey is captured on film with Motherland Hotel (1987) based on a novel by Yusuf Atilgan. Director Ömer Kavur’s dark drama of loneliness and obsession captures a mysterious woman’s promise to a lonely hotel keeper that causes his mental breakdown. Kavur was one of the first generation of directors coming from a film school background. He also directed The Secret Face (1991) based on “The Black Book” by Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk, which received the Best Film award at the Istanbul Film Festival and the Montreal New Cinema Festival. Atif Yimaz’s The Girl with the Red Scarf (1977) inspired by Kyrgyz writer Cengiz Aytmatov, is a love story about a man who leaves his family only to come back years later demanding his wife and child return to him.
The best Turkish auteur cinema can offer is Climates (2006) by internationally acclaimed filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Cited as a masterpiece at the Cannes Festival, the climates of two towns on opposite ends of Turkey are the backdrop for the tumultuous relationship between the main characters.
The Space Between: A Panorama of Cinema in Turkey will feature Q & A’s with stars after the screenings as well as a panel discussion “The Space Between: The Trajectory of Cinema in Turkey” to be held at the Walter Reade Theater on Sunday, April 29 at 2:45PM. All films are in Turkish with English subtitles and will be shown at the Walter Reade and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.
The retrospective is made possible through the generosity of lead sponsor Chobani and the company's charitable arm, the Shepherd’s Gift Foundation, as well as other sponsors, Ramerica International and The Marmara-Manhattan. The program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by a generous grant from Ramerica Foundation. The organizers would like to extend special thanks to Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Consulate General of Turkey in New York.
Tickets are on sale both at the box office and on-line Thursday. Discounts are available for students, seniors and Film Society members. Read more about The Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Press Screening Schedule
Please join us for advance press screenings at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.
RSVP to John Wildman, [email protected]
212-875-5419.
MONDAY, APRIL 9
10:00AM
CAN (106min)
12:00PM
FUTURE LASTS FOREVER (108min)
Films and Descriptions for
THE SPACE BETWEEN: A PANORAMA OF CINEMA IN TURKEY
OPENING NIGHT
CAN (2011) 106min
Director: Raşit Çelikezer
Country: Turkey
Winner at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for Artistic Achievement, Can begins as a contemporary couple, Ayşe and Cemal, struggle to find a way to conceive a child together. When modern medicine comes up short, they resort to illegal means, but the stress eventually causes the couple’s relationship to unravel. Meanwhile, a single mother is raising her little boy, Can, in something less than ideal fashion.
Friday, April 27 at 6:30PM
CLOSING NIGHT
FUTURE LASTS FOREVER (Gelecek Uzun SĂĽrer) (2011) 108min
Director: Ă–zcan Alper
Countries: Germany/France/Turkey
Sumru, an ethnomusicologist, leaves her university in Istanbul and sets off for Diyarbakır in southeast Turkey, where she plans to record the elegies of those (mainly women) who have lost loved ones in the ongoing Turkish-Kurdish conflict. Yet the journey has another purpose, even if Sumru can’t admit it to herself: to find the man she herself loved and “lost.” Along the way she meets Ahmet, also wounded by the war, a street vendor who sells bootleg DVDs. Each comes to recognize the ongoing grief in the other, and as they probe their respective wounds they provide an outline of the great wound that continues to bleed the nation.
Thursday, May 10 at 8:10PM
CLIMATES (Iklimler) (2006) 101min
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Countries: Turkey/France
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s NYFF hit Once Upon a Time in Anatolia was a favorite among audiences with a mournfully droll Turkish analysis of male melancholy. Ceylan moves metaphorically and meteorologically from the warmth of western Turkey to the snowy cold of its eastern border in this visually stunning tale of a couple’s break-up and the aftermath.
Monday, May 7 at 3:30PM and Tuesday, May 8 at 8:30PM
CONFESSION (Itiraf) (2002) 100min
Director: Zeki Demirkubuz
Country: Turkey
Screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Confession brings a chilling, Dostoevskian feel to its searing look at the disintegration of a marriage. Harun (Taner Birsel) and NilgĂĽn (Başak KöklĂĽkaya) have been married for seven years. Their relationship seems uneventful enough, with little outward strife. Then Harun suspects his wife of having an affair, and he begins to draw apart from her. Yet he fears that confronting her might actually bring the affair into the open—or end the marriage.
Sunday, May 6 at 5:45PM and Thursday, May 10 at 4:10PM
CROSSING THE BRIDGE: THE SOUND OF ISTANBUL (2005) 90min
Director: Fatih Akın
Countries: Germany/Turkey
Crossroads between Europe and Asia, eastern and western cultures, as well as the former seat of a major empire—it’s little surprise that Turkey’s greatest city has developed an astonishingly rich and varied musical scene. Award-winning director Fatih Akın (Head On, The Edge of Heaven) takes us on a breathtaking tour of the sights and especially the sounds of Istanbul: you get to meet and hear Turkish rappers, Roma jazz musicians and traditional Kurdish singers, not to mention neo-psychedelic bands such as Baba Zula and various street performers.
Saturday, April 28 at 10:20PM and Thursday, May 10 at 6:15PM
DESPITE EVERYTHING (Herşeya Ragmen) (1988) 87min
Director: Orhan Oǧuz
Country: Turkey
Released from prison for unspecified offenses, Hasan (Talat Bulut) finds himself unable to reenter or even recognize the society into which he emerges. Even the most basic communication with other people is a challenge, and Hasan increasingly draws into himself. He finds a job as the driver of a hearse for one of Istanbul’s churches—a seemingly perfect job for someone trying to disappear in plain sight—but then he meets a woman and her son, and together they rekindle some kind of spark in Hasan’s life.
Saturday, April 28 at 5:30PM and Friday, May 4 at 3:00PM
DON’T LET THEM SHOOT THE KITE (Uçurtmayi Vurmasinlar) (1989) 100min Director: Tunç Başaran
Country: Turkey
When a woman is sent to prison for drug smuggling, Barış, her young son, is sent with her, as is the custom in Turkey. Inside this all-women’s penitentiary, Barış searches for companionship and guidance—and finds them both in the form of Inci (Nur SĂĽrer), a political prisoner with whom he forms a very special bond.
Saturday, May 5 at 5:00PM and Tuesday, May 8 at 2:00PM
DRY SUMMER (Susuz Yaz) (1963) 81min
Director: Metin Erksan
Country: Turkey
Winner of the Golden Bear at the 1964 Berlin Film Festival, Dry Summer is the story of two brothers, Hasan and Osman, whose land contains the water source that irrigates all the surrounding farms. The land is fertile, and all is peaceful until an exceptionally arid summer puts pressure on the water supply. Osman decides to close down access to the water for his fellow farmers, who band together to fight him; although preoccupied with his upcoming wedding, it’s left to Hasan to try to reestablish peace before it’s too late.
Saturday, April 28 at 1:30PM and Tuesday, May 1 at 2:15PM.
ELEGY (Ağıt) (1971) 80min
Director: Yılmaz GĂĽney
Country: Turkey
In this return to territory explored in earlier films such as Law of the Border, Yılmaz GĂĽney–again working as director, writer and lead actor–offers a tale about smugglers working in southeastern Turkey. Çobanoǧlu is a former peasant who took to smuggling in order to survive, made notorious by his success in eluding capture. The locals compete with each other to give information on Çobanoǧlu to the authorities for a price, while the landowners aren’t above hiring him for some of their own dirty work.
Wednesday, May 2 at 2:00PM and Friday, May 4 at 6:45PM
40 SQUARE METERS OF GERMANY (40m Almanya) (1986) 81min
Director: Tevfik Başer
Country: West Germany
Established as a guest worker in Germany, Dursun brings his young wife Turna from Anatolia. Scared that she’ll get lost in the big city where she doesn’t speak the language or know the customs, Dursun demands that she stay home all day, making Turna’s experience of her new country the 40 square meters trapped between the walls of their tiny apartment. Brought up to obey men, Turna tries to adjust to her new life, her only communication with the outside world being shared gazes with a young girl who lives across the way.
Friday, May 4 at 5:00PM and Saturday, May 5 at 1:30PM
HAZAL (1981) 90min
Director: Ali Ă–zgentĂĽrk
Country: Turkey
The wonderful TĂĽrkan Şoray stars as the title character in this internationally acclaimed chronicle of a collision between tradition and modernity. The son of a wealthy, respected family seeks the hand of Hazal; unexpectedly, soon after her marriage, her husband dies. According to custom, as the deceased family had paid dowry for Hazal, she must marry the next male sibling—which in this case, happens to be an 11-year old boy. Trapped by the obligations imposed on her and her own romantic stirrings, Hazal is forced to choose what future lies ahead.
Saturday, April 28 at 3:15PM and Thursday, May 3 at 1:00PM
HOPE (Umut) (1970) 100min
Director: Yılmaz GĂĽney
Director: Turkey
With Hope, Yılmaz GĂĽney—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 GĂĽney 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.
Tuesday, May 1 at 4:00PM and Wednesday, May 2 at 6:15PM
JOURNEY TO THE SUN (GĂĽneşe Yolculuk) (1999) 104min
Director: Yeşim Ustaoğlu
Countries: Turkey/Netherlands/Germany
Mehmet, a recent arrival to the teeming city, is fortunate. He has a shared room, a possible girlfriend and a neat job as a diviner for Istanbul’s municipal water system. He meets Berzan, a street music vendor familiar with the metropolis, and his moral education begins. Berzan is a Kurd, harassed by the authorities, and Mehmet’s friendship with him combined with his own “dark skin” puts Mehmet at extreme risk. Yeşim Ustaoğlu, an architect turned filmmaker, takes her characters on a journey east out of Istanbul into a ravishing and war-ravaged landscape close to the Iraqi border. Winner of the Best European Film Award at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival.
Saturday, April 28 at 7:50PM and Tuesday, May 8 at 4:00PM
KOSMOS (2010) 122min
Director: Reha Erdem
Countries: Turkey/Bulgaria
A mysterious stranger comes running out of a barren, snow-covered landscape; hearing screams, he heads to the river bank and saves a young boy who’s fallen in the swift currents. Although assumed to be dead, the boy is somehow revived by the stranger; later, the stranger, who calls himself Kosmos, is led by the boy’s grateful father and sister to a nearby town, where the locals greet him as a hero.
Wednesday, May 9 at 8:15PM
LAW OF THE BORDER (Hudutların Kanunu) (1966) 71min
Director: LĂĽtfi Ă–. Akad
Country: Turkey
On the surface, Law of the Border, is an action-packed, exciting smuggling drama with a powerful central performance by Yılmaz GĂĽney. Yet beyond the genre elements lays a searing critique of social conditions in southeastern Turkey, where lack of education, joblessness and general hopelessness have left the population little choice but to become outlaws in order to survive.
Tuesday, May 1 at 8:15PM and Friday, May 4
MOTHERLAND HOTEL (Anayurt Oteli) (1987) 110min
Director: Ă–mer Kavur
Country: Turkey
Zebercet (a beautiful performance by Macit Koper) runs a small provincial hotel that’s seen better days but still exudes a certain charm. One day, a beautiful, somewhat mysterious woman from Ankara comes to spend the night. She and Zebercet engage in some light conversation, and she promises that she’ll return to the hotel “next week” for a longer stay. But the week passes, and then another, and time begins to weigh more and more heavily on Zebercet, driving him further into his own thoughts and fantasies.
Thursday, May 3 at 5:00PM
MY AUNT (Teyzem) (1987) 81min
Director: Halit Refiǧ
Country: Turkey
One of the giants of filmmaking in Turkey, Halit Refiǧ created one of his finest works with this searing drama based on a screenplay by respected writer (and later filmmaker) Ümit Ünal. Üftade (Müjde Ar) has long been the object of men’s fury. In childhood, her stepfather constantly abused her, and later her marriage descends into vicious psychological domination. Throughout the years, her suffering is witnessed by her nephew who, despite his warm feelings for his aunt, nevertheless feels helpless to do anything about her condition.
Saturday, May 5 at 3:15PM and Wednesday, May 9 at 2:35PM
MY BELOVED WITH THE RED SCARF (Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalim) (1977) 90min
Director: Atif Yılmaz
Country: Turkey
My Beloved with the Red Scarf begins as truck driver Ilyas (Kadir Inanır) hauls a load of sand and gravel to a construction site; along the way he meets Asya (TĂĽrkan Şoray), a beautiful young woman from the countryside. Smitten, the couple run off together. At first all is fine: a son is born, and they set about creating a life together. But then Ilyas loses his job, and starts to slip away, drifting into alcohol and the arms of other women. Asya leaves him and eventually meets Cemşit, an older man eager to marry her and adopt her son. But just at it seems life is settling down for Asya, Ilyas reappears.
Sunday, April 29 at 6:45PM and Wednesday, May 2 at 3:45PM
MY CINEMAS (Benim Sinemalarim) (1990) 100min
Directors: FĂĽruzan and GĂĽlsĂĽn Karamustafa
Country: Turkey
Nesbibe lives with her parents on the outskirts of Istanbul; the family is poor, and her consistently unemployed father often takes out his frustration on the rest of the family. Nesbibe knows that there has to be something more to life, and she finds it—at the movies. As she recalls her childhood and adolescence, her own memories merge with scenes from the dozens of musicals, melodramas and romances she saw to fill her days and to escape the desperation of her home life.
Sunday, May 6 at 1:30PM and Wednesday, May 9 at 4:15PM.
OH BEAUTIFUL ISTANBUL (Ah, GĂĽzel Istanbul) (1966) 97min
Director: Atıf Yılmaz
Country: Turkey
The lovely Ayşe (Ayla Algan) moves from her country village to Istanbul in the hope of becoming an actress; there she acquires a boyfriend/manager/director who has other ideas about how she should use her good looks and talent. One day Ayşe meets Hasmet (Sadri Alişik), a grumpy, world-weary street photographer descended from a good family but having fallen on hard times. Haşmet takes it upon himself to cure the young woman of what he sees as her blind optimism, but some of it begins to rub off on the old cynic.
Friday, April 27 at 3:50PM and Monday, April 30 at 6:30PM
ON FERTILE LANDS (Bereketli Topraklar Ăśzerinde) (1979) 115min
Director: Erden Kıral
Country: Turkey
Three friends decide to abandon their poverty-stricken village and try their luck in Çukurova, a cotton-growing region in southern Turkey. Their search for better lives leads them from construction sites to factories to cotton fields, as they discover at every turn a system designed for exploitation and the frustration of their dreams.
Thursday, May 3 at 7:00PM.
REVENGE OF THE SNAKES (Yılanların Ă–cĂĽ) (1962) 108min
Director: Metin Erksan
Country: Turkey
A landmark in the history of filmmaking in Turkey whose importance has been compared to that of Open City for Italian cinema, Metin Erksan’s masterpiece cast a sharp gaze on the life in the backlands of Turkey’s eastern region. When the construction of a new house causes a dispute among neighbors, the fragile social fabric of a village comes undone, as rivalries, fears, and old, unsettled scores start to emerge.
Monday, April 30 at 8:30PM
SECRET FACE (Gizli YĂĽz) (1991) 115min
Director: Ă–mer Kavur
Country: Turkey
Adapted by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk from his novel The Black Book, Secret Face introduces us to a young photographer who spends each night haunting late-night Istanbul cafes, capturing on film the faces he meets in the shadows. The audience for his work is a mysterious woman, who scans his photographs in search of a certain face. At last she seems to find it, on a clockmaker working in a provincial town, and she sends the photographer off to find him. But soon this woman also disappears, setting the photographer off on a search that will bring him into an increasingly mysterious space made up equally of the physical world and the recesses of his own consciousness.
Friday, April 27 at 1:30PM and Sunday, May 6 at 3:30PM.
SOMERSAULT IN A COFFIN (Tabutta Rövaşata) (1996) 76min
Director: Derviş Zaim
Country: Turkey
Writer/director Derviş Zaim focuses his camera on a rarely seen side of Turkish life with the alternately darkly comic and unsettling Somersault in a Coffin. Mahsun, unemployed and homeless, steals cars to keep warm in winter and sponges off his friends for food. A sympathetic fisherman tries to help by paying Mahsun's tab at a local cafĂ©, and arranging a job for him there. But Mahsun's attention soon drifts to Rumelihisar Castle, a tourist attraction of this very old neighborhood, and the fifty peacocks that occupy the grounds.
Friday, April 27 at 9:15PM and Wednesday, May 9 at 1:00PM
STEAM: THE TURKISH BATH (Hamam) (1997) 94min
Director: Ferzan Ozpetek
Countries: Italy/Turkey/Spain
The thin curtain of steam rising from the floor of a traditional Istanbul hamam (steam bath) provides an apt symbol for a film concerned with the permeable boundaries between nations, cultures and people. A Turkish director and longtime resident of Italy (frequently featured in our annual Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series), Ferzan Ozpetek burst on the international scene with Steam: The Turkish Bath. Francesco, a young Italian designer with a rocky marriage, discovers that an aunt whom he’d never met has left him property in Istanbul in her will. That property turns out to be a hamam, and although Francesco at first plans to sell it, the building, the city and a budding sexual attraction soon make him reconsider.
Sunday, April 29 at 4:30PM and Monday, May 7 at 1:30PM
SUMMER BOOK (Tatil Kitabi) (2008) 92min
Director: Seyfi Teoman
Country: Turkey
In a quiet, beautiful town on the Mediterranean coast, children play in the ruins of an old fort, and life goes on at its own pace. But beneath the surface, at least for the family of 10-year old Ali, tensions are brewing. His older brother is looking for a way out of military academy; his divorced uncle seems to grow more eccentric by the day. Meanwhile, Ali’s mother grows suspicious of her husband’s increasingly frequent business trips. And for Ali, something has to be done about the bullies forever picking on him. These narrative currents suddenly all come together when Ali’s father suffers a cerebral hemorrhage, and each member of the family has to redefine his or her role within it.
Wednesday, May 9 at 6:20PM
THREE FRIENDS (Ũç Arkadaş) (1958) 90min
Director: Memduh Ũn
Country: Turkey
Three friends live practically on the streets of Istanbul, cadging small jobs every now and then to make ends meet but mainly enjoying each other and the carefree life. Then they meet Gül (Muhterem Nur), a beautiful blind girl who has given up all hope. Trying to boost her spirits, the friends decide to pretend that they’re actually wealthy socialites who together share a classic villa in a posh part of town. The ruse works, for a while, but the friends begin to fear what will happen when Gül discovers the truth.
Sunday, April 29 at 1:00PM and Monday, April 30 at 2:15PM.
VIZONTELE (2001) 110min
Directors: Yılmaz Erdoğan and Ă–mer Faruk Sorak
Country: Turkey
Based on the childhood memories of co-director and star Yılmaz Erdoğan (recently seen in Once Upon a time in Anatolia as the police inspector), Vizontele chronicles the price of change in a small village in southeastern Turkey. The village mayor seeks to exert strict control over his electorate; his principal opponent is Latif, an opportunist who runs open air film screenings. But the villagers are growing tired of Latif’s recycled movies, and the mayor decides to break Latif’s monopoly by introducing the village’s first TV set—which is when the battle (and the fun) really begins.
Sunday, April 29 at 9:00PM and Thursday, May 10 at 2:00PM
YOL (1982) 111min
Director: Şerif Gören
Countries: Turkey/Switzerland/France
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 GĂĽney (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. Thursday, May 3 at 2:50PM and Friday, May 4 at 8:45PM
Public Screening Schedule
Screening Venue:
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street, between Broadway & Amsterdam (upper level)
The Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th Street, between Broadway & Amsterdam
Friday, April 27
1:30PM SECRET FACE (115min)
3:50PM BEAUTIFUL ISTANBUL (97min)
6:30PM CAN (106min)
9:15PM SOMERSAULT IN A COFFIN (76min)
Saturday, April 28
1:30PM DRY SUMMER (81min)
3:15PM HAZAL (90min)
5:30PM DESPITE EVERYTHING (96min)
7:50PM JOURNEY TO THE SUN (104min)
10:20PM CROSSING THE BRIDGE: THE SOUND OF ISTANBUL (90min)
Sunday, April 29
1:00PM THREE FRIENDS (90min)
2:45PM Panel Discussion: The Space Between: The Trajectory of Turkish Cinema
4:30PM STEAM: THE TURKISH BATH (94min)
6:45PM MY BELOVED WITH THE RED SCARF (90min
9:00PM VIZONTELE (110 min)
Monday, April 30
2:15PM THREE FRIENDS (90min)
4:15PM REVENGE OF THE SNAKES (108min)
6:30PM OH BEAUTIFUL ISTANBUL (97min)
8:30PM REVENGE OF THE SNAKES (108min)
Tuesday, May 1
2:15PM DRY SUMMER (81min)
4:00PM HOPE (100min)
8:15PM LAW OF THE BORDER (71min)
Wednesday, May 2
2:00PM ELEGY (82min)
3:45PM MY BELOVED WITH THE RED SCARF (90min)
6:15PM HOPE (100min)
Thursday, May 3
1:00PM HAZAL (90min)
2:50PM YOL (111min)
5:00PM MOTHERLAND HOTEL (101min)
7:00PM ON FERTILE LAND (115min)
9:15PM MOTHERLAND HOTEL (101min)
Friday, May 4
1:00PM LAW OF THE BORDER (71min)
3:00PM DESPITE EVERYTHING (96 min)
5:00PM 40 SQUARE METERS OF GERMANY (80 min)
6:45PM ELEGY (82min)
8:45PM YOL (111min)
Saturday, May 5
1:30PM 40 SQUARE METERS OF GERMANY (80min)
(at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center)
3:15PM MY AUNT (81min)
5:00PM DON’T LET THEM SHOOT THE KITE (100min)
Sunday, May 6
1:30PM MY CINEMAS (100min)
(at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center)
3:30PM SECRET FACE (115min)
5:45PM CONFESSION (100min)
Monday, May 7
1:30PM STEAM: THE TURKISH BATH (94min)
3:30PM CLIMATES (101min)
Tuesday, May 8
2:00PM DON’T LET THEM SHOOT THE KITE (100min)
4:00PM JOURNEY TO THE SUN (104min)
8:30PM CLIMATES (101min)
Wednesday, May 9
1:00PM SOMERSAULT IN A COFFIN (76min)
2:35PM MY AUNT (81min)
4:15PM MY CINEMAS (100min)
6:20PM SUMMER BOOK (92 min)
8:15PM KOSMOS (122min)
Thursday, May 10
2:00PM VIZONTELE (110min)
4:10PM CONFESSION (100min)
6:15PM CROSSING THE BRIDGE: THE SOUND OF ISTANBUL (90min)
8:10PM FUTURE LASTS FOREVER (108min)
Moon and Stars Project of the American Turkish Society
The Moon and Stars Project was founded in 2002 in New York as a not-for-profit, all-volunteer organization, dedicated to promoting greater cultural interaction between the United States and Turkey, and highlighting the changing face of Turkey’s arts and culture scene. In 2011, following a decade of unprecedented arts and culture programs, Moon and Stars Project became the culture division of The American Turkish Society, America’s oldest not-for-profit organization, founded in 1949, seeking to enhance economic, diplomatic, educational and cultural ties between Turkey and the United States.
Moon and Stars Project offers year-round programming including traditional and contemporary programs in music, visual arts, literature, theater and film, as well as project sponsorships, grants and scholarships, for emerging and established artists.
One of its flagship programs is the New York Turkish Film Festival, which has screened over 200 films in its 12-year history.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Under the leadership of Rose Kuo, Executive Director, and Richard Peña, Program Director, the Film Society of Lincoln Center offers the best in international, classic and cutting-edge independent cinema. The Film Society presents two film festivals that attract global attention: the New York Film Festival, currently planning its 50th edition, and New Directors/New Films which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA. The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, and for over three decades has given an annual award—now named “The Chaplin Award”—to a major figure in world cinema. Past recipients of this award include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks. The Film Society presents a year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures, educational programs and specialty film releases at its Walter Reade Theater and the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.
The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stella Artois, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow #filmlinc on Twitter.
For Media specific inquiries, please contact:
John Wildman, (212) 875-5419
[email protected]
David Ninh, (212) 875-5423
[email protected]
For the Moon and Stars Project of the American Turkish Society:
Mary Frances Duffy
The Dilenschneider Group
212-922-0900
C ell: 917-854-6580
[email protected]
