UCL Mellon Programme - Cüneyt Çakirlar

Seminar: 22 January 2009 (Chair: Dr Cüneyt Çakirlar, more ... )

Nomadic Discourses in post-90s Turkish Cinema

A screening and discussion of:

Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (dir. Fatih Akın, 2005)

Abstract:

Fatih Akin’s film/documentary Crossing the Bridge (2005) narrates the diverse music scene in Istanbul. Akin collaborates with Alexander Hacke, the German musician and composer, a member of the band Einsturzende Neubauten, and creates a portrait of Istanbul through Hacke’s voyage and experience of the contemporary Turkish music. In our discussion, we will try to understand Akin’s discourse of multiculturalism-interculturalism in depicting/representing Istanbul. Crossing the Bridge consists of performances and interviews by the neo-psychedelic band Baba Zula, fusion DJs Orient Expressions, rock bands Duman and Replikas, maverick rocker Erkin Koray, Ceza, breakdance performers Istanbul Style Breakers, Mercan Dede, the clarinetist Selim Sesler, Canadian folk singer Brenna MacCrimmon, street performers Siyasiyabend, Aynur, Orhan Gencebay, and the divas Müzeyyen Senar and Sezen Aksu.

Suggested Readings:

Berghahn, Daniela. ‘ No Place Like Home? Or Impossible Homecomings in the Films of Fatih Akin’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 4:3, 2006, 141-57.

Keyder, Caglar. Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).

Pamuk, Orhan. Istanbul: Memories of a City, trans. Maureen Freely ( London: Faber, 2005).

Petek, Polona. ‘Enabling Collisions: Re-thinking Multiculturalism through Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand/Head On’, Studies in European Cinema 4:3, 2007, pp. 177-86.

Robins, Kevin and Aksoy, Asu. ‘ Istanbul Rising: Returning the Repressed to Urban Culture’, European and Regional Studies 2:3, 1995, pp. 223-35.

Robins, Kevin. ‘Prisoners of the City: Whatever Could a Postmodern City Be?’, Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location, edited by E. Carter, J. Donald and J. Squires (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993), pp. 303-29.

Stokes, Martin. The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

Stokes, Martin. ‘Sounding Out: The Culture Industries and the Globalization of Istanbul’, Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local, edited by Caglar Keyder (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), pp. 121-39.

This page last modified 10 December, 2009 by UCL Mellon Admin

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