Cem Yilmaz Film
Trinity Pullam
After being convicted of killing judge Sefa Mutlu in 1974 (a charge which he denied[6]), Gney fled the country and was later stripped of his citizenship.[7][8] A year before his death in 1983, he co-founded the Kurdish Institute of Paris together with the Kurdish poets Cegerxwn and Hejar among others.[9]
Yılmaz Gney was born in 1937 in the village of Yenice in Adana province.[10] His father, Hamit, who was from Siverek in Şanlıurfa province, moved to Yenice after both of his brothers were murdered.[11] His mother was from Varto in Muş province.[1][7] His parents migrated to Adana to work as labourers in the cotton fields and the young Yılmaz grew up surrounded by the Kurdish working class. Besides working in the fields he had several other jobs including movie delivery boy, horse-cart driver and writing short stories for a local magazine.[12] His first article was published in August 1955 and his first poem a week later while he was still attending high school.[10] His writing brought him into difficulties with the authorities, especially for a short story he wrote about a person aiming for a better world, which was deemed Communist propaganda and for which he had to stand trial.[13] These experiences laid the ground for his future work which generally focused on a realistic portrayal of the downtrodden and marginalised in Turkish society. In 1957, Gney started studying law at Istanbul University but was quickly drawn into the film industry in which he already had connections from his time in Adana. In Istanbul he met the novelist Yasar Kemal, who connected him with other people from Adana working in the Istanbul film industry.[14]
Through Yeşilam, the Turkish studio system, a handful of directors, including Atıf Yılmaz, began to use cinema as a means of addressing the problems of the people. Until then state-sanctioned melodramas, war films and adaptations of plays had mostly been performed in Turkish theatres.[citation needed] The new filmmakers began to shoot and screen more realistic images of Kurdish and Turkish life.[citation needed] Yılmaz Gney, a gruff-looking young actor who earned the moniker irkin Kral (Turkish: The Ugly King) or "Paşay Naşirn" in Kurdish, was one of the most popular new names to emerge from this milieu. After working as an apprentice screenwriter for and assistant to Atıf Yılmaz, he began appearing in as many as twenty films a year and became one of Turkey's the most popular actors.[citation needed]
However, in 1957 Gney was accused of Communist propaganda just weeks after settling in Istanbul and was sentenced in May 1958 to seven and a half years imprisonment,[15] a verdict against which he appealed. His conviction lead to his dismissal by his conservative employer, but brought him new employment with the left-wing Atıf Yılmaz who was preparing a movie based on a work of Yaşar Kemal.[16] For this new job, he changed his surname from Putn to the Gney by which he is known today.[17] Atif Yilmaz introduced him to a career as an actor which began in 1958 when he was the supporting actor in the movie The Children of the Fatherland (Turkish: Bu Vatanın ocukları) before becoming a main character the same year in the movie Alageyik (Red Deer).[17] The appeals court In Istanbul reduced his prison sentence to one year and a half, but before he could enter prison, the juridical procedures were interrupted by the coup d'tat in 1960.[15] He was then imprisoned on 15 June 1961 on the grounds of the verdict before the coup[18] and released in 1962.[17] In prison he wrote what some labelled a Communist novel,[19] They Died with Their Heads Bowed.[19][20] Gney stayed loyal to his left-wing connections throughout his career[21] and his relationship with the authorities became even more tense in the ensuing years. Not satisfied with his star status in the Turkish film industry, Gney began directing his own pictures in 1965. From 1966 onwards he earned considerable amounts with the movies he produced which gave him some financial freedom.[22] He and his partner Nebahat ehre were able to leave their apartment in Beyoğlu and settle in uptown Levent.[22] By 1968 he had formed his own production company, Gney Filmcilik (Gney Films). Over the next few years, the titles of his films mirrored the feelings of the underprivileged people of Turkey and he often portrayed people struggling against the mighty and powerful: Kasımpaşalı Recep (Recep from Kasımpaşa) or Konyakı (the Cognac Drinker), both produced in 1965, are examples.[23] Other movies he worked in are Umut (Hope, 1970); Ağıt (Elegy, 1972); Acı (Pain, 1971); and Umutsuz (The Hopeless, 1971). Umut is considered to have been the first realistic film of Turkish Cinema and the American director Elia Kazan was among the first to praise it, writing "Umut is a poetic film, completely native, not an imitation of Hollywood or any of the European masters, it had risen out of a village environment".[24]
After the military coup in March 1971, Gney was in pretrial for weeks and decided to leave Istanbul to evade further trouble with the authorities.[8] Arrested for harbouring anarchist students, he was jailed in 1972 during preproduction for Zavallılar (The Miserable, 1975), and before completing Endişe (Worry, 1974), which was finished by his assistant, Şerif Gren. This was a role that Gren would repeat over the next twelve years, directing several scripts that Gney wrote while in prison.
Released from prison in 1974 as part of a general amnesty,[8] Gney was re-arrested that same year and charged with shooting Sefa Mutlu, the judge of the Yumurtalık district in Adana province, dead in a night club during a drunken row.[25][26] He was given a prison sentence of nineteen years but always declared his innocence.[8] During his incarceration, his most successful screenplays were Sr (The Herd, 1978) and Dşman (The Enemy, 1979), both directed by Zeki kten. Dşman won an Honourable Mention at the 30th Berlin International Film Festival in 1980.[27] While in prison, Kazan visited and supported him, believing he had been jailed on account of his political activism.[28]
Gney and Nebahat ehre divorced in 1968 after he tried to crush his wife with a car, but many of those closest to Gney always regarded ehre as the love of his life.[citation needed] In 2019 ehre shared details of her relationship with Gney asa guest on the programme Şafak Yavuz's Visor.[29]
In September 1980, Gney's works were banned by the new military junta causing Gney to declare: "There are only two possibilities: to fight or to give up, I chose to fight".[30] After escaping from prison in 1981 and fleeing to France,[31] Gney won the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival for his film Yol (The Road) whose director in the field was once again Şerif Gren. It was not until 1983 that Gney resumed directing, telling a brutal tale of imprisoned children in his final film, Duvar (The Wall, 1983), which was made in France with the cooperation of the French government. Meanwhile, Turkey's government revoked his citizenship and a court sentenced him to another twenty-two years in jail in absentia.[19]
A biography of Gney, Halkın Sanatısı, Halkın Savaşısı: Yılmaz Gney (The People's Artist, The People's Warrior: Yılmaz Gney), was published by Dnşm Publishing in 1992 and reprinted in 2000. In 2001 its publisher was fined for some of its content, although this was overturned in 2003 when the relevant law was repealed.[33]
A master of startling imagery, vigorous storytelling and political commitment, Yilmaz Gney (1931-84) is a legendary figure in Turkish cinema and undoubtedly the best-known and most controversial filmmaker the country has produced to date.
After a period of intense productivity that produced a series of impassioned films, Gney was again imprisoned in 1972, accused of ties to revolutionary groups. Released as part of a 1974 general amnesty, Gney was able to make two more films before being arrested and convicted for the murder of a right-wing judge, apparently during a restaurant brawl. The details of the crime remain obscure and controversial and Gney always maintained his innocence despite incriminating evidence.
Inside prison, Gney devoted himself furiously to screenwriting, completing three scripts and copious notes which he sent to his collaborators and which resulted in The Herd (1978) and his most famous film Yol (1982). Pointing out that filmmaking is always a collaborative process, Gney declared himself deeply satisfied with these films. Indeed, Gney considered these late films to be more intregal to his oeuvre than his first genre films.
Yilmaz Gney (Turkey, 1974) New 35mm Print! Gney turns his gaze away from the struggling rural poor and toward the alienated urban rich in this scathing Antonioniesque indictment of the class boundaries and glass ceilings of contemporary Turkey. Gney stars as a still-committed activist who reunites with a now-rich, debauched old friend. (100 mins)
Gney became a director in the midsixties, creating a cinema that took key elements of Turkish and Kurdish outlaw folklore and merged them into a hypnotic blend of Italian and Hollywood Westerns, Third World cinema, and social realism. In 1974, however, he was arrested for the murder of a right-wing judge, and sentenced to eighteen years (his fourth imprisonment since 1961). Miraculously, he still managed to smuggle out screenplays and precise directing instructions for three new films.
Coordinated at BAM/PFA by Kathy Geritz. Special thanks to Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism; Turkish Culture and Tourism Counselor's Office, Washington DC; Hseyin Karabey, the Gney Foundation; Erju Ackman, Turkish Cinema Newsletter; and Deniz Gktrk, UC Berkeley, for their invaluable assistance in making this series possible. The series features new 35mm prints, provided by Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Copyright and Cinema, Telif Hakları ve Sinema Genel Mdrlğ.
59fb9ae87f