Abstract:

This essay aims at analyzing the disappearance of the working class subject and the politics of redistribution in the new independent Turkish cinema emerged in the mid 1990s. In those years a new cinema, very different from Yeşilçam filmmaking practices, was born. A new generation of filmmakers who were cosmopolitan, spoke several languages and knew about the world cinema became visible. They were also very individualistic although the economic problems and the agonies of the working class were still very persistent. The political pressure caused by the 1980 Coup d’Etat was much lighter towards the 1990s. Although the labour unions were active in the 1990s and the political restrictions were much lighter than the previous decades the new intellectual filmmakers such as Derviş Zaim, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Yeşim Ustaoğlu and Zeki Demirkubuz refrained from focusing on the agonies of the working class. They instead preferred to concentrate on micro political issues, identity problems and existential stories. This essay argues that apart from the individualism propagated by the prime minister of the post-Coup d’Etat period Turgut Özal’s neoliberal policies, globalisation and its cultural extensions such as festivalism are crucial structural agents in shaping the filmmakers’ cinematographic choices. Festivals that target the well-educated but less radical urban elites are rarely critically analysed by the academia and the new dependencies they create are not throughoutly discussed. However, they highly restrict the thematic choices of the young filmmakers as this essay aims at arguing.

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