A Touch of Thread! May 16–26, 2019

Istanbul Modern Cinema presents a film program in parallel with “The Event of a Thread” exhibition. Curated by Müge Turan, the program traces the journey of textiles throughout the history of cinema, and includes films that address the policies of the fashion industry, films from different periods and genres about the relationship between cinema and fabrics and paint as well as films that focus on costumes as a defining feature of characters in the storylines. One of the most important directors of Czech New Wave, Vera Chytilová’s Daisies (Sedmikrásky) deconstructs the dresses, colors and patterns that deal with the texture of cinema to address the concept of fabric from a feminist perspective, while Machines takes place in a huge textiles factory in India’s Gujarat region. In this journey into the dark heart of the global textile industry, we hear workers and their modern day stories of slavery.

Clothes are always ideological. And the winner of this year’s “Best Costume” Academy Award, the Afro-futurist superhero film Black Panther is a perfect example of this. Adding an alternative layer to the world of Marvel, the film seeks a response to the question, “How would African societies dress if they had not been colonized in the past,” and comes to the fore with costumes inspired by the traditional cultures of different African tribes and their transformations into super hero outfits. The film’s costume designer Ruth E. Carter uses garments weft in Ghana and integrates them with the technique of 3D printing. Another highlight from the “A Touch of Thread!” program is Muhsin Ertuğrul’s final film, The Carpetmaker Girl (Halıcı Kız), which is also the first film in color from the cinema of Turkey. The story begins in Isparta, and travels around Anatolia and depicts carpet making in long takes through the camera that has just recently discovered color.