Tilda September 1–30, 2008

Screenings are free of charge for the museum visitors.

One always plays his own self. Whatever you do, it is autobiographic. For the last thing you’d want is to be seen as if you were acting." Tilda Swinton

İstanbul Modern Cinema, focuses the spotlight on the avangard personality of the Scottish actress, Tilda Swinton on screen. The program titled "Tilda" consists of a collection of films, most of which are to be shown for the first time in Turkey.

Tilda Swinton’s career started with experimental low-budget films. In her first 7 films she worked with Derek Jarman, an independent British filmmaker known for his provocative and homosexual activism. Tilda was school mates with Princess Diana; she was involved in horse races for quite a long time; she acted the "extraterrestrial" in the video-clip of the song titled "The Box" by the electronic music band Orbital; she slept in a glass prism 8 hours a day, for the duration of many days, as part of an installation titled "The Maybe"; she acted the Virgin Mary in Jarman’s movie "The Garden".

After having performed these experimental roles created by Jarman’s imagination, following his death, Swinton moved on to Holywood. She acted The White Witch in Narnia Diaries and a protective mother in The Deep End. Moreover Hollywood crowned her success by awarding Swinton with an Oscar for her role in Michael Clayton.

Tilda Swinton will now meet the audience of the İstanbul Modern Cinema through the various types of women roles she has acted.

In the roles she plays, the actress depicts women who are far from established female images; she breaks up the sexual identity stereotypes with her extraterrestrial image and most of the time managing to reflect a bisexual sexuality-as in Orlando- and keeps on discovering the meaning of androgen. As an actress she can easily move between different sexual poles as well as between ages and she charges every character she plays with a hypnotic energy of her own.