One Hundred Years of Love: The Affair Between Film and Audience in Turkey

On its 10th anniversary, Istanbul Modern celebrates the 100th anniversary of Turkish cinema

Within the scope of its 10th year and in honor of the 100th anniversary of Turkish film, Istanbul Modern presents the exhibition “One Hundred Years of Love: The Affair between Film and Audience in Turkey”. Focusing on audiences as the element that keeps cinema alive, “One Hundred Years of Love” features moments of encounter between film and people and the collective and individual worlds these meetings created. Organized with the support of “The Istanbul Development Agency’s 2014 “Istanbul as a Global Tourism Center’ Financial Support Program for Non-Profit Organizations” and with the contributions of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, this research exhibition is a first of its kind in Turkey. Türk Tuborg A.Ş. has also contributed to the exhibition, which aims to evaluate the phenomenon of cinema in Turkey from the audience’s perspective.

Curated by Müge Turan, head of Istanbul Modern Cinema, and researcher and writer Gökhan Akçura, One Hundred Years of Love is on view between September 25, 2014 and January 4, 2015. By digitizing visual and written materials pertaining to audiences in Turkish film history, “One Hundred Years of Love” alsoaims to render visible the memory of a history whose sources have been poorly preserved and kept alive only through personal efforts.

Emphasizing that movie theaters – the meeting spaces of audiences with films – are “audience temples”, the exhibition offers a nostalgic overview of these venues from the first movie houses in Turkey to today’s festival halls. In addition to looking at the ways in which relationships are established between audiences, films and theatres, such as newspaper advertisements, film brochures, and posters, the exhibition has a section dedicated to audience fanaticism. Observing that the majority of moviegoers are “fanatics”, this section features all sorts of film publications and objects of devotion – pictures of film stars that used to be inserted in chocolate bar and bubble gum packages, books on films, novels, calendars featuring film stars and other significant memorabilia of this kind.

Entitled The Audience is Fanatic, this section also features three “fanatic” fans: Pınar Çekirge, who is 54 years old and still devastated by films in which Filiz Akın, “the imaginary heroin of his childhood”, dies; Metin Şamdan, proudly nicknamed “Şorayholic” and today the president of the Türkan Şoray Fan Club, which he says gives “meaning to his life”; and Vadullah Taş, whose passion led him to collect some “five truckloads” of archives on his “universal folk hero”, Yılmaz Güney. Aside from items from their personal worlds, this section includes videos in which they talk about the star they hold in great admiration.

The exhibition additionally conveys the “magical” relationship between cinema and the audience by featuring examples of autographed photos of stars, fan letters, magazine covers, and telephone rendezvous with stars arranged by magazines as promotional campaigns.

For “One Hundred Years of Love”, scenes from close to 50 Turkish films reflecting the special relationship between cinema and the audience were compiled and edited in a video. The video comes to the fore as an important visual document, taking visitors through the history of cinema and the audience in Turkey from the 1950s to the present.

Moreover, a special space in the exhibition offers a nostalgic experience that transforms the audience’s relationship with film soundtracks. Viewers can select classic songs featured in Turkish movies and listen to them while watching the scenes in which they were played.

“One Hundred Years of Love” relied heavily on the archives of private collectors, among them Agâh Özgüç, Burçak Evren, Gökhan Akçura, Ömer Durmaz, Turan Tanyer, Cengiz Kahraman and Ali Özuyar.

Press Conference

At a press conference to announce the exhibition opening, Istanbul Modern Chair Oya Eczacıbaşıpointed out that, on its 10th year, Istanbul Modern continues to demonstrate its interdisciplinary approach through innovative projects. “Opened on December 11, 2004, Istanbul Modern is the first museum in Turkey with a film department and cinema program. Istanbul Modern Cinema presents examples both from Turkey and world cinema, bringing extraordinary films and documentaries to movie lovers. For the 100th anniversary of Turkish film,Istanbul Modern, which itself is celebrating its 10th year, presents a research exhibition focusing on the hundred-year love story between cinema and audiences in Turkey. It gives us great pleasure to host such an exhibition, a first of its kind in Turkey. The exhibition looks at film culture and the love of movies in Turkey from the viewpoint of the ‘audience’. Thanks to extensive visual and written archival research, the exhibition renders visible the collective memory of film history in Turkey, thus reflecting how cinema changes and transforms us and giving us the opportunity to reevaluate numerous sociocultural dynamics. I would like to thank all those who contributed to making this exhibition possible, including those who, with great effort, compiled and digitized the visual and written materials and those who prepared a comprehensive exhibition catalogue for future generations to consult.”

Istanbul Modern Director Levent Çalıkoğlu noted that “One Hundred years of Love” brought together, through an unprecedented conceptual framework, archival materials which were previously untouched and in separate hands. Çalıkoğlu said, “The archival work of our new research exhibition, ‘One Hundred Years of Love: The Affair between Film and Audience in Turkey’, sheds light on the century-long journey of film in Turkey since 1914, the year that most consider to mark the birth of cinema in Turkey. ‘One Hundred years of Love’ focuses on the visual, cultural, imaginary and political bonds between audiences and cinema in Turkey as an art form of modern times. This history opens a new area of sociological discussion which is key to understanding the present century. The data obtained in the research and presented in the exhibition provide an important roadmap for reinterpreting and making sense of this history.”

Gökhan Akçura, researcher, writer and co-curator of the exhibition, emphasized that “One Hundred Years of Love” sought to capture the evolution of cinema in Turkey “from the viewpoint of the audience”. “We looked at Turkey’s film history alongside the audience: what they saw, what they liked, what transpired between this person and that movie. In a sense it is a history of everyday life. But it does provide us certain scientific data, though from a bird’s-eye view. The relationship of the audience with films and cinema was much more powerful at the beginning because cinema was a very ‘special’ thing back then. It was a new, unbelievable, magical world – a phenomenon that influenced and changed people. Today, the relationship between cinema and the audience is different. Film has become a larger part of our everyday lives than ever before, but we can no longer speak of the magical relationship that used to exist.”

Müge Turan, head of Istanbul Modern Cinema and co-curator of the exhibition, noted that the exhibition’s point of departure was the idea that in cinema we are, above all else, viewers. “This is a topic that has not been dwelled upon or explored previously. We sought to interpret film history through the eyes of the audience. In this incomplete story, we strove to trace the footsteps of the audience and bring together whatever related written and visual materials we could find in the archives we were able to access. We wanted to trace and show how the audience was born, evolved, took shape and gave shape... Since the journey returned us to the “olden golden” days, the exhibition naturally ended up being an emotional one. Tracing this great love story was not easy. The archive of film history in Turkey is like a puzzle with many pieces scattered among various and private sources. We asked for the help of collectors we met during our lengthy research and preliminary work; they are, at the same time, the guardians of memory of Turkish film. We proceeded under the guidance of such advisors such as Necip Sarıcı and Agâh Özgüç and consulted experts and institutions working on film history in Turkey.”

Pointing out that the greatest loss in these hundred years has been the disappearance of movie theaters, where the love between cinema and the audience once flourished, Müge Turan said this was also the most bittersweet section of the exhibition. “What a magical world it was with its seats, foyers, ushers, and lobbies! However much its codes have changed with social history, going to the movies was a very important part of both city and country life. This collective memory unavoidably evokes a longing. Although we turned a little to literature and also hunted for memories in the collage film prepared for the exhibition, what truly served as our memory was, again, cinema itself. We brought together scenes from Turkish films showing audiences or movie halls. I believe it is a solid work of social history. Dozens of extinct theaters and long-forgotten movie-going rituals will flash before our eyes ‘like a filmstrip’”.

The content of this project prepared within the scope of the Istanbul Development Agency’s 2014 Financial Support Program does not reflect the views of the Istanbul Development Agency and/or of the Turkish Ministry of Development; the content of this project is the sole responsibility of Istanbul Modern.