CINEMA STUDIES, Burak Türten, Editör, University of South Florida M3 Publishing, Florida, ss.77-88, 2022
In the movies of Zeki
Demirkubuz, who is one of the significant representatives of independent cinema
in Turkey, we can see an attitude towards the deliberate neglect of certain
events and situations related to the phenomenon of ideology and the
representation of the state although they do not visibly include political and
ideological references. This director draws attention to the general
characteristics of the sociopolitical climate of the period in which he has
lived, especially with images of prisons, schools, or housing estates, through
elements and motifs that evoke alienation and insecurity, as well as the
difficulties of taking action in terms of characters and the controlling
influence of an unknown, transcendent power that drives people to marked
inaction. The between-the-lines meanings or the sub-texts of his movies, in
which ideological phenomena are not directly reflected, function as tools of
the established order that cripples individual existence. Almost all of the
characters are lonely, alienated, and insecure, having lost their political
impulses and urges. In other words, they are people who have succumbed to the
dominant cultural and political status quo and have no dealings with the
system. The functioning of institutions and organizations reminiscent of the
state and its ideological influences in general is almost never reflected on
the screen, and when it is rarely reflected, it is quite indirect, obscure, and
ambiguous, depicted as an area of lifelessness, emotional poverty, and
spiritlessness. In this article, we present some clues to the invisible and
uncertain functioning of the state and ideological phenomena in general and its
possible causes through the images and metaphors in the movies of Demirkubuz,
primarily using the content analysis method. It is concluded that, in
Demirkubuz’s movies, the state and ideological tendencies in general are
uncertain, and the main reason for this is the low level of awareness of the
characters about social reality. Therefore, their existential concerns precede
the rules that govern the social world.