An analysis of a short-lived cinema journal: the young cinema (genç sinema) in Turkey, 1968-1971

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1304404 (Table of Contents)

This study, starting from the analysis of the journal The Young Cinema (Genç Sinema), which was issued sixteen volumes between October 1968 and April 1971, aims to analyze how the namesake cinema group organized around the journal, The Young Cinema perceives their socio-politic conjunctures and how this perception is reflected on the perspective of their own cinema. The study claims that a cinema movement/group appeared at a certain period or era or the improvement thereof, is influenced to a great extent by the cinematic developments in the previous and/or contemporary period as well as the sociopolitical climate in which it is situated. From this point forth, this study tries to analyze the influences of cinema movements germinating on a national and international scale in the 1960s and the highly politicized social context on the emergence of Young Cinema and exemplify this influence through the articles and essays in the journal. This study points out that the subject group has the two characteristics of the cinematic movements in the 1960s (despite the differences in dimension and degree). These characteristics are the opposition to the dominant economic relations (capitalism) and ideology (imperialism) of the era in which it emerged and the disengagement from the international (Hollywood) and national (for Young Cinema – Yesilçam) cinema sector. The fact that Young Cinema Group is oppositional to the existing economic and political system and is inspirational for a new system conduces the group to co-operate with the revolutionist young movements on a operational and theoretical level as well as to perceive cinema as tool in the realization of the revolution (the prior aim of the group). Simultaneously, the disengagement from Yesilçam, which symbolizes the dependence on imperialist powers and the reflection of capitalist-imperialist infrastructure causes the members in the Young Cinema to discuss the ways to found an independent structure which will completely isolate them from the existing system and the ways to integrate their films into the organizational process created by the alternative economic relations of this independent structure. This study examines all the above-mentioned subject matters by referring to the articles and discussions in the Group’s Journal on a fundamental level as well as to oral history studies carried out with some of the representatives of the Group.