Imagintions of the Anatolian landscape: The films of Sabahattin Eyüboğlu

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2482912_ (Table of Contents)

My thesis examines short documentary films produced by the literary and cultural critic, translator, and scholar Sabahattin Eyuboğlu within the rubric of the Istanbul University Film Center. Composed of travels into Anatolia’s cultural geography with an eye scrutinizing the archeological and ethnographic heritage, I argue that his filmography gives a reading of Anatolia as a trope of the motherland as part of Turkey’s construction of its national culture, which translates into a journey representing Asia Minor’s ancient history, folklore, and picturesque landscape in the films. Seeking the imprints of this ideologically-determined approach in the form and content of Eyuboğlu’s films, I also account for the workings of this trope through a survey of the intellectual history of Turkey. I analyze these imprints in the film’s "cinematographic re-animation" of the past and their representation of the space of Anatolia as a mythical and trans historical entity