Description
Book SynopsisIn the last five years of the twentieth century, films by the second and third generation of the so-called German guest workers exploded onto the German film landscape. Self-confident, articulate, and dynamic, these films situate themselves in the global exchange of cinematic images, citing and rewriting American gangster narratives, Kung Fu action films, and paralleling other emergent European minority cinemas. This, the first book-length study on the topic, will function as an introduction to this emergent and growing cinema and offer a survey of important films and directors of the last two decades. In addition, it intervenes in the theoretical debates about Turkish German culture by engaging with different methodological approaches that originate in film studies.
Sabine Hake is the Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin.
Barbara Mennel is Associate Professor of German Studies and Film and Media Studies at the University of Florida,
Trade Review
“This collection of essays significantly contributes to reimagining Turkish German cultural productions as part of a larger conversation on world cinema, global, and diaspora studies, without losing sight of the historical and cultural specificity of places and spaces in which culture is produced.” · German Studies Review
“With its multiplicity of topics this varied volume contributes much to the promising study of Turkish German cinema, and more general: migrant cinema. [This volume] does not only show how much research there has already been done, but also how much work remains to be done.” · Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
“[This book] …breaks new ground in film-theoretical approaches to the field and points the way to future avenues of investigation. Particularly refreshing are chapters that take account of how Turkish German film intersects with new forms of spectatorship…in its attention to a variety of media and genres, theoretical frameworks, institutional contexts, and its rare inclusion of perspectives from outside Germany…The volume pushes the boundaries of existing scholarship. More than just a survey, it offers productive models for future studies in the field.” · German Quarterly
“This volume presents an impressive array of essays ... which will be essential reading in German and European culture programs, cinema studies, and minority/diasporic culture studies. The collection emphasizes not only the variety of cultural products here summarized under ‘Turkish German cinema,’ ... but also methodological diversity.” · Katrin Sieg, Georgetown University
“I believe [this volume] is going to be a genuine contribution to a very lively yet underresearched area of film studies. [It] will serve as a rich model for scholarly study in film departments, as well as appealing to a wide range of readers, particularly inter- and multi- disciplinary minded scholars.” · Nezih Erdogan, Izmir University of Economics
Table of Contents Introduction
PART I: CONFIGURATIONS OF STEREOTYPES AND IDENTITIES: NEW METHODOLOGIES
Chapter 1. My Big Fat Turkish Wedding: From Culture Clash to Romcom
Daniela Berghahn
Chapter 2. The Oblivion of Influence: Transmigration, Tropology, and Myth-Makingin Feo Aladağ’s When We Leave
David Gramling
Chapter 3. The Minor Cinema of Thomas Arslan: A Prolegomenon
Marco Abel
PART II: MULTIPLE SCREENS AND PLATFORMS: FROM DCOUMENTARY AND TELEVISION TO INSTALLATION ART
Chapter 4. Roots and Routes of the Diasporic Documentarian: A Psychogeography of Fatih Akın’s We Forgot to Go Back
Angelica Fenner
Chapter 5. Gendered Kicks: Buket Alakus’s and Aysun Bademsoy’s Soccer Films
Ingeborg Majer-O’Sickey
Chapter 6. Location and Mobility in Kutluğ Ataman’s Site-specific Video Installation Küba
Nilgun Bayraktar
Chapter 7. Turkish for Beginners: Teaching Cosmopolitanism to Germans
Brent Peterson
Chapter 8. “Only the Wounded Honor Fights”: Züli Aladağ’s Rageand the Drama of the Turkish German Perpetrator
Brad Prager
PART III: INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS: STARS, THEATRES, AND RECEPTON
Chapter 9. The German Turkish Spectator and Turkish Language Film Programming: Karli-Kino, Maxximum Distribution, and the Interzone Cinema
Randall Halle
Chapter 10. Mehmet Kurtuluş and Birol Ünel: Sexualized Masculinities, Normalized Ethnicities
Berna Gueneli
Chapter 11. The Perception and Marketing of Fatih Akın in the German Press
Karolin Machtans
Chapter 12. Hyphenated Identities: The Reception of Turkish German Cinema in the Turkish Daily Press
Ayça Tunç Cox
PART IV: THE CINEMA OF FATIH AKIN: AUTHORSHIP, IDENTITY, AND BEYOND
Chapter 13. Cosmopolitan Filmmaking: Fatih Akın’s In July and Head-On
Mine Eren
Chapter 14. Remixing Hamburg: Transnationalism in Fatih Akın’s Soul Kitchen
Roger Hillman and Vivien Silvey
Chapter 15. World Cinema Goes Digital: Looking at Europe from the Other Shore
Deniz Göktürk
Notes on Contributors
Works Cited
Index of Names
Index of Films
