Autonomy & Community with Dilan Yurdakul

As an honorary fellow at the University of Amsterdam, Dilan Yurdakul researches the expression of migration in literature and film.

Prompted by clips from Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s work (About Dry Grasses, Winter Sleep, Uzak, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), she will enter into conversation with Asli Özgen-Havekotte, Assistant Professor Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam and Scholar-in-Residence at Eye Filmmuseum. Özgen-Havekotte specialises in Turkish cinema and feminist and post-colonial film theory.

Contrast

The clips shown deal in part with the contrast between the city and the countryside. What does it mean to leave the area where you were born and bred? What role does the contrast between city and countryside – which often also coincides with a frequently experienced secular-religious opposition – play? And what does this mean within the context of the diaspora now also unfolding within Europe – something Yurdakul researches in her own work, as well as being a recurring theme of Ceylan’s.

Opposing voice

Yurdakul and Özgen-Havekotte will also discuss the female perspective (‘female gaze’) in Ceylan’s films, in which the woman often gives an opposing voice to that of the male protagonist while, at the same time, we sometimes also see her as being oppressed.

"Because of my background, I am fascinated by the friction between freedom and identity, between autonomy and community", Dilan Yurdakul says. "In my work, I investigate the human condition and reflect on the world and events taking place around me. Family, patterns, migration and the free self are all central to this."