Routledge Dictionary of Turkish Cinema

Gönül Dönmez-Colin is a film scholar specializing in the cinemas of the Middle East and Central Asia. She is the author of Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging; Cinemas of the Other: A Personal Journey with Filmmakers from the Middle East and Central Asia and Women, Islam and Cinema, among others.

'Gonul Donmez-Colin’s latest book, The Routledge Dictionary of Turkish Cinema is a monumental effort at collating and interpreting everything that has gone into the creation of this art in Turkey. All this and much more is what this vastly well researched, illustrated and documented dictionary gives us. […] She analyses films at the micro and macro levels with acuity, puts films and filmmakers in perspective, and links them to the political and social problems that bedevil Turkey: migration (and the plight of migrants and refugees), the exclusion of minorities, poverty, masculinity, dogmatic traditions, particularly the suffering and humiliation of women, censorship (officially abolished in 1998, but ongoing in subtler forms), the urban-rural divide and much else. But films such as those of Omer Kavur which ask questions about time, timelessness, life and death are also the stuff of her book. […] The Routledge Dictionary of Turkish Cinema is at once a background and a foreground for understanding a fascinating cinema in a fascinating land.' Film Focus India, Latika Padgaonkar

• Introduction.  Entries.  Chronology