ReFocus: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Gönül Dönmez-Colin is an independent film scholar specialising in the cinemas of Iran, Turkey and Central Asia. She has written numerous books including Women in the Cinemas of Iran and Turkey: As Images and As Image-makers (2019), The Routledge Dictionary of Turkish Cinema (2014), Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging (2008) and Women, Islam and Cinema (2004).

This rigorous and passionate collection bestows on Turkish maverick Nuri Bilge Ceylan the scholarly attention he deserves. From his early shorts to his mature features, Ceylan has offered a unique and penetrating vision of humanity’s existential struggles. His aesthetic and philosophical motifs are in dialogue with the likes of Ozu, Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, Martel and Antonioni, placing him among the greatest world-cinema auteurs of all time. By unveiling Ceylan’s local roots, global connections and transmedial relations, this book makes a definitive contribution to film history and theory.

• List of figuresNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgementsIntroduction - Gönül Dönmez-ColinChapter 1. Portrait of the Provincial Artist as an Urban Intellectual - Gönül Dönmez-ColinChapter 2. Vanishing Image of History: Uzak/Distant (2002) - Mahmut MutmanChapter 3. Portraits and Landscape: İklimler/Climates (2006) - Cecília MelloChapter 4. Aesthetic Silences and the Political Bind: Üç Maymun/Three Monkeys (2008) - Vuslat D KatsanisChapter 5. The Aesthetics of Space and Absence: Üç Maymun/Three Monkeys (2008) and Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da/Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) - Adam OchonickyChapter 6. Transnational Indistinctions: Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da/Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) and Kış Uykusu/Winter Sleep (2014) - Ebru Thwaites DikenChapter 7. The Politics of Dialogue and Ethics of Engagement: Kış Uykusu/Winter Sleep (2014) - Emre ÇağlayanChapter 8. Staying in the Primary Home, Relationships, Desires to Go and Roots: Kış Uykusu/Winter Sleep (2014) and Ahlat Ağacı/The Wild Pear Tree (2018) - Hasan AkbulutChapter 9. Of Fathers, Sons and ‘Solitary, Misshapen’ Trees: Ahlat Ağacı/The Wild Pear Tree (2018) - Coşkun Liktor Chapter 10. ‘Gender Trouble’ and the Crises of Masculinities in the Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan - Gönül Dönmez-ColinChapter 11. Auteurism, Recognition and Reception: Ceylan as a Global Auteur - Özgür Yaren