Diasporic cinema: turkish-german filmmakers with particular emphasis on generational differences

Beyond the Frontiers: Diasporic Cinema as a Particular Category

Diasporic cinema is one of the most important new cinemas in the age of globalisation. “France, Britain and Germany in particular, have seen a veritable filmmaking renaissance thanks to second and third generation directors from minority ethnic backgrounds” (Elsaesser 2005: 27). Yet, as established so far, in an era wherein the idea of nation is compromised and the concept of national cinema is challenged, it proves difficult to define and frame diasporic cinema. To further complicate the issue, as discussed in the first chapter, diasporic communities do not constitute a homogenous group. Nor do diasporic filmmakers. “The majority of filmmakers working in and from Europe, including hyphenated filmmakers, choose to define themselves and their work in terms of individual vision and creative independence rather than under a collective label” (Jäckel 2010: 77). Nevertheless, to put it simply, being different and often treated as the “other” of both the host society and the country of origin, they are mostly marginalised. This position and perspective of marginalisation powerfully informs their filmmaking and results in recognisable common features in their films. That is to say, notwithstanding the range of diasporic films, their stylistic and thematic variety, it is possible to identify a number of shared characteristics.
It should be noted of course that immigrant filmmakers and their contribution to cinema industry do not constitute a new issue in the history of cinema. It is rather a recurring phenomenon emanating from general economic and industrial conditions that have determined aspects of the film industry all around the world. Thomas Elsaesser has pointed out that migration, exile and immigration are constitutive of what is understood today by the American film industry, since European émigrés such as Carl Laemmle, Samuel Goldwyn, and Adolf Zuckor have had a significant impact on Hollywood both in terms of industry and film aesthetics (Elsaesser 1999: 98-99). However, the individual migration of that era and those figures are not subsumed under the category of diaspora which, as explained in the previous chapter, implies collectivity and a settled presence over generations.⁵² In addition, the cultural policy in the United States of that era, a country that was “more accustomed to define itself as a nation of newcomers” (Hannerz 1996: 87) and promoted the melting pot approach, was considerably different from European cultural policies in general and from recently deployed multiculturalism in European countries in particular. Thus, the conditions of diasporic subjects at the centre of contemporary Europe are very different. In spite of the alternative spirit these early émigrés brought to classical Holywood cinema, these filmmakers used to work within the conventions of traditional mainstream cinema. Even though the theme of immigration was often a significant one in films, the focus was on “Americanness” rather than individual and distinctive national identities.⁵³ Most of these immigrants simply assimilated and they did not explicitly deal with the issues of otherness, race, and ethnicity and so on in their films.
One might contend that some contemporary diasporic filmmakers who are situated and work in the interstices of both their diasporic community and media industries have similarly, over time, become embedded in mainstream cinema. In this sense, they cannot be considered necessarily alternative although most of their work is seen as a part of independent, low-budget cinema. For instance, with the exception of her first full-length feature Salaam Bombay! (1988), the films of Mira Nair, who was born in India but migrated to and started her film career in America, have been made in the mode of Hollywood cinematic production. Nonetheless, most of the time, diasporic filmmakers tend to use the cracks of the system to their advantage. The Turkish-German filmmaker, Fatih Akın, is a good example of this mode of filmmaking. Petra Fachinger (2007: 254) considers him as a representative of independent transnational cinema:⁵⁴ he mostly makes his films as co-productions and has established his own production company with a name “Corazón International”, which emphasises his and his films’ multinational character, which cannot simply be reduced to a pure Turkishness or Germanness. Similarly, Ngozi Onwurah, who is a member of the Black diasporic community in Britain, and Gurinder Chadha, who is an Asian-British filmmaker, have their own production companies to produce films with commercial interests, adopting partly mainstream strategies whilst also using other funding sources such as Channel 4 Films or the British Film Institute for distribution and/or exhibition (Ciecko 1999: 70-79; Malik 1996: 213). This also proves that “power relationships are changing and a number of filmmakers from minority cultures have become experts at tapping into subsidies and have themselves become brand names of national cinemas” (Jäckel 2010: 92). Overall, diasporic cinema covers a wide range of films and divergent ways of filmmaking rather than a collective movement with a specific group consciousness.
Hamid Naficy’s term “accented cinema” provides a starting point to illuminate the issue since his theorisation of exilic and diasporic cinema has been widely discussed and quoted in papers on diasporic cinema.⁵⁵ Accented cinema, Naficy claims, “is both created with the awareness of the vast histories of the prevailing cinematic modes and in a new mode that is constituted by the structures of feeling of the filmmakers themselves as displaced subjects and by the traditions of exilic and diasporic cultural productions that preceded them” (Naficy 2001: 22). He seems to devise the term “accented” in order to emphasise the polyphonic structures of diasporic films caused by the multi-local, multi-national, multi-cultural characteristics of the filmmakers who are themselves diasporic subjects. In this respect, “accented” serves as a useful metaphor because, as stated by Gayatri C. Spivak, “the feeling of cultural identity almost always presupposes a language” (2003: 198). Similarly, Frantz Fanon highlights the importance of language in the identification process of a subject: “To speak means above all to assume a culture … A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language” (1986: 17-8). Both language as a tool, which provides communication within the diasporic community or between diasporic community and the host society, and the film language itself are major issues for diasporic cinema. Film language here not only refers to the visual images or to the style of the narration but literally to the language itself as spoken or written within a given film. For diasporic subjects, language, of whatever form, like identity, is never simple and unitary, it is almost always spoken with an accent. The importance of language in terms of diasporic cinema unavoidably invokes Bakhtin’s important term “heteroglossia” which has been described as;
[T]he centripetal forces of the life of language, embodied in a “unitary language”, operate in the midst of heteroglossia. At any given moment of its evolution, language is stratified not only into linguistic dialects in the strict sense of the word but also … into languages that are social-ideological: languages of social groups, professional and generic languages, languages of generations, and so forth. (Morris 1994: 75)
In this respect, diasporic communities within a given society constitute language groups by virtue of either their bilingualism or their very specific way of speaking the language of the host country. Consequently, like the accent of a speaker, the language of diasporic films is noticeable carrying their creators’ distinctive traces and revealing their roots as well as their interaction with the host societies. As a result, in order to recognise and classify these films, some prominent characteristics of their visual style, narration, content and the modes determining the process of filmmaking from pre-production to exhibition should be examined.
Naficy elaborates on what he calls “accented style” by identifying its seperate components: “the film’s visual style; narrative structure; character and character development; subject matter, theme and plot; structures of feeling exile; filmmaker’s biographical and sociocultural location; and the film’s mode of production, distribution, exhibition and reception” (Naficy 2001: 21). Looking at his explanations of each component, some common factors can be identified: in terms of visual style, accented films tend to use real locations, the homeland’s landscapes, nature, which is – seemingly – contradictorily accompanied by the portrayal of claustrophobic inner spaces. Airports, train stations or vehicles are frequently used as signifiers of transnationality and physical and psychological border crossing. Incompleteness and amateur aesthetics appear to be other important elements of visual style. Other significant elements of the narrative structure of accented films include multilinguality; discontinuity of diegetic time and space; a circular structure of storytelling; orality; juxtaposition; memory of and nostalgia for childhood or homeland; self-reflexivity about diasporic subjectivity and filmmaking process; and epistolarity which can be explained as engaging with letters and written communication. In accordance with these kinds of visual style and narration, we also see slippery identities, stressing either the hybridity or the alienation of characters, or even both; filmmakers representing themselves referring to the autobiographical and self-inscriptive features of the films; characters who speak several languages; homelessness or home coming journeys; questions of belonging; dealing with displacement; liminality and the loneliness of the characters. All these are important factors that determine the accented style of cinema. When it comes to the mode of production, accented cinema can be depicted as artisanal, collective and transnational, using different financial sources such as funding from television, public or private funding agencies or ethnic organisations, focusing on alternative distribution and exhibition channels, and involving the filmmaker in every stage of the filmmaking process (Naficy 2001).
These factors seem quite comprehensive and give clear guidance as to what constitutes accented film. However, it should not be expected that all diasporic films will meet all the criteria mentioned above. Naficy himself draws attention to the comprehensive character of this definition of “accented style” and advises readers to bear in mind that not all accented films are diasporic, whereas he would argue that all diasporic films can be considered as “accented” (Naficy 2006: 121). The latter is highly debatable, however, since especially the younger generations of diasporic filmmakers might readily and seamlessly integrate into the mainstream cinema of their host countries. Besides, there might be some films that can satisfy most of the elements of this classification but still cannot be considered as diasporic in terms of the identity and the social and cultural belongings of the filmmaker, which constitutes one of the most important factors in the conceptualisation of “accented cinema”.
In addition to Naficy’s attempt to theorise accented style, Stuart Hall’s explanation, with particular reference to postcolonial diasporic filmmakers provides a useful tool to identify the major common motivations for diasporic films:
They have to try to retell the story from the bottom up, instead of from the top down. And this moment has been of such profound significance in the post-war world that you could not describe the post-war world without it. You could not describe the movements of colonial nationalism without that moment when the unspoken discovered that they had a history, which they could speak; they had languages other than the languages of the master, of the tribe. (1991: 35)

This definition, too, refers to the assumed “accent” of diasporic films. Since these films are not made by members of the dominant culture, and they deliberately do not use the language of the dominant; they are accented, and potentially revolutionary and rebellious. They give the perpetually silenced the chance of expressing themselves, inevitably requiring speaking upward. In addition, even if they speak in the language of the country they settled in, they do it in their own ways, expressing their distinctiveness. Here one can invoke Homi K. Bhabha’s theory about the power of mimicry in the colonial context whereby he investigates the possibilities for resistance under cultural hegemony (Bhabha 1994: 85-92). “Bhabha suggests that the very techniques that broadcast the dominance and impenetrability of the imperial discourse actually expose its inherent weaknesses that ultimately destroy itself from within” (McGarry 2007: online). Similarly, “Keesing points to the clash of cultures, where one culture appropriates the other and uses its own naturalised systems against it, which can lead to the denaturalisation of the ‘inherent’ rights to power held by colonialists; this can potentially lead to a dramatic shift in power” (MacKenzie 2000: 250). Correspondingly, using hegemonic language in their own ways, diasporic films and filmmakers can be constructively subversive by creating a domain for an alternative use of language and other communicative systems: by seeking attention and demanding recognition for this alternative view. The existence of an inferior, marginal, non-native, diasporic hero or heroine, who can speak the language of the superior, or equally, the untranslated use of the native languages of diasporic subjects, can be revolutionary both in terms of cinematic expression and of the definition of identity. Here is the point, however, where Spivak’s question “can the subaltern speak?” is transformed into another related one, as raised by Kobena Mercer, “can the subaltern be heard even if s/he dares to speak?” (Mercer 1994). To attempt to answer this, it is necessary to look at the power relations within the cinema industry and the cultural and social environment in which diasporic filmmakers work.

As explored in the first chapter, the categories of diaspora and the postcolonial overlap to a certain extent.⁵⁶ So too do diasporic cinema and postcolonial cinema. From this point of view, it is possible to establish a relationship between diasporic films and postcolonial discourses and the representations of colonised subjects.
Many diasporic films are considered as not only diasporic but also as anti-colonialist, treating postcolonial identity within a post-Third Worldist aesthetics and ideology. Some samples break away from earlier macro-narratives of national liberation, re-envisioning the nation as a heteroglossic multiplicity of trajectories … Films produced in the first world, in particular, raise questions about dislocated identities in a situation marked by the mobility of goods, ideas and people in a multinationalised global economy … While most Third Worldist films assumed the fundamental coherence of national identity, with the expulsion of the colonial intruder fully completing the process of national becoming, diasporic films call attention to the fault lines of gender, class, ethnicity, religion, partition, migration and exile. (Shohat and Stam 1994: 318)

Arif Dirlik suggests that postcolonial starts when intellectuals from the third world enter the academies of the first world (2003: 294). In the same way, postcolonial issues appear in film when diasporic subjects start to become part of the filmmaking process. That is, it is only when the dispossessed become possessed enough (of a university place, of a film camera and the money to make a film) to be heard that a new way of framing the issue emerges. The stories of deterritorialised, displaced people and their real lived experiences, revealing the diverse modalities of diasporic experience began to be told by their own people who refrain from using stereotypes even though “self-othering” does occur. Hamid Naficy states that, diasporic films are not only alternative and critical but also “minor” in the sense Deleuze and Guattari formulated as the deterritorialisation of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy and the collective assemblage of enunciation (1999: 131). Through their unmistakable engagement with the specific experience of “otherness” in a host society, most diasporic filmmakers register a collective and political consciousness. If diaspora and postcoloniality, then, have much in common, what of the relationship between diasporic cinema and what has come to be called third world cinema?

Shohat and Stam refer to the term “third world” in the context of cinema as a notion that calls attention to the collectively vast cinematic productions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and include in this the cinema of minority groups in the first world (1994: 27). Accordingly, they provide overlapping circles of denotation of third world cinema:

1. 
   A core circle of third world films produced by and for third world peoples and adhering to the principles of Third Cinema
   
2. 
   A wider circle of the cinematic productions of third world peoples whether or not the films adhere to the principles of Third Cinema and irrespective of the period of their making
   
3. 
   Another circle consisting of films made by first or second world people in support of third world peoples and adhering to the principles of Third Cinema
   
4. 
   A final circle, somewhat anomalous in status, at once inside and outside, comprising recent diasporic hybrid films, for example those of Mona Hatoum or Hanif Kureishi, which both build on and interrogate the conventions of Third Cinema. (Shohat and Stam 1994: 28)
   

Third world cinema and Third Cinema are not identical, but they are strongly connected. The main defining features of Third Cinema are that it is constituted of radical, harshly critical, revolutionary, low-budget films that challenged political oppressions and interventions, that advocated the independence movements of colonised countries, and that supported the emergence of new cultures and social structures.⁵⁷ It is possible to see the correlations between the two ways of filmmaking and the potential inspirational power of Third Cinema on any alternative cinema formation. John Hill, too, draws attention to the relation between diasporic cinema and Third Cinema:

[T]he emphasis on the diasporic experience may also be linked to a certain revival of interest in the idea of “Third Cinema” … In this respect, the project of Third Cinema may be seen to extend to the diaspora culture of ethnic and cultural groups dispersed across the globe, including the Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities in Britain. (Hill 1999: 223)
When the characteristics of Third Cinema, together with the enumerated aspects of third world cinema, are considered, it becomes possible to assert that diasporic cinema is partly included in the definition of Third Cinema due to common points such as using alternative methods that change conventional filmmaking, coping with controversial issues, and being dedicated to minorities and their experiences. Or we can reformulate it to say that some forms and types of diasporic cinema apparently can be classified under the category of Third Cinema as well. Stuart Hall highlights this connection:
Think, for example, of the dialogue of every Caribbean filmmaker or writer, one way or another, with the dominant cinemas and literature of the west – the complex relationship of young black British filmmakers with the avant-gardes of European and American filmmaking. Who could describe this tense and tortured dialogue as a one-way trip? … This preoccupation with movement and migration Caribbean cinema shares with many other Third Cinemas, but it is one of our defining themes, and it is destined to cross the narrative of every film script or cinematic image. (2003: 243)

Such an association also links diasporic cinema with world cinema, as formulated by Thomas Elsaesser in his attempt to redefine world cinema in positive terms. However vague and so highly contested a concept it is, “historically and semantically, world cinema is a reworking of Third Cinema … Third Cinema has shed its political agenda and has become world cinema: a term modeled on music or food to indicate fusion and hybridity of national and international, ethnically specific and globally universal characteristics” (Elsaesser 2005: 496). By virtue of its suggested inclusiveness, the concept of world cinema now compromise ethnically-oriented films and film cultures across the world, and thus, diasporic films can be seen as part of world cinema.⁵⁸

Nonetheless, it should be emphasised that Third Cinema as originally conceived represents a disjuncture from dominant commercial cinemas, referred to as “first” and “second” cinemas by Solonas and Getino (1976: 44-64), whereas diasporic cinema might include commercial, profit-oriented films that are not always necessarily marginal or alternative as noted above. Following his conceptualisation of “accented cinema”, Hamid Naficy also underlines the differences between this and Third Cinema. He notes that they are “alike in their attempts to define and create a nostalgic, even fetishised, authentic prior culture – before contamination by the West in the case of the Third Cinema, and before displacement and emigration in the case of accented cinema” (2006: 124). However, they should not be regarded as completely overlapping terms since accented cinema, which encapsulates diasporic films according to his theorisation, “is much more situated than the Third Cinema, for it is necessarily made by (and often for) specific displaced subjects and diasporised communities” (Naficy 2006: 121). Despite its overlapping layers with Third Cinema, diasporic cinema should still be classified as a different category.

While I would argue that it is useful to maintain a category of diasporic cinema, it is the case that films within this category have a variety of features that are dynamic and subject to change over time, particularly as the younger generations of filmmakers come to the fore. The celebration of difference as a positive descriptive and group identity, for instance, is a characteristic of one type of diasporic films, basically made by the first generation of migrants and mainly by the members of former colonies, while most of the filmmakers of successive generations prefer to focus on hybridity rather than essentialist differentiation, and tend to express their transnationality rather than their authenticity. This issue of generational differences between diasporic filmmakers, and the concomitant shift in the motivation and way of filmmaking over time is an important one.

Scholars theorising diasporic cinema have started to question the representativeness of diasporic films and filmmakers. Early diasporic cinema recalls the term “cinema of duty” which was conceptualised by Cameron Bailey: “social issue in content, documentary-realist in style, firmly responsible in intention – [the cinema of duty] positions its subjects in direct relation to social crisis, and attempts to articulate ‘problems’ and ‘solutions to problems’ within a framework of centre and margin, white and non-white communities” (cited in Malik 1996: 203-204). Kobena Mercer similarly focuses on the problem of diasporic cinema being confined to binary systems of signification. Naming it as “the burden of representation”, he calls attention to the limitations it imposes upon diasporic filmmakers’ creativity. Richard Dyer questions the forced representational status of “raced” people in his seminal study on whiteness and its power. “The claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of humanity. Raced people cannot do that – they can only speak for their race” (Dyer 1997: 2). In other words, in so far as white people are regarded as “the norm”, they can claim to speak for the entire human race. Providing specific references to Black diaspora culture in Britain, Mercer asserts that the necessity to be authentic, the responsibility to be the representative of a whole diasporic community should be transcended because “not only does this reduce the diversity of black experiences and opinions to a single perspective assumed to be typical, it may also reinforce the tokenistic idea that a single film can be regarded as representative of every black person’s perception of reality” (Mercer 1994: 58). Instead, he suggests speaking to each other, since he thinks, as interpreted by John Hill, that “the expectation of ‘speaking for’ the black and Asian communities relies upon the very same – essentialising – assumption of homogeneity as racist ideologies” (Hill 1999: 210). This kind of change in perspective, from “speaking for” to “speaking to”, can be seen increasingly in second and third generation diasporic cinema, which promotes “dialogic imagination”,⁵⁹ allowing dialogue and exchange between different cultures and ethnic groups.

Throughout the generations diasporic subjects generally, at least supposedly, become more integrated into the country they have settled in, by participating in their education system and/or by acquiring citizenship status, as exemplified by the Turkish community in Germany.⁶⁰ As a result, they occupy a more powerful and thus more visible status in the sociocultural and political life of the host country. This invokes Judith Williamson’s comment stating that “the more power any group has to create and wield representations, the less it is required to be representative” (cited in Mercer 1994: 91). The younger generations of diasporic filmmakers feel much less pressure on themselves to be loyal to the necessary image/fiction of the group, which gives them the chance of being much more creative and playful with their art. This leads to the production of a much greater variety of films from commercial, popular fictions to low-budget, experimental documentaries in the field of diasporic cinema. Regarding a wide range of recent diasporic films in Europe like Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Jeunesse Dorée (2002), Offside (2004), Exiles (2004), and Head On (2004), it is possible to trace a shift towards the “pleasures of hybridity”, and a celebration of hybridity of genres, styles and diversified thematic concerns. Sarita Malik, who works on Black British cinema, explores the potentials of being a diasporic subject who deals with multiple identity belongings as a figure living in a different society and culture from her/his own or her/his parents’/ancestors’; she argues that “this form of duality is different from the ‘in-betweenness’ of the ‘cinema of duty’ films in that it does not locate its protagonists solely within a problem-oriented discourse and diasporic experiences are not limited to victimhood and struggle” (1996: 212). In this respect, diasporic cinema has become much more diverse, resisting expectations for diasporic filmmakers to make representative films from a minority perspective. These films are increasingly engaged with gender, sexuality, queer positionalities, and tiny facets of daily life as well as addressing the questions of diasporic subjectivity, collective memory, identity, race and integration in the host society.