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

If the presence of diasporas moulds social, cultural and economic structures in their host countries, it must also affect artistic production in general, and film production in particular, in these countries. As Randall Halle argues, “film proves to be the most significant marker of simultaneous economic and cultural transformations, a marker of globalisation and transnationalism” (2008: 6). One would therefore expect that increased transnational mobility and the formation of diasporas would manifest itself in the emergence of distinctive film cultures in Europe. Globalisation and transnationalism constitute a challenge to the nation-state and national cinemas. Today, “neither images nor viewers fit into circuits or audiences that are easily bound within local, national or regional spaces” (Appadurai 2003a: 4). The definition of national cinemas as well as the depiction of nation and national identity has changed. In evaluating a national film industry, the question of having non-native components within it is certainly not a new issue. In this respect, the international nature of film production makes it even more difficult to conceptualise national cinema. Yet the recent rise of multicultural, multinational and transnational cinema requires rethinking all given terms and questioning their traditional meanings. “Cinema is the 20th century’s most precious cultural memory” (Elsaesser 2005: 18). Therefore, it cannot ignore the ongoing remapping of Europe and the redefinition of European identity due to the ever-increasing number of diasporic subjects. Moreover, the second generation immigrants have made a concerted effort to obtain means of self-expression and self-representation in order to articulate the complexity of their experiences. Therefore, over the past few decades the number of diasporic filmmakers has unmistakably increased across Europe.

Although European cinema has consolidated itself as an area of research since the 1990s by means of a steady flow of publications, the supranational implication of the term “European” has had little impact on theoretical frameworks and methodologies in this area (Bergfelder 2005: 315). “Europe today, in addition to being a contested geographic and political compilation of old and new states ..., is an idea, an ideal, a project, and ... a spatial and temporal conundrum depending on whose subjectivity it is imagined from” (Christensen and Erdoğan 2008: 11). So is contemporary European cinema. Thomas Elsaesser suggests that we no longer seem to know what European cinema is: “the very idea of it has slipped between the declining relevance of national cinemas and the emerging importance of world cinema” (2005: 485). So, one can locate European cinema somewhere in between the two. Increasingly, the history of Europe, and so its cinematic narratives, has been written by its diasporic subjects, by its “others” within. “Recent examples of Maghrebi-French, Turkish-German and black and Asian British cinema … have won considerable critical acclaim, and a few have even captured international audiences” (Berghahn and Sternberg 2010a: 2). These diasporic filmmakers, by virtue of their politically engaged, challenging and aesthetically hybrid films, have been changing the face of contemporary French, German and British national cinemas. Therefore, they and their work have attracted much scholarly attention in a variety of disciplines in the past few decades.

Responding to this noticeable shift in the politics of representation of diasporas, which is reflected in the growing number of diasporic films, this dissertation is intended as a contribution to the existing scholarship in the field of transnational and diasporic cinema. I privilege filmmakers with a migratory background since it is the premise of this thesis that the experience of migration, dispersal and marginalisation in the destination country has left recognisable traces in their work. I suggest that diasporic cinema is characterised by a distinctive aesthetic approach that makes it different from other (trans)national cinemas and mainstream cinema. Correspondingly, the dissertation moves from a critical investigation of the key concepts of diaspora and diasporic cinema in the first two chapters to an in-depth analysis of selected Turkish-German films in the third chapter. The fourth chapter provides a detailed analysis of the reception of Turkish-German cinema and filmmakers in the Turkish daily press.

The first chapter examines the concept of diaspora and explores the shift in its meaning and perception over time. It addresses the proliferation of terms in the field to clearly demarcate the concept of diaspora. While attempting to investigate the term’s relation to other relevant terms such as “exile”, “migrancy”, “transnationalism”, “hybridity”, “postcolonialism” and “nation”, the chapter draws on a diverse range of scholarly literature. Since the concept of diaspora suggests and requires an interdisciplinary approach for a comprehensive understanding, I combine the work of scholars from political science, such as William Safran, from sociology, such as Robin Cohen and Avtar Brah, from anthropology, such as James Clifford and Pnina Werbner, from literature, such as Andreas Huyssen, and from cultural studies, such as Stuart Hall and Kobena Mercer. This eclectic approach, cutting across various disciplines, allows me to present the complexity of the term as well as the many overlaps, engagements and interrelations that constitute the notion of diaspora. This also makes it possible to trace the shift from a term loaded with negative connotations to a celebrated one. Interlinked with the concept of diaspora is the question of identity. I therefore analyse how national and diasporic identity has been redefined in the light of ongoing social and cultural transformations taking place in host societies with regards to diasporic communities. It becomes clear that diaspora, in the age of globalisation, does not refer to a single entity, but to a diverse, heterogeneous and multilayered structure that is defined by various dynamics and components such as gender, class, religion, politics and generation. Bearing this in mind, I finally discuss whether the Turkish community in Germany, having settled in the country for almost five decades now, can be considered a diaspora. The Swiss writer Max Frisch’s famous remark “we asked for workers, we got people instead” succinctly explains the tension between the Turkish community and German society, and the alleged controversial position of Turkey, and Turks in Germany, in terms of being part of European culture or not. In this context, it should also be noted that concepts like homeland and host land become highly problematic when considering that the country of settlement is the home now especially for the second and subsequent generations of migrants. Such terms have arguably become superseded by new senses of belonging, which exist alongside transnational connections and mobility between the home and host countries, and which render the existing conceptualisation problematic. Yet in the present thesis, while acknowledging their problematic nature, I continue to use them, since they are well-established, and ultimately relate to external discourses that are relevant to my discussion, and relevant to the lives of the people I am concerned with.

The second chapter examines the conceptualisation of diasporic cinema. Expanding on the discussions in the first chapter, I initially focus on the question of national cinema in the context of ongoing economic and industrial changes leading to an ever-increasing number of global co-productions. I ask how and to what extent national cinemas have always included non-native elements. This leads to the question as to whether it is possible at all to talk about “pure” national cinemas, and also what the concept of European Cinema actually encompasses. This discussion helps to situate diasporic cinema, which is now seen as a very important part of contemporary European cinema, in view of the current categories and debates. Given that almost every film can be considered as a transnational product under the circumstances of the current global economy, what gives diasporic films their distinctiveness? In seeking to answer this question I draw mainly on Hamid Naficy’s theorisation of “accented cinema”, and I strive to explain why diasporic cinema should be regarded as a particular category, distinct from other theoretical categories such as Third Cinema and postcolonial cinema, by illuminating the differences as well as intersectionalities between them. Nevertheless, existing ambiguities and overlaps between concepts such as “migrant cinema”, “exilic cinema” and “diasporic cinema” in the literature and in representative examples are not overlooked. Nor are some unique features identifiable in the films of some diasporic filmmakers that resist limiting categorisations. Instead, I am attentive to the presence of various trends, and the resultant diversity and heterogeneity of a diasporic cinema at any given time. Furthermore, I delineate how the concept of diasporic cinema as well as its actual filmmaking practices might change over time and how it may differ from one generation to another. Bearing these caveats in mind, I conceive of “diasporic cinema” as an aggregate term with considerable heuristic potential . This chapter is completed by an investigation of the shared characteristics of diasporic cinema, such as being accented, dialogic, hybrid, multicultural, and multilingual, as observed in broad trends in diasporic filmmaking. In this sub-chapter, even though I benefit from various scholarly discussions of diasporic cinema, provided by Sarita Malik, Sujata Moorti, Thomas Elsaesser and Kobena Mercer to name a few, I particularly draw on Mikhail Bakhtin’s conceptualisation of language. His theory, and especially concepts such as the “dialogic imagination” and “double-voicedness”, have been widely utilised by scholars in the field but only a few have analysed his work in detail.
The third chapter is primarily an attempt to concretise, or rather to test, defining features of diasporic cinema as illustrated in the second chapter. It seeks to establish correlations between theory and practice as well as to reveal any discrepancies. Nonetheless, it also provides another framework by not privileging space over time but conceiving them as mutually interdependent for the understanding of diaspora. Here the issue of generation particularly comes to the fore since the character and structure of a diasporic community as well as identification processes of individuals appear to change over time. Consequently, I first explore the process and the importance of memory in relation to generation within the diasporic context, and how their combined effects shape the construction of “self” and its expression. Even though suggestions such as that the younger generations integrate more easily to the host society might imply an ageist approach, there are unmistakable differences between earlier and subsequent generations of migrants and settlers, and I endeavour to examine what these are and how they are reflected in film. As proposed in the second chapter, diasporic cinema is a complex, layered and hetereogenous phenomenon; therefore, instead of merely applying given characteristics to my analysis of the films as definitive rules, I try to free myself from impositions in order to allow room for unprecedented findings. In this context, I analyse a number of films about the Turkish diasporic community and their experiences in Germany within four main thematic frameworks: changing narratives/discourses; the shift in the representation of space over time; the shift in the use of music; and the shift towards hybrid aesthetics and genres. It should be briefly mentioned here that I allocate a comparatively long space to the analysis of Başer’s films, because they are the most important examples that established the narrative of victimhood, and thus provide a useful point of reference while discussing later films. All in all, the analysis includes seventeen filmmakers from different generations and over forty films. This reasonably wide scope makes it possible to closely monitor presumed generational differences, and draws attention to some less well-known filmmakers and their work. It also encapsulates the nascent third generation Turkish-German filmmakers, whose work has not yet been the subject of academic discussions. However, it does not claim to be exhaustive, since it excludes films which were not accessible to me (due to a variety of reasons, such as not being commercially released), films without English or Turkish subtitles, and films which were made/released after mid 2009. It should also be noted that I have not been able to consult German resources and reviews. However, considering that this has been done by scholars based in German Departments and that most academic discussions of Turkish-German cinema are taking place in an Anglophone context, mine should be regarded as a hitherto less exploited Turkish contribution to the field.
The films considered in this dissertation are definitely significant sites of the struggle over identity, but they are not the only constituent of contemporary mediascapes that have an impact on the construction of meaning and negotiation of identity. Other media play a role in the perception of diasporic communities in general and filmmakers in particular, too. Based on this premise, the last chapter engages with how the hyphenated identities of the pertinent Turkish-German filmmakers are reconstructed in Turkey, in the wider context of Turkish politics. This is a thoroughly under-researched area since most scholars of Turkish-German cinema in the Anglophone world are based in German Departments. Considering that “diaspora and transnationalism studies have a tendency to be more heavily weighted toward host country settings” (Harney and Baldassar 2007: 194), this chapter of the dissertation proves to be particularly important. In order to accomplish a critical reading of relevant news coverage, I survey seventeen daily newspapers from January 1986, the year which marks the first widely known and critically acclaimed film made by a Turkish filmmaker in Germany about the first generation Turkish guest workers, until January 2010. I focus on the daily newspapers for they are by far the most important media sector, especially since they have the highest circulation figures in Turkey, and therefore provide the most accurate reflection of how Turkish-German filmmakers and their work are regarded in the country of origin. To contextualise the analysis of the relevant news materials, I first present a brief discussion of the structure of the Turkish press. I then move on to the reception of Turkish-German filmmakers on the basis of two salient thematic frameworks in the news coverage. The Turkish media seems to emphasise only their “Turkishness”, preferring to downplay the German side of their hyphenated identity. The achievements of these Turkish filmmakers in Germany are used by the Turkish daily press to bolster a positive image for Turkey in an international context or they are utilised to make a case for Turkey’s accession to the EU.
In brief, this dissertation aims to make a contribution to the existing body of scholarly work on diasporic cinema, as a particular type of transnational cinema. It argues that the particular case of contemporary Turkish-German cinema from the mid-1980s to the present can be regarded as representative of other, especially European, diasporic film cultures, which emerged roughly simultaneously in France and Britain – though the colonial pre-histories of Maghrebi French and Black and Asian British cinema account for different political inflections. However, rather than pursuing the socio-historical developments of these diasporic cinemas in depth, this thesis is primarily interested in establishing the commonalities and distinctive features of diasporic cinema in terms of its thematic and aesthetic strategies.