Women's journey in Turkish cinema

To celebrate Women’s Day, here’s a brief look at women in Turkish cinema and how they took their journey from nonexistent to one-dimensional roles on the screens

This week we celebrate Women’s Day. A brief look at Turkish cinema will show you that there is a rich selection of roles for female actors, showing women as complicated, multi-dimensional characters. Some of the comediennes are able, on their own, to drive a movie to box office success.

Thanks to the rising popularity of TV shows in recent decades, veteran female actors find it easier to obtain roles that show their versatility. There are probably more female directors and writers in Turkey than in Hollywood. Some of them are on a continuous streak in winning awards here and abroad. To celebrate Women’s Day, let’s take a brief look at how women found their voice in Turkish cinema in the last century.

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Women’s biopics, here and there

With the Golden Globe-winning portrayals of Margaret Thatcher and Marilyn Monroe, respectively by Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams, here is a look at women’s biopics in Turkish cinema, or lack thereof

When you watch Meryl Streep’s old lady buying a pint of milk from a corner grocery in the opening scene of The Iron Lady, you know you are in for a treat. A treat, perhaps not in the sense of watching a film that will sweep you off your feet, but for the sweet anticipation of a performance that will stick with you.

That old lady is Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first and only female prime minister, an influential figure in 20th-century history, admired and hated for brazing head on into gender and class barriers and trying unabashedly and ruthlessly to implement a classic free-market ideology.

The film might have failed to please both the admirers of the Iron Lady, for focusing too much on her later years with dementia, and her adversaries, who believed the movie portrayed Mrs. Thatcher with far too much sympathy. But none dared to say anything negative about Streep’s Golden Globe-winning portrayal of the Iron Lady which was done with uncanny precision.

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Violence and women subject of new movie

The new movie ‘Kurtuluş Son Durak’ tackles violence against women with female characters refusing to be victimized by male oppression. The same cannot be said of many Turkish TV series, which often glamorize rape and abuse

It is not often you see an all-female cast in Turkish cinema, let alone in Turkish comedy. The fact the recent Kurtuluş Son Durak (Last Stop Kurtuluş) is set around a deeply-rooted issue like violence against women makes the movie an even more important development to Turkey’s pop culture.

Penned by veteran filmmaker Barış Pirhasan and directed by his son Yusuf Pirhasan as his debut feature, the film’s title refers to an address in Istanbul. The residents of the apartment building are the other characters. When Eylem (Belçim Bilgin), a young female psychologist, moves to the apartment soon after being dumped by her fiancé just weeks before their wedding, she at first tries her best to maintain her distance with an eclectic mix of female neighbors.

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British women example of celebrities under pressure

The aftermath of Amy Winehouse’s death, a recent exhibition in the Buckingham Palace and a Tracey Emin retrospective, all show that it’s becoming even harder to succumb to the pressures of public scrutiny on perceptions of the ideal woman

What with twittering and video sharing and the paparazzi culture symbolized by massive telephoto lenses, fame and celebrity have turned into something altogether different than what it was two decades ago.

It’s becoming harder each day to believe in the magic and sparkle of being a celebrity. The boundaries between the public personae and the private lives have intertwined. It’s more and more difficult to distinguish what truly makes a person famous – what makes that person admired, or in most cases, frowned upon.

The burdens of being a celebrity are doubled when you are a woman, exemplified recently through two distinctively British women.

Singer-songwriter and all-around tabloid favorite Amy Winehouse’s shocking and untimely death was the pop culture news that rocked the media last week. With only two albums to her credit in the last decade, Winehouse was a one-woman force in British music, single-handedly opening the way for contemporary female soul musicians.

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