ReFocus: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan

This edited volume provides thematical analysis of Ceylan’s transnational cinema with intertextual and intermedial readings of individual films, the fluidity of the text creating and maintaining a dialogue between chapters the way Ceylan’s films maintain dialogue with each other. International scholars with interdisciplinary perspectives locate Ceylan’s cinema within the context of the past and present social, cultural and political climate of Turkey with political and sociological readings of specific films. Ceylan’s transnational style of filmmaking that favours intertextual exchanges between his films, but also with other landmark works and the intermedial aspect that merges photography, painting and literature (particularly Chekhov) are some of the key concerns. His major influences, from Ozu to Tarkovsky, including Kiarostami and Antonioni, are explored through detailed readings. Feminist readings of Ceylan’s work place his representation of women within the masculinist filmmaking tradition of Turkey also comparing his practices with the practices of other global filmmakers who have been subject to controversy. The place of Ceylan’s oeuvre is further explored within the context of global cinema as a transnational author of realist cinema and slow cinema with the aim to bring original insights into Ceylan's cinema within the context of the present aesthetic, social and political concerns, globally and locally.