According to definitions, the first motion picture was a documentary film about train stations, which was shown by the Lumiere Brothers to 33 people at the Garden Cafe in Paris. At the screening on December 28, 1895, 17 more short films met the audience. Those who watched the film” workers coming out of the factory ” were afraid of the scene where the train came towards the screen. They tried to escape the hall in screams, thinking their cinematographer was the magic of the Lumiere Brothers. Now that the most irrational scenes are shot with effects, the backstage tricks of the cinema industry travel in the language of children. Although it’s not what Garden Cafe guests understand, Yes, Cinema is magic. Although cinema industry workers are not magicians, they can at least be shown among the next generation of community engineers.
Although many subjects have experienced a period of pause from time to time in their history and have gone back, the film sector has constantly progressed in terms of technique and content. Although some sources link the arrival of cinema in Turkey to the arrival of one of the documentary teams sent by the Lumiere Brothers to different countries to the Ottoman Empire at that time, it is certain that the first film shot in Anatolian geography was made by the Macedonian Manakis Brothers.
The first Turkish film was made by Fuat Uzkınay on November 14, 1914 under the name “The Fall of the Russian monument to Aya Stefenos”. Although cinema entered Turkey later, screenwriter Safa Onal set a world record. He is “the most prolific screenwriter in world history”with over 400 screenplays he has written. The most famous defining period of Turkish cinema “Yeşilçam Cinema” came to this day, rising on the shoulders of Cuneyt Arkın, Tarık Akan, Türkan Şoray , Fatma Girik, Filiz Akın, Nebahat Çehre, Hülya Koçyiğit, Şener Şen, Ilyas Salman, talented actors and actresses. Today, Turkish cinema has caravans of lead roles on its sets, star rooms, but in the days when Turkish cinema was in labor pains, it rose on the shoulders of the actors and actresses whose name we mentioned above. In modern Turkish cinema, we cannot see the sincerity and warmth captured in Yeşilçam, except for a few examples. Turkish cinema is looking for its own language. Although we are in a good place technically and human resource; we shoot more closed and local stories, but in Hollywood, more universal stories are shot. Now Bollywood and Nollywood have started making films that appeal to the global market. We can say that after Yeşilçam, filmmakers (from 1995 to the present) have taken European cinema as an example in finding different subjects to be able to do more universal work. Now we can export films to 113 countries. In Turkish cinema, world-class projects are promising .
Every producer has style like comedy, drama, adventure . Although Turkish cinema is shaped by the preferences of producers, making films is a collective business. The technical team, the cast, the venue, the materials and the budget are all part of the cinema. It’s not necessary to work on a budget to make a movie. Every job has its costs. That’s why low-budget independent filmmakers have trouble releasing their films. They can get support from experienced producers to reach distributors. During the pandemic in which the world was located, cinemas closed. As with us all over the world, many of the films shot in digital media, namely Netflix, Amazon, etc. they went on the path of publishing. But as around the world, there are producers who prefer to wait for vision in post-pandemic cinemas. We believe that 2022 will be a breakthrough year for Turkish cinema.
By: Ali Kaygsiz (24 Kare Film Producer) & Ebru Cengiz Ergen ( FabUK magazine )
