Shooting for Justice: The Courage of Yilmaz Guney

Praised as one of the most important and influential directors of Turkish cinema, Yilmaz (Putun) Guney and his films have been a source of hope for his fellow countrymen for over forty years (Nowell-Smith 659). Until his escape from imprisonment under a restrictive government regime, however, hardly anyone outside of Turkey had seen or heard of his work as an actor, writer, and director (Imdb.com). According to The Oxford History of World Cinema, Guney began his film career as an actor, and even wrote several of his action films, before becoming a director in the mid-1960s.

In 1970, Guney’s acclaimed film Umut, or Hope, raised controversy with its exploration of rural poverty and oppression. In the movie, Guney himself plays a horse cab driver whose horse is killed, and who sinks into a deep depression because of the injustice that befell his family (Imdb.com). Guney’s quest for justice did not end there. The following year, he directed The Elegy and The Sorrow, which also explored the topic of rural poverty, and The Desperate Ones and The Father, which “were centered on urban capitalism” (Nowell-Smith 659).

Although his country was at the height of civil war, Guney ushered in a cinematic New Wave with his epic, poetic realist taste in films (Nowell-Smith 660). He led the way for other young directors despite his imprisonment in 1971 by the Turkish military (Nowell-Smith 659). He was released, only to courageously produce more films, and then was once again imprisoned in 1974, during which time he continued to write and direct “by proxy” (Nowell-Smith 659).

In 1981, Guney escaped his country and fled to France (Imdb.com). He subsequently edited his directed-by-proxy film Yol, which won at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival (Nowell-Smith 659). Never one to back down, Guney’s last film before his death in 1984, Duvar, or The Wall, touches on themes of political repression, abuse, independence, nationalism, police corruption, and so on (Imdb.com). Guney’s films were focused on the brutal consequences of injustice, and he set a model of courage that should make any filmmaker think twice about what we capture with a camera, and why we capture it. What are we willing to lose?

 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0351566/ (Yilmaz Guney)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066500/plotsummary (Umut summary)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090982/keywords (Duvar)