> I for one am looking forward to Ceylan's next > film, no matter his esthetic predispositions. > > Louis Proyect
I did not know Nuri, that is, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, well but I know of him. We were both at the Bogazici University in the early 1980s. He was one of the best photographers of our Photography Club, as well as a member of the Cinema Club, whose president was my room mate. At the time I was the president of the Turkish Music Club so because of this Nuri and I belonged to the same milieu. He was a lonely person with not many friends but this maybe because he was happy by himself with his photography and movies. That Cinema Club produced many directors, some of whom are now among the best directors in the country. A few of them are the top TV commercial directors, among other productions including movies. So, it is no surprise to me that Nuri turned out to be one of the best directors in Turkey. Both him and I are the children of 912. 912 is our 911, so it stands for September 12, 1980. On that bloody day the US supported Turkish Military took power to make sure that the January 24, 1980 economic program, which started the process of neoliberalization in Turkey can proceed smoothly. The neoliberalization project has not worked as smoothly as was planned maybe but the parallel project of depolitization of the population has worked quite fine. It is one of the best executed social engineering projects of the past few decades in my view. A young population with almost no interest in politics has been created and the older ones with some political interests were either exterminated or converted to liberalism. But they could not convert all of us. Nuri is among those of us who survived this conversion process with as little scratches as one can expect. His movies are about his own personal experiences and this makes his movies somewhat "shallow" at times, but the period he has lived and what he has experienced during this period are so rich that even that is fine. Moreover, he still is a great photographer. Best, Sabri
