Browsing by Author "Akcali, Elif"

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Glaring and Out Loud! Thinking Women's Cinema in Turkey Through Agency and Companionship
(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2025) Akcali, Elif; Guclu, Ozlem
Recognizing the 2010s as a decade that marks a shift in the audiovisual landscape in Turkey in terms of increased visibility of women and diversity of gender roles on screen, but most importantly as a decade of women filmmakers' rising voices, in this article, we aim to bring forward the significant strands and tendencies that define this period via a discussion of the representations of women marking a break and a difference from the past examples, and an evaluation of women filmmakers' ever growing involvement in the film industry and their solidarity networks. The data in this article was gathered within the work packages of a 26-month research project and it includes the insights, analyses and results drawn from quantitative and qualitative methods. In the following pages, we aim to reveal the diversified output of women filmmakers of the 2010s and to establish the extended boundaries of their filmmaking without setting hierarchies between mainstream, art-house, short, animation or documentary films. Marking this period as unique and ample in the history of cinema in Turkey, we aim to emphasize its novelties. We then turn to the statistical results of our research project and cross-read them with our interview data with an affirmative ethical approach.
Representation of Women in Two Different Adaptations of "the Little Mermaid" Fairy Tale
(Kadir Has Üniversitesi, 2022) Şen, Ecem; Akçalı, Elif; Akcali, Elif; Radio, Television and Cinema
The representation of women in fairy tales has been one of the focus areas of feminist studies for decades. The discourses of the tales, especially about the representation of women, can confirm the patriarchal system. Fairy tales are also noteworthy because they are often adapted to movies. The extent to which these adaptations adhere to the fairy tale or what they prefer to change obviously may vary; the film’s director, its context, and its genre can, for instance, determine how the film was shot, what type of production it belongs to and what kind of content it will have. The aim of this thesis is to compare two versions of Hans Christian Andersen's tale “The Little Mermaid” adapted for cinema, The Little Mermaid (John Musker and Ron Clements, 1989) and The Lure (Agniezska Smoczyńska, 2015), in terms of female representation. While making this comparison, the films; focusing on the fact that they belong to two different periods and that they were produced by production forms such as mainstream and independent cinema, the main objective is to investigate how the representation of women and the codes underlined by the tale are conveyed to the audience through their narratives. During this research, feminist film theory will be used and films will be examined mainly through formal analysis while reflecting on their contextual differences
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Two Balloons Can Fly a Minaret: Parody and Fabricated Reality as Integral Qualities of Mock-Documentary in aya Seyahat
(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2025) Tüzün, Defne; Akçalı, Elif; Paça Cengiz, Esin; Behlil, Melis; Radio, Television and Cinema
This paper takes a close look at the critically acclaimed artist and filmmaker Kutlu & gbreve; Ataman's mockumentary Aya Seyahat (Journey to the Moon, 2009). We discuss the potentials and possibilities that the mockumentary mode brings to the film in detail, and address this mode as an aesthetic and critical manner that Ataman employs in his artistic practice. Through this discussion, we evaluate the ways in which the film is informed by and can be interpreted as a parodic observation of recurrent patterns in Turkish politics and representations of the national pasts. We argue that it exemplifies and endorses mockumentary's politically reflexive capacity to rethink history and the process of historiography in which historical truths are constructed. Mockumentary mode offers layers of meanings, exceeding the obvious narrative of historical parody, and invites the viewers to notice and problematize conventional narrational and stylistic methods of documenting a historical event. Thus, the film provides a criticism and comparison of the public opinion towards politics within two distinct periods in Turkey's history, namely the 1950s and the 2000s. It also opens up a space for a critical engagement with Turkey's troubled pasts and their construction as historical narratives in both cinematic and other representations.