ÄSTHETIK DES OKZIDENTALISMUS.
Yücel Çakmaklıs islamisch-turkistisches Millî Sinema
(„Nationales Kino“) (1964-2006)
Project management: Dr. Ömer Alkın
Project duration: 2020-2023
Research institution: Philipps University of Marburg
Department: FB 09, Institute for Media Studies
For more than thirty years, scholars have been investigating different conceptions of ‘Occidentalism’. Mostly, these studies gather discourse-analytically conceptualized research that analyzes the dichotomous relationship between Orient and Occident and the complex discursive as well as historical entanglements also in different regional as well as national contexts.
Although the studies examine radio broadcasts, photographs or other media, the non-textual media-aesthetic qualities (i.e.: image, sound, etc.) are hardly included in the analysis. What part do media-aesthetic qualities of discourses play in constituting occidentalist discourse sense? Such discourses are assumed to be those that construct the West in a pejorative and delimiting way in order to stabilize and consolidate a non-Western self. This research project explores this overarching question using an example that has so far been neglected in research discourse.
Specifically, it examines the cinematic oeuvre of Yücel Çakmaklı (*1943-2009), the founder of a national-Islamic cinema in Turkey, by means of cinematic work analyses, and works out decidedly cinematic-aesthetic characteristics that implement occidentalist discourse dynamics in film.