Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History Reviews

The best of all the recent volumes which have appeared on Turkish cinema and its antecedents. Arslan is good both on the origins of cinema in Yesilcam - or Green Pine; a movement in Turkish cinema which was much like the old Hollywood Poverty Row studios in the 1930s and 1940s. Arslan also understands how the past influences the present, both in thematic and structural terms: Turkish cinema is un-like Hollywood cinema for a series of specific reasons. He adopts a refreshingly pluralistic approach to his material, acknowledging the significance of both western and nonwestern theoretical models. Highly recommended.

"Refreshing, thought-provoking and informative."--Charlotte McPherson, Today's Zaman


"I believe that Cinema in Turkey is a groundbreaking work, the first of its kind in English that looks in detail at the conditions of production and exhibition that shaped Yesilcam's product over nearly five decades. It deserves to become a seminal text in Turkish film history."--Laurence Raw, Insight Turkey


"Full of fresh ideas, Arslan's book productively reconciles popular and art house cinema within this study of Turkey's national film tradition. It brings insights into matters of genre, alternative cultural geographies, cross-cultural adaptation, and transnational film historiography. And it successfully tackles the relationship between Western narratives and their appropriation within modernising peripheries." --Dina Iordanova, University of St. Andrews


"Ranging from international art films to the Turkish mainstream, from trash to high-art films, from feminist and auteur theory to Orientalism, from pornography to melodrama, from the Silent Era to New Media, this book is rich in its reference, deep in its understanding, and clear in its analysis." --Ronald Green, Ohio State University