Istanbul rules in coming seasons’ films
The Turkish film industry has been working tirelessly between the months of May through to September.
Despite the heat of summer and the hardships of Ramadan, filming is being going on in hotel rooms, on the streets and in the studios. In this new season for which about 60 new films have been prepared at a galloping pace, we know through bitter experience that only five or six films will please their producers while the remainder will be lost in theaters. Despite this bitter reality, the sector seems to have kept up the pace in recent years.
The most noteworthy aspect of the coming season’s films is the boom about İstanbul itself. Of course, there is nothing surprising about İstanbul being used as a setting for Turkish cinema. This has often been the case ever since the first Turkish film. Having been referred to in the title of a local movie in 2006, İstanbul has continued to assert its dominance over our cinema. Of course, the influence of the İstanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture (ECOC) Agency in this should also be acknowledged. Excluding the Indian movie “Mission Istanbul,” İstanbul has not appeared on movie posters since “Sevgilim İstanbul” directed by Seçkin Yaşar, although it has often had lots of exposure in the film frames. This time İstanbul will be the star in movie theaters not only with its scenery and locations but also with its name, its past and its present.
Here are the new season’s İstanbul films:
İstanbul Beni Unutma: Six young directors led by Hüseyin Karabey came together to shoot 15-minute short films that will make up this anthology, which is among the projects funded by the ECOC. The film opens with Aida Begic, the Bosnian director who made a remarkable debut with “Snow,” followed by Stefan Arsenijevic (Serbia), Stergios Niziris (Greece), Omar Shargawi (Denmark), Hany Abu-Assad (Palestine) and Eric Nazarian (USA), who will come to İstanbul to shoot their own stories about İstanbul. The film is reminiscent of the successful experiment “Anlat İstanbul,” for which five directors came together in 2004, as well as “Paris je t’aime” and “New York I Love You,” and is already attracting attention for these directors who have won acclaim with their earlier works.
Istanbul My Dream: It is yet another foreign look at İstanbul. Directed by Hungarian director Ferenc Török, this film brings two sorrowful characters together in İstanbul. Joanna Ter Steege, mostly known for her work with Hungarian director István Szabó,’ co-stars with Yavuz Bingöl. The producer of the film is Serkan Acar, who also produced “Sonbahar.” In “Istanbul My Dream,” İstanbul sets the scene for this story between a Hungarian woman and a local construction worker in their struggle to hold on to each other.
Fetih 1453: The concept that the conquest of İstanbul would make a great film -- which is frequently voiced by those who are most distant to cinema -- is finally making an inroad at movie theaters. Of course, its too early to tell how director Faruk Aksoy will emerge from this formidable project, however, Aksoy has raised audience expectations by saying, “I will not give anyone an excuse to scorn the film.” It is expected to make its debut in December.
Sultanın Sırrı: This film has already brought several Hollywood stars including Mark Dacascos and Emanuel Bettencourt to our country, and looks at İstanbul through the eyes of Dan Brown. The film directed Hakan Şahin and screen written by Ömer Erbil, elaborates on the legend that there are sacred relics belonging to Jesus hidden in a room beneath Çemberlitaş.
Saç: Following his debut at the Locarno Film Festival with “Pus” (Haze), Turkish film maker Tayfun Pirselimoğlu now tells the story of Hamdi, who makes his living with “hair” in Tarlabaşı. Rıza Akın and Nazan Kesal star in the film.
Vay Arkadaş-Manik, Tik, Dildo: This film is poised to dispel Pirselimoğlu’s misty atmosphere and is attention-grabbing with its strange title. In this action comedy, featuring Demet Evgar, Mete Horozoğlu, Fırat Tanış and Ali Atay, director Kemal Uzun takes the audience on a journey into the suburbs of İstanbul.
40: In this debut film, which has been awaiting cinema release since the last year’s Golden Orange Film Festival, Emre Şahin focuses on the experiences of immigrants in İstanbul. Audiences will have to make up their own mind as to whether it is İstanbul or the immigrants that set the background for this film.
Kösem Sultan:
For some, Kösem Sultan was the paragon of ambition who established the institution of bribery in Turkey. For others she was an intelligent mother who took control of the Ottoman state when it had been left in the hands of her young children after her husband died. The life of Kösem Sultan, who is always a subject of debate, is being made into a movie. The film, titled “Mahpeyker: Kösem Sultan,” written by Avni Özgürel and produced by Ayfer Özgürel, began filming at İstanbul’s Topkapı Palace in February. The film promises to provide a realistic portrait of Sultan Kösem that is different from anything that has been said about her before now. While indoor scenes are being shot near Gebze, outdoor scenes are being filmed at Topkapı Palace, Yedikule Zindanlari (Seven Tower Dungeons), the Haseki complex and Hünkar Kasrı. Damla Sönmez will play the young Kösem Sultan, while Selda Alkor will play Kösem Sultan at the age of 60. Gökhan Mumcu will star as Sultan Ahmet I, and the film will also feature Bonnie Ramirez, Mansur Ark, Suavi Eren, Selda Özer and Ayten Soykök.
Istanbul and the baroque / The bountiful Balyans
Most visitors to İstanbul quickly hear about the great 16th-century Ottoman architect Sinan, particularly if they visit the Süleymaniye, Sokollu Mehmed Paşa or Rüstem Paşa mosques or the Çemberlitaş Hamam, where they will hear him spoken of in tones of reverence as befits the master behind so many of the city’s landmark buildings.
Far fewer people ever hear about the Balyans, however, even though this family of Turkish-Armenian architects left their fingerprints all over the 19th-century city, reversing the old Ottoman style in which the decoration was focused on the inside of outwardly austere buildings in favor of a more Western style in which the ornamentation was lavished on the exterior.
The problem is that the style of architecture in vogue in their heyday -- a florid local form of baroque -- has since fallen from favor. Today there are probably more people who admire the cool, classic lines of a Sinan mosque than appreciate the extravagant stone swags and garlands adorning a Balyan palace. Nor does it help that the buildings created by the Balyans tend to be stuffed full of the sort of over-the-top furnishings -- outsize chandeliers, giant porcelain vases, endless inlaid furniture -- that even lovers of maximalism find hard to stomach. The final nail in the Balyan coffin is the fact that you can only visit their most prominent masterpieces -- Dolmabahçe Palace, Beylerbeyi Palace and Küçüksu Kasrı -- on rushed guided tours that make it virtually impossible to appreciate anything. But the fact remains that the city would not be what it is without the Balyans, who are long overdue for a bit of praise.
The founder of this extraordinary dynasty was a man named Meremmetçi Bali Kalfa (?-1725), who hailed from a village near Karaman in Central Anatolia. Having somehow heard about the success of a fellow Armenian architect at the court of Sultan Mehmed IV, he made his way to İstanbul and succeeded in securing a post for himself, which then passed to his son Magar. Magar fell foul of Sultan Mahmud I and was exiled to Bayburt, where he taught his sons Krikor and Senekerim architecture. It was with Krikor Amira Balyan (1764-1831) that the great days of the family firm began in earnest. Sadly, many of the buildings he bequeathed to the city have since been lost, although the Nusretiye (Victory) Cami, designed to celebrate Sultan Mahmud II’s suppression of the Janissaries in 1826, is still standing, as are the elegant Valide and Topuzlu dams (reservoirs) in the Belgrade Forest and the Feshane alongside the Golden Horn at Eyüp, which is where the city’s fezes were once manufactured. Krikor was also responsible for three wings of the giant Selimiye Barracks, visible as you sail to Kadıköy, after it had to be expanded to house Sultan Mahmud II’s new professional army.
Less well known, Krikor’s younger brother Senerkerim nevertheless left the city one of its most conspicuous landmarks, the Serasker Fire Tower that stands on the grounds of İstanbul University in Beyazıt. Ironically, it was a replacement for the first tower, built of wood by brother Krikor, that had burnt down.
But it was Magar’s youngest son Garabet Amira Balyan (1800-66) who really made the city his own. It was he who was responsible, with his son Nikoğos, for the Dolmabahçe Palace, built for Sultan Abdülmecid and such a mammoth undertaking that it took from 1843 to 1856 to complete. The palace contains a daunting 258 rooms, although the public only get to see a tiny fraction of them, most attention focusing on the stupendous 38-meter-high Ceremonial Hall with its concealed dome where the later sultans presided over festivities to celebrate the different bayrams (holidays), and on the considerably smaller room in which Mustafa Kemal Atatürk breathed his last on Nov. 10, 1938. It shows what a grip the Balyans had on court architecture at that time that the wooden Beşiktaş Palace that had stood on the site before the Dolmabahçe had itself been a work of Garabet’s older brother Krikor.
Many people find a visit to the Dolmabahçe overwhelming, which is a shame since, amongst other treasures, it contains a priceless collection of paintings that the hurried tours prevent visitors from enjoying. On the other side of the Bosporus, however, Beylerbeyi Palace, built in 1865 towards the end of his life by Garabet in collaboration with his even more prolific son Sarkis, is more manageable, its most beautiful feature being a lovely internal pool presided over by a marble fountain adorned with dolphins that was intended to cool and soothe palace occupants during the dead heat of summer.
Garabet’s other masterwork is the exquisite mosque that juts out from the waterside at Ortaköy, an unmissable landmark as people cruise up and down the Bosporus that has a virtual twin in the equally lovely, light-filled Dolmabahçe Cami designed by Nikoğos. People strolling along Divan Yolu in Sultanahmet will also pass the mausoleum housing the remains of Sultans Mahmud II, Abdülaziz and Abdülhamid II, another work of Garabet dating from 1840. Less obvious are the diminutive Nusretiye clock tower that he built in 1848, the first such tower in the city (you can see it from the windows of the İstanbul Modern art gallery), and the enormous Surp Asdvadzadzin Church in Beşiktaş that you will pass if you walk downhill to the ferries from Abbas Ağa Park. Garabet was also responsible for the attractive Gümüşsuyu Askeri Hastanesi (Military Hospital) on Gümüşsuyu Caddesi, the road running down to Dolmabahçe from Taksim Square. He even designed the Abud Efendi Yalısı at Kandilli, used as the setting for the recent smash-hit TV serial Gümüş (Silver).
Nikoğos Balyan (1826-58) had a tragically short life during which he nevertheless designed a couple of the city’s smaller treasures: the Küçüksu Kasrı at Kandilli and the Ihlamur Kasrı at Beşiktaş. Intended as pavilions in which a traveling sultan could rest rather than as permanent homes, both these buildings showcase the elaborate baroque features of Balyan architecture without leaving the visitor drowning in excess detail. It’s a shame, then, that they receive relatively few visitors. It was Nikoğos, too, who was responsible for the pretty Küçük Mecidiye Cami, built in 1848 across the road from the Çırağan Palace, itself designed by his brother Sarkis. He was also responsible for the Adile Sultan Palace, built in Kandilli in 1853, which now houses the excellent Kandilli Borsa restaurant.
The work of Sarkis Balyan (1835-1899) will be familiar to residents of two of the city’s top hotels: the Çırağan Palace Kempinski Hotel, which was rebuilt in 1990 as a copy of his original that had burnt down in 1910; and the W Hotel at Akaretler, which was created out of the row-houses built to accommodate workers at the Dolmabahçe Palace in the 1870s. The newly restored Valide Sultan Cami at Aksaray, built in 1871, is also sometimes attributed to Sarkis and his brother Agop. In 1889 Sarkis expanded the Şale (chalet) guesthouse in the grounds of the Yıldız Palace ready for the state visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the man who bequeathed the green-roofed fountain to the Hippodrome. He also added the delightful Malta Köşk to the grounds, equipping it in 1870 with an interior pool rather like the one inside Beylerbeyi Palace, but this time decorated with marble swans. The Sarı Köşk that he added to the Emirgan Grove in the 1870s was designed to imitate a Swiss chalet. It now houses a pleasant small café.
Although Agop Balyan (1838-1875) worked on several projects with his brother, it was really with Sarkis that the great dynasty of architects came to an end. It had served no fewer than six different sultans over five generations, bequeathing an unprecedented quantity and variety of buildings to İstanbul. The Balyans are buried in the Armenian Cemetery in Nuh Kuyusu Caddesi in Bağlarbaşı in Üsküdar.
First exhibition of İstanbul monumental tombs opens
A selection of items from the İstanbul Tomb Museum Directorate is currently on display at Topkapı Palace, revealing the richness of the monumental tombs that have been the resting places of sultans, statesmen and Islamic thinkers.
We live in an age where we have distanced ourselves from our deceased ancestors. Whereas we once had a culture where people lived with their deceased and even shared their sorrows and joys with them. There is a story of when a foreigner asked famous Turkish poet Yahya Kemal about the population of İstanbul and he replied, “80 million.” The foreigner objected, saying, “How is this possible?” The answer by the poet was thought provoking: “We live with our dead.”
The tombs of historic and spiritual figures currently showcased by the exhibition highlight the delicate art of the Ottomans. They are filled with artworks that reveal how these individuals and their followers saw the thin line between death and life.
The items, including coats, caps, prayer rugs, chandeliers, Qurans and royal decrees from the Ottoman period, were retrieved from storage by the İstanbul Museum of Shrines Directorate. In a joint effort by the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, the Governor’s Office of Istanbul with the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, this exhibition during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, titled “Gateways to Eternity: Shrines,” gathers unique pieces that had been kept in dusty chests for years at the Topkapı Palace Imperial Stables. The exhibition, featuring 120 pieces, is merely a drop in the sea, because thousands of other artifacts are waiting to be brought out of storage into the light of day.
‘Tombs must have a museum’
Culture and Tourism Ministry Undersecretary İsmet Yılmaz, İstanbul Culture and Tourism General Director Ahmet Emre Bilgili, İstanbul Müfti Mustafa Çağrıcı and director of the İstanbul Tomb Museum Directorate, Hayrullah Cengiz, were in attendance at the opening ceremony on Monday.
In his opening speech, Cengiz said, “Here we share only a small sample of the works that we have in our archives. We are both proud and sad about that. We would wish that all the pieces could be displayed for visitors in a museum. But until now the İstanbul Tomb Museum Directorate was unable to secure an exhibition space.” Bilgili also shared the same concerns during his address. The exhibition, curated by Serkan Nişancı, is set to run until Sept. 19.
