Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History by Savaş Arslan (review)

these memoirs effectively, the historian-reader must ask herself some serious questions: How do we provide the proper context of such memoirs? How do we use such memoirs in the histories that we write of this period? How should we think about memoir authorship? How do we negotiate conflicts between texts? Critical and comparative memoir studies need to be undertaken , in which the field of memory studies is applied rigorously to the study of the Armenian genocide memoir. Most importantly, the study of Western Armenian must be prioritized and funded more ambitiously in both Armenia and in the diaspora so scholars and non-scholars can learn the language that offers the richest and most untapped point of access to the many memoirs and memories written in Western Armenian that remain uncollected, unpublished , and unread. Goodbye, Antoura stands out as a telling, concise, and human portrait of a painful and traumatic component of the Armenian genocide. Beyond academic circles, the memoir could find a special audience among young adults, much as The Diary of Anne Frank has done. Panian’s skill at weaving the celestial with the hellish is a true gift to the reader; through Panian’s work, one can experience intimately this knot of angst and awe that is often concomitant with being a thoughtful child. This knot also provides deep insight into the experience of many other victims of the Armenian genocide, who often thought back to their homes, their families, and their former lives, enmeshed in visions of endless sadness and eternal beauty, each vision making the other more vivid and severe. Nora Lessersohn Harvard University doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.2.2.15 Savaş Arslan. Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 319 pp. Cloth, $105.00. ISBN-13 9780195370058; ISBN-10 0195370058; Paperback, $41.95. ISBN-13 9780195370065; ISBN-10 0195370066. The publication of a book on the history of cinema in Turkey in the English language has long awaited a specialist in the field. Savaş Arslan’s book is a valuable contribution to fill this gap. It is written by a film scholar who has a vast knowledge of his field. With this book, Arslan sets the ambitious goal of exploring not only the history of cinema in Turkey in its entirety but also providing a critical account of it. Thus, he embraces an interdisciplinary approach in his analysis while selecting his material from a wide range of Book Reviews 437 films, including national and international productions as well as a huge variety of genres ranging from comedy to pornography. This is the major strength of his book and also its weakness. In this study, Arslan distances himself from traditional interpretations of Turkish cinema as essentially “Turkish.” He also distinguishes his book from two recently published books on Turkish cinema: Gönül Dönmez Colin’s Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging (London: Reaktion, 2008) and Asuman Suner’s New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), by suggesting that his book does not deal with the cinema of Turkey as “Turkish” or as a manifestation of national identity nor does it imagine Turkey’s cinema as being in search of an identity. To overcome the limitations of a national framework and recognize the contributions of both the nation and its others to the cinema in Turkey, he prefers to use the term “cinema in Turkey” rather than “Turkish cinema” throughout the book. He does not consider his endeavor as building bridges or tunnels between the East and the West but instead invites the reader to enjoy the very separateness of Turkey’s cinema. Arslan argues that cinema in Turkey is an ambiguous cultural form—as is Turkey itself—that is neither Western nor Eastern but both at the same time. Thus, it cannot be understood only by looking at what makes it united, but also at what separates it. Instead of searching for a “true” national cinema that seeks a coherent and unique identity , this book concentrates on multiplicity and multitude. It embraces differences and plurality while rejecting the alleged contradictions between high and low art as well as art and popular...