Dear All,

CFS Talk:

Canan Balan : Silent Cinema in Istanbul: “the Rendezvous Place of the 
High-Society”

Tuesday, 12th January at 15.15 pm
Boardroom of the Film Studies Department, 99 North Street.

ABSTRACT: This paper will examine the ways, in which cinema was 
institutionalized and offered a new public sphere in Istanbul of the 
1920s through the establishment of film criticism and cinema journalism 
that promoted new life styles along with the notions of consumerism and 
fandom. The transformation of the society from a multi-national and a 
multi-ethnic one (the Ottoman Empire) to a nation state (Turkish 
Republic) in this period coincided with the dominance of the idea of 
cinema as a transformative public sphere. The Turkish state's 
encouragement of a new type of bourgeoisie played role in the emergence 
of chic theatres and an "elegant" audience profile. The exhibition 
practices, openings of new cinema halls, "coquettish" interior 
decorations or audience manners received far more detailed analysis by 
the journals than the individual films did. Additionally, an important 
task for a "good" cinema critic was to improve the public taste as part 
of the /zeitgeist /in the early Turkish Republic similar to many global 
/fin-de-siècle/ movements.

For more information please log on to:
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/events.php

With best wishes in the New Year.