INTERVIEW / On the relationship between cinema and literature / Anıl Şen, Göktuğ Arslan

2012.05.25
Istanbul University, Department of Turkish Language and Literature, Project Assignment

Who is Selim Güneş? Can you tell us about the work you have done so far?

I studied Electrical Engineering at Yıldız Technical University. Then I did a master’s in Business Administration at Istanbul University and worked as an engineer for a while; later I left engineering and worked at our own advertising agency. I started taking an interest in photography in 1989. From 1989 until today I have photographed intensively. I gave slide shows and held solo and group exhibitions. Each of these shows and exhibitions was a step for me. My photographs have also been shown at Istanbul Modern and the Istanbul Photography Museum. I am a member of İFSAK. I have taught at İFSAK and other institutions. In the courses I gave, I taught light, composition and shooting techniques.

In 1997 and 1998 Yusuf Darıyerli and I did a joint project on Istanbul. That work culminated in an exhibition called “İstanbul İstanbul”. My album “İstanbul Lodoslar Kenti” came out of the photographs of Istanbul I took between 2000 and 2006. “İstanbul Lodoslar Kenti” was born from the poem of the same name in Füruzan’s poetry book “Lodoslar Kenti”. I felt that the poem “Lodoslar Kenti” expressed my way of looking at Istanbul and my feelings about it very well. So I got in touch with Füruzan, shared with her the photographs I had taken of Istanbul, and told her I would like to use the name “Lodoslar Kenti” for my album. She looked at my photographs and, after our conversation, gladly agreed. I also included part of the poem in the album’s introduction.

My uncle ran a cinema, so my childhood was spent in a movie theatre. My childhood years were a time when there were films all the time. My eldest brother also has a part in my love of cinema. When I was in primary school, he was at a boarding high school in Kars. He would come and tell us about the films he had seen. Even if it is not something young people today are used to, it is something that people of my age group lived through and know. There were two reasons for it. The first was economic, and the other was that there simply weren’t many opportunities to watch films. My brother would take at least an hour, an hour and a half, to tell us a one-hour film he had seen, exaggerating the story and imitating the characters. We would wait for my brother to come home so that he would tell us the films he had seen and we could share his dreams. At the root of my love of cinema was having an uncle who ran a cinema and being the younger brother of a brother like that. I was also a child who was always dreaming. And dreaming did not stay behind in my childhood; it has always continued. I have always been a keen filmgoer. Also, like it was for many people, the Istanbul Film Festival was a school for me.

I started photography by chance. A friend asked me to go along with him to a course, so I went with him. And that was how photography began for me. My skill and progress in photography also raised my expectations and abilities when it came to cinema. The shows I put together had the flavour of short films. I was making works that had a story. I had a work on Istanbul, and it had that flavour. I had a show called “Yolculuk”, in which I tried to tell the story of a train journey. So, in the end, cinema was always there for me. In one of his poems Pablo Neruda says, “In the heart of every lion lies the wish to be a poet.” When I adapt that to our world, I say that in the heart of every photographer lies the wish to be a filmmaker. At least, that is how it was for me.

When the conditions came together, I reached the point of making a feature film, and I began writing a screenplay based on Ayran, one of Sabahattin Ali’s stories that had moved me deeply; this took about three years. During that time I didn’t only write the screenplay; I read a great many books, did research and worked hard on what I needed to do to shoot a feature film. I exchanged ideas with people, and in the end “Ayran” became White as Snow. Shooting was finished in 2010. White as Snow went to festivals and met its audiences. Now we have started working on our second film.

If I were to sum up briefly the background that brought me to cinema, I would say: my dreams, my childhood, photography and my love of cinema.

What kind of bond do you think there is between cinema and literature?

When we think of the literary adaptations made both in Turkey and abroad, we can say there is a close bond. It is certain that filmmakers have been greatly influenced by literature. On the other hand, you can see that literature has been influenced by cinema too. When you read some novels, stories or poems, you can observe that their language has a structure, an imaginative world, that lends itself to cinema. A writer who has been influenced by cinema may also be producing works that taste as if they could be made into a film. Cinema’s history is much shorter than literature’s. In this short period filmmakers have drawn heavily on literature. The fact that adaptations are still being made today shows this. Adaptations of the same work are even made more than once, at different times and by directors from different countries. In short, I think there is a close and indispensable relationship between literature and cinema, and that each influences the other.

Does adapting literary works for the cinema lower their literary value? Or, to put it another way, do you think adapting a literary work for the cinema adds a literary quality to that film?

Some writers say, “If only literary works weren’t adapted for the cinema.” I suppose they think the spirit and the language of that literary work, that novel or that story, will be harmed. But I don’t share this view. Literature is one art form and cinema is another. The language of literature is different, and the language of cinema is different. So the two reach the reader and the viewer by moving in different ways.

A literary work may add a literary quality to a film, or it may not. Let me give the example of Fahriye Abla. Fahriye Abla is a film freely adapted from a poem. When you watch Fahriye Abla, it does not have a poetic language; it has a different language. White as Snow, on the other hand, was adapted from a story, yet those who watched White as Snow found a poetic flavour in it. So even if you set out for a film to be literary, or the opposite, it doesn’t happen that way. In fact, the answer to this question has to do with cinema’s own formula. In making a film, you might have a good screenplay and good performances, you might have worked with the right crew technically and got the right shots, you might have done everything in post-production; in short, even if you have done many things right, it doesn’t mean the film will be good when it is projected on the screen. It has a strange spell that we call the magic of cinema, and nobody knows its formula. It is impossible to predict the first relationship that will form with the audience the moment the film appears on the screen. Sometimes you can feel the literary value that the literary work’s own language has brought to the film. But sometimes it may not be there. So the answer is neither a hundred per cent yes nor a hundred per cent no.

In your view, what kind of work could graduates of the Department of Turkish Language and Literature do in the film industry? Can being a graduate of the Department of Turkish Language and Literature give someone an advantage in working in the film industry?

Not only in Turkey but all over the world, one of the biggest problems for filmmakers is a good screenplay. It is very much a cliché, but I will repeat it here anyway: from a good screenplay you can make a good film, or you can make a bad one. But you can never make a good film from a bad screenplay. In other words, the screenplay is one of the first and most important steps of cinema, one it cannot do without and one that has to be good. Turkish Language and Literature students can work on screenwriting first of all. Considering the education and skills you have acquired, and that a good screenplay is indispensable to cinema, I think graduates of Turkish Language and Literature can make a contribution to the world of cinema. Dialogue writers can also come from people with this education. They can become directors too. Directing is not the monopoly of film school graduates. When we look at the backgrounds of directors, we see that those who studied film are in the minority, because directing requires being able to look at many things from a bit higher up. The education film schools provide certainly contributes. But having gone through film school is not a hundred per cent requirement.

What I would say to Turkish Language and Literature students is to choose the film industry without any hesitation. They need to consider the following. The education they have received is their first plus. Second, they may have the talents this industry calls for. Third, do they truly love cinema? And four: in this industry, those who produce good work also have the chance to earn a good income. There is work in the film industry in terms of the education you have received, your skills, and economically as well.

What is your advice to graduates of the Department of Turkish Language and Literature?

One: they should read novels and short stories; two: they should read poetry. They should follow not only Turkish literature but world literature as well.

As for my advice to those who want to become screenwriters: there are screenplay books. Rather than books on how to write a screenplay (though those can help too, of course), there are the screenplays of films published in book form. I recommend that they read those screenplay books. They should also be sure to watch the film of every screenplay they read. I recommend that they assess them side by side: the screenplay was written like this, but it was turned into a film like this. And the screenplay has another characteristic too. A screenplay is a living thing. From the moment you write its first version until the shooting stage, it keeps developing. It even goes on during the shoot. Some directors are able to make additions to the screenplay even while shooting. Some directors shoot through improvisation. So the screenplay stage can go on until the end of the shoot. With all this in mind, I recommend that they read books, watch films and, above all, of course, be sensitive to the world (sensitive, as citizens of the world, to political, economic and social developments), and at the same time, as their work requires, take a somewhat deeper interest in cinema and literature.

*****