Refocus: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan - (Refocus: The International Directors) by Gönül Dönmez-Colin

About the Book

Examines the work of Turkish director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Book Synopsis

ReFocus: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan brings together a cohort of expert scholars to analyse the films of Turkey's most renowned filmmaker. His self-reflexive films inspired by local incidents have reached global dimensions, and won awards at prestigious films festivals, including the Grand Prix, Best Director and Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival.
This collection highlights Ceylan's aesthetics, auteurism and unique position within the film industry of Turkey and contemporary global cinema while focusing on his transnational style of filmmaking that also favours intertextual exchanges between his films, but also with other landmark works, merging photography, painting, and literature.

Review Quotes

Offers essential commentary on aspects of local culture and politics and on the resonance of certain words, names, characters, music, and locales to which a non-Turkish critic would probably be oblivious.--Editor "The New York Review of Books"

An intriguing collection of essays on the work of the celebrated Turkish film director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. A rewarding read for anyone interested in world cinema, it succeeds in placing Ceylan within his cultural context and analysing his wider significance within Film Studies.--Oliver Leaman, University of Kentucky

This rigorous and passionate collection bestows on Turkish maverick Nuri Bilge Ceylan the scholarly attention he deserves. From his early shorts to his mature features, Ceylan has offered a unique and penetrating vision of humanity's existential struggles. His aesthetic and philosophical motifs are in dialogue with the likes of Ozu, Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, Martel and Antonioni, placing him among the greatest world-cinema auteurs of all time. By unveiling Ceylan's local roots, global connections and transmedial relations, this book makes a definitive contribution to film history and theory.--Lúcia Nagib, University of Reading