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30 - A Cinematography of Kurdishness

Identity, Industry and Resistance

from Part VI - Art, Culture and Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2021

By
Bahar Şimşek
Edited by
Hamit Bozarslan ,
Cengiz Gunes  and
Veli Yadirgi
Hamit Bozarslan
Affiliation:
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Cengiz Gunes
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
Veli Yadirgi
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Summary

This chapter problematizes the film modes of Kurdish presence to address the need for a radicalization of artistic tools in the name of artistic autonomy. The industrial mode of cinema’s desire for national totalities is valid in the Kurdish case through a pedagogy of the real to place traumatized Kurdishness in a victimhood discourse in the name of the recognition of Kurdish languages, and to claim its own popular narrations within limits defined by hegemonic powers - i.e. the officially recognized space for Kurdish languages in movie theatres. The limits of this very popular audience are also flagged by international film festivals’ taste and room for them. Within such a historical and political context, which sets Kurdish cinematography as a discursive tool within capitalist film modes, a claim for truth-telling emerges as the domestication of non-linear and non-smooth conflict zones in favour of a consumable form of Kurdish culture.

Keywords

Kurdish filmtraumaresistancevideopedagogy
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Kurds , pp. 752 - 774
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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