sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

that she is pregnant and tries to find shelter in her friend’s house where she is abused by her friend’s
lover. After coming back to her village she tries to hide her pregnancy. She gives birth to her child
and kills the newborn. Throughout the film, we feel the cold atmosphere of on‐the road‐diners in
Anatolia. Young people travels from the villages to these diners everyday and their identities are split
in these transitional zones. Zehra is one of these many workers and servants who are lost in these
spaces in the middle of nowhere. Yeşim Ustaoğlu’s comment on a “perpetual search for identity” is:
Conclusion
Despite the fact that we are part of a very rich culture, we continue to ask ourselves,
“Who are we?”. Including Islamist fundamentalism, all social explosions, the Kurdish
identity, the Turkish identity and the problems of the third‐generation Turks in Germany
are all based on the same question. ‘Who are we’? Everyone is asking this question and
finding an open door to say I am this or that and defending it”.
Yeşim Ustaoğlu’s films pose important questions regarding the modalities of silence; questions
about life, about human beings, about families, about nationalities and ethnicities. 10 The silence of
sound in all these films is constructed in a picturesque way. We are fascinated by the composition of
these frames so that we do not dig for their faults or their guilt, 11 on the contrary, we praise the way
they stay silent. Ustaoğlu’s characters question their existence in these silenced scenes, like the
grandmother’s daughter in Pandora’s Box who keeps silent in the crowds of the city, between the
barriers and the bridges. In these films, what is revealed is the impossibility of speaking to another: la
“nausee” in Duet, the obsessive cleaning scene of the elder sister in Pandora’s Box, the ritual with the
photograph of Niko in Waiting for the Clouds, Zehra’s escape to the world of television in Araf . All
these films are paintings of mute images.
Whereas Nuri Bilge Ceylan has a B/W photographic code and framing of silence in his films, Yeşim
Ustaoğlu has a “painter’s passion” in illuminating and darkening the canvas. The scene of the funeral
ritual in Waiting for the Clouds has the touch of Rembrandt lighting and colors, veiling the focus and
shining the ground with the dripping water. The representation turns into a shadow play
accompanied by the murmurs of the prayer, a meditation takes place where sight and sound are
removed although there is an image. The body of the dead woman is covered with the white sheet
and the archaic sounds of praying to God veils the speech of women. The action, pouring water on
the dead body and washing it is not shown, only shades are seen and the action is replaced by
splashes of water in the vessel. This is a painting more than just the capturing of a moment. The
grammatical elements of film are used in relay as Robert Bresson explains, “if equal sound and image
damage or kill each other, as we say of colors,” to resolve this he conceives of sound and image as
“working in a relay, first one and then the other.”
Yeşim Ustaoğlu, too draws her images in relay. First the signs, than the sounds and finally a
synthesis that unfolds in the spectators’ minds. She opens a window and helps us to look at the
landscape behind the screen. Yeşim Ustaoğlu follows a different path than other directors of New
Turkish Cinema turning her direction to the Black Sea region, to the landscape of mountain people,
instead of insisting on Istanbul. Her choice of the aural void concentrates our gaze on the landscape
that is isolated and framed by mountains and heights over the sea. The clouds veil silence and
mourning. The time‐image gives us the freedom to look at the frames as if they were paintings in a
museum hall. There is no rush, no crowd and no noise. This absolute freedom of leaving us the space
to look at these pictures makes her the master of images of silence.