My Life as a Turkey

Turkeys for Xmas

1915

Feathered friends prepare to meet their fate in this seasonal newsreel outing to a Norfolk turkey farm.

From Atatürk to Erdoğan: Building a Nation

2019

Turkey's history has been shaped by two major political figures: Mustafa Kemal (1881-1934), known as Atatürk, the Father of the Turks, founder of the modern state, and the current president Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, who apparently wants Turkey to regain the political and military pre-eminence it had as an empire under the Ottoman dynasty.

Architects of Denial

2017

Though both the historical and modern-day persecution of Armenians and other Christians is relatively uncovered in the mainstream media and not on the radar of many average Americans, it is a subject that has gotten far more attention in recent years.

Intent to Destroy: Death, Denial & Depiction

2017

INTENT TO DESTROY embeds with a historic feature production as a springboard to explore the violent history of the Armenian Genocide and legacy of Turkish suppression and denial over the past century.

Arada

2021

The story of three Turkish men. They all grew up in Switzerland and all got deported after various criminal offenses.

The Armenian Genocide

2005

More than one million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1916 in massacres or brutal deportation programs. Turkey still denies it ever happened. Laurence Jourdan examines massacres of Armenians in the decades leading up to the mass murder, and the geopolitical situation both before and after the genocide. Contemporaneous reports and documents written by Western diplomats stationed in the Ottoman Empire describe the methods used and the deportation routes. These accounts are mixed with personal stories from the living survivors and archive footage from Ottoman authorities.

Remake, Remix, Rip-Off: About Copy Culture & Turkish Pop Cinema

2019

Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the biggest producers of film in the world. In order to keep up with the demand, screenwriters and directors were copying scripts and remaking movies from all over the world. This documentary visits the fastest working directors, the most practical cameramen and the most hardheaded actors to have a closer look into the country's tumultuous history of movie making.

Demirkırat: Bir Demokrasinin Doğuşu

1991

A documentary of Turkish political history about multi-party period, Democrat Party government and the coup d'etat of 27th May. Including eye-witness interviews with journalists, officers, politicians and family members.

İHA'nın Arşivinden 17 Ağustos 1999 Depremi

2022

Trans*BUT — Fragments of Identity

2015

Fragmentary perspectives on Human Rights and transgender (trans*) People in Turkey. What remains at the place where a murder happened? What constitutes trans* life? How to cope with daily violence and hatred? We begin to search for traces. We follow the tracks of resistance and survival. We are collectors of the expelled. We gather fragments of trans* lives inspired by texts of Nazim Hikmet, Foucault, Benjamin and Zeki Müren. Trans*BUT is a documental research study driven by the question: “What keeps you going when all else falls away?”

The Last Apostle: Journies in the Holy Land

2020

Dr. Mark Fairchild, world-renowned archaeologist, traces the hidden years of Saint Paul's life in the mountainous Turkish countryside of Rough Cilicia.

The Armenian Genocide

2006

Explores the Ottoman Empire killings of more than one million Armenians during World War I. The film describes not only what happened before, during and since World War I, but also takes a direct look at the genocide denial maintained by Turkey to the present day.

Son Darbe: 28 Şubat

2012

12 episodes documentary about Turkish political history focused on period between 1993 and 2002.

Krüger aus Almanya

2015

Berlin widower Paul Krüger, a retired ex-GDR stone mason (66), hates foreigner immigrants, especially Muslims. When his beloved, doting granddaughter Annie plans to marry Deniz, an ambitious student and waiter in Ankara who needs a visa for Germany, backward Paul and his buddy, publican Karin, go on Turkish 'holiday' so he can talk her out of it. But Deniz proves her only choice and probably a right one, even if countrymen and family win Paul's heart, as well as a resourceful preteen-thief, who proves an orphaned Syrian refugee. Paul even promises to plead with his counterpart, Deniz's family patriarch, who opposes him marrying a Christian infidel at pain of expulsion from the close clan.

The First World War

1934

Produced by the Fox Movietone News arm of Fox Film Corporation and based on the book by Lawrence Stallings, this expanded newsreel, using stock-and-archive footage, tells the story of World War I from inception to conclusion. Alternating with scenes of trench warfare and intimate glimpses of European royalty at home, and scenes of conflict at sea combined with sequences of films from the secret archives of many of the involved nations.