TURKEY
SEYYIT HAN / Bride of the Earth
1968 – 35mm – b/n - 78’
Direction: Yilmaz Güney
Screenplay: Yilmaz Güney
Cinematography: Gani Turanli
Editing: Sezai Elmaskaya, Tahsin Demirant
Music: Nedim Otyam
Cast: Yilmaz Güney, Nebahat Çehre, Hayati Hamzaoglu, Danyal Topatan, Nihat Ziyalan
Production: Güney Film
SYNOPSIS
Seyyit Han is a bold, but poor man. He is in love with a girl from his village in Anatolia and his love is returned. But Seyyit Han has no intention of marrying her yet, because he dreams of leaving his village and returning only after making a fortune. Only then will he marry his beloved. But his absence lasts many years and in the meantime a rich man proposes to her. As her brother looks favourably on a union between his family and that of the landowner, he decides to spread the bad news that Seyyit Han has died, making her sister abandon her dream of love. But right in the middle of the wedding, Seyyit Han reappears…
CRITICAL NOTE
“In Seyyit Han Guney develops qualities which are reminiscent of a travel of discovery. The story of Seyyit Han is told off-screen. On-screen we see an endless plain with three people riding into the distance or an endless field of margierites which Seyyit plants for his fiancée. At the film's beginning its melodramatic aspects are intensified by music which betrays inmistakeably American influences. This is a trick of Guney's to enhance his stories – stories about people who only ecounter the wrost sides of the remains of feudalism and of spreading caputalism.” (31st Berlinale Catalogue)
AWARDS
1969 Festival di Adana: Best Actor, Best Photography
