The protagonists of european cinema: Yilmaz Güney
It is the eleventh step of an ideal route, started with Krzysztof Zanussi and carried on with Carlos Saura , Otar Iosseliani, Jules Dassin, Andrzej Wajda, Edgar Reitz, Andrej Tarkovskij, Theo Anghelopoulos, Nikita Michalkov and Costa Gavras.
A review of the most important works of an important director will take place, as well as a congress on his cinema in collaboration with the SNCCI during which a monograph sponsored by the Festival will be introduced, written by Massimo Causo and published by Besa Editrice.
BIOGRAPHY
Yilmaz Güney birth name Yilmaz Pütün, was born to Kurdish parents in 1937 in Yenice, near Adana (Turkey). After the high school, he studied law at Ankara University and then economics in Instabul. As a boy, he cultivated literary activity with fervour, besides doing all kinds of job. Already in 1953, in fact, he was accidentally taken on by a film distribution company with the task of carrying films from town to town; this gave him awareness of the public taste and of his own cinema interests. Also during his time at university, he became known as a story writer. In 1958, as a result of a conviction for the communist sympathies expressed in one of his early writings, he was dismissed. However, thanks to the knowledge he had developed of the cinema world and thanks to his skill as a writer, he began working with the one who would be his master: Atif Yilmaz. It's exactly by Yilmaz the 1959 film Bu vatanin çocuklari (Guys in this country), where Güney worked as co-scriptwriter and actor. He worked with him (even as an assistant director) until 1961, when he started serving his sentence. In prison he wrote his first novel: Boynu bübük ӧldüler (Yureghir fields). Isolated from the world of cinema, he returned to work only thanks to his friend Ferit Ceyhan, who directed him in Ikiside cesurdu (Two brave men, 1964), also written by Güney. The success of the film turned him into a star, and in the next four years he was the protagonist of over 60 films and also the co-scriptwriter of twenty of them. These were mainly commercial action films, but in them he focused his identity as a popular hero (he was called “the ugly king”, in contrast with Turkish cinema stars, that followed Western models of stardom). In 1967 he made his first film as a director Benim adim Kerim (My name is Kerim), a secondary film compared to what he considered his real début: Seyyit Han, also known as Topragin gelini (Seyyit Han or The Bride of the Earth, 1968), produced by his Güney film. Between '69 and '72 he starred in about thirty films, directing ten, among these the fundamental Umut (Hope, 1970), and then Aci (Pain, 1971), Umutsuzlar (The hopeless ones, 1971), Agit (Elegy, 1972). In 1972 he was convicted again for harbouring some anarchists and imprisoned in Selimiye, where he wrote a collection of short stories and letters published under the title of Selimiye uclemesi (Selimiye Trilogy). Released under an amnesty in '74, he began shooting Endise (Anxiety,1974), but he was arrested again for the murder of a judge killed by firearm during a brawl in the restaurant where the crew was eating dinner. Condemned not only for the murder but also for other political “crimes”, he continued working in prison, where he wrote two novels and three scripts (more than excellent): Sürü (The herd, 1978), Düsman (The enemy, 1979) e Yol (1982), shot by Zeki Ӧkten e Serif Gӧren. The first two gained the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 1979 and a special mention at Berlin in 1980 respectively. The third one, edited by Güney in Switzerland, after escaping from Turkey in late 1980, won the Palme D'or at Cannes in 1882 ex-aequo with Missing by Costa-Gavras. In 1983 in France he shot Le mur (The wall, 1983), set in a Turkish prison. He died in Paris on 9 September 1984. In 1981 Military Junta removed his nationality and banned his books, his pictures and his films, some of which have been lost. Nowadays the figure of Güney represents a firm point of reference in Turkish cinema and culture, that still considers his Work as an essential turning point in the complex cultural history of the country.
