Kedi between the local and the national

Abstract

Documentary film has not traditionally played a significant role within the critical discourse of the national cinema in Turkey. Before television, documentary filmmaking in the country was limited mostly to foreigners shooting in the country, like the Soviet film Ankara, Heart of Turkey (Yutkevitch and Arnstam, 1934), a series of Marshall Plan documentaries, or Maurice Pialat’s Turkish Chronicles (1963-64). When the state-run television channel TRT started broadcasting in 1968, documentaries, often about various aspects of life in Anatolia, became much more accessible for audiences. Since the recent democratization of filmmaking through digitization, documentaries have provided a space where voices of the opposition in Turkey can make themselves heard. In fact, all scandals regarding censorship at festivals in recent years have sprung from documentaries, and there are several documentary filmmakers currently on trial for their films. There is no national film body in Turkey and no pronounced policy regarding documentaries. Within this context, Kedi holds a special position. Although set entirely in Istanbul and shot in Turkish, the film is considered a co-production of the US and Turkey, with the production company and most of the main crew (including the Turkish-born director) based in the US. Kedi was released in its hometown in June 2017 to great acclaim, selling about 27, 500 tickets (a respectable sum for a small independent documentary). But the Film Critics Association (SIYAD) in Turkey included Kedi not in the national category but among foreign films for their awards consideration due to its majority producer being based in the US. Co-produced documentaries in Turkey are quite rare, and the few documentaries from Turkey that enter the international distribution networks are more political and often deal with either historical traumas or identity issues. So, in these senses, Kedi is an anomaly, but one can argue that the film harks back to the tradition of foreign filmmakers’ documentary production in Turkey. This chapter will position Kedi within Turkish documentary history, discussing its conditions of production while also problematizing the notion of a national documentary. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Jaimie Baron and Kristen Fuhs individual chapters, the contributors.