Fellini and Turkey: Influence and Image

Abstract

Like many great artists, Federico Fellini used his fertile cultural context in his films, reflecting it onscreen with a great deal of originality and elegance. He is known for exhibiting a sensibility open to the universal, or at least the broadly transnational, while engaging intensely with his own subjectivity and with the cultures and dialects specific to Italy. Turkish cinema had been influenced by many cinema movements, but perhaps the most noteworthy one was Italian neorealism. Particularly after the1950s, important filmmakers were involved in the creation of a national cinema, and by following the model of Italian neorealism, they formed a short-lived, politically engaged “social realism” movement between 1960 and 1965. However, beginning in the late 1980s when filmmakers decided to make more individual, auteurist, and alternative films, and continuing with the next generation of filmmakers, the transformation of Turkish cinema culture invites us to investigate to what extent Turkish cinema interacted with Fellini. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. All rights reserved.