Reviewed by: Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens ed. by Sabine Hake and Barbara Mennel Barbara Kosta Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens. Edited by Sabine Hake and Barbara Mennel. New York: Berghahn, 2012. Pp. 251. ISBN: 978-0857457684. What is striking in the title Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens is the deliberate omission of the hyphen that has been commonplace when marking (and marketing) Turkish German cultural productions in the context of German Studies. Reconsidering the relationship between these historically loaded markers of identity is in keeping with the volume’s overall goal, which, as the editors Sabine Hake and Barbara Mennel state, is “to move beyond the traditional focus of representation and signification to approach German Turkish cinema as part of a long history of film professionals in German and European cinema with a migration background” (10). Indeed, the fifteen essays contained in [End Page 463] this volume, each provocative in its own approach and intervention, represent the rich prismatic approaches to a relationship that, on the one hand, continues to vex notions of identity, integration, and complex definitions of belonging, and on the other hand, strives to resist the more essentialist, binary definitions of ethnic and affective affiliations. The thematic shifts evidenced in Turkish German filmmaking since the 1970s are mapped onto a changing historical context that, as the editors show, has called for various epistemological and methodological approaches. The editors also provide an overview of the diverse theoretical discourses that scholars have used to unpack visual representations of ethnicized subjects and transnational sensibilities and spaces in Turkish German films. A sampling of the impressive range of topics explored here are: mainstream genre cinema, popular culture, experimental media, issues of production, reception and spectatorship, and the tension between transnational and local identifications. The volume is divided into four sections. The first section, “Configurations of Stereotypes and Identities: New Methodologies,” looks at “the objects of study that have haunted [Turkish German cinema’s] theorization from the outset: ethnic stereotypes” (13). Daniela Berghahn persuasively charts the trajectory of wedding films ending with the marital “ethnic romantic comedy” that allows for the domestication and benign celebration of difference. David Gramling eloquently reveals the myth-making structures that Feo Aladağ’s film Die Fremde sets in motion only to perpetuate an essentializing myth of gender and violence. Marco Abel unhinges Thomas Arslan’s films from prescriptive narratives of bifurcated identities to look at the labor of image production. All three essays skillfully reveal the strategies of meaning production as it engages, reinforces, and resists ethnic stereotypes. The second section, “Multiple Screens and Platforms: From Documentary and Television to Installation Art,” offers a look at various media and shows the immense range of Turkish German contributions to cultural production from documentary filmmaking to television to installations. Exploring notions of bicultural subjectivities, Angelica Fenner turns to Fatih Akın’s autobiographical documentary We Forgot to Go Back, which negotiates between his private and public persona and dwells on spaces, infused with nostalgia, that express “the desire for belonging [that] powerfully informs both Akın’s approach to his project, and the testimonials of his wider circle of relatives” (71). Ingeborg Majer-O’Sickey explores Buket Alakuş’s and Aysun Bademsoy’s female soccer films as a vehicle to promote women’s presence in the public sphere. Nilgün Bayraktar looks at performance, spectatorship, and migration in Kutluğ Ataman’s video installation Küba. Brent Peterson’s essay on the television sitcom Turkish for Beginners and Brad Prager’s essay on Züli Aladağ’s film for television Rage conclude this section with a focus on representations of ethnicity and gender that neatly tie in with the first section on stereotypes, though without offering less in the way of new approaches. [End Page 464] In section three, “Institutional Contexts: Stars, Theaters and Reception,” the primary focus is on “how institutional contexts and practices shape German Turkish cinema” (14). The spectrum of topics includes the analysis of movie theater programming, of Turkish German stars, of the German reception and marketing of Akın, and the reception of Turkish German...
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Dec 27, 2016
Jun Tanimoto 
Open Access