Atatürk on Screen: Documentary Film and the Making of a Leader

Description

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was not widely known when he led the national resistance movement in Anatolia in 1919. However, the effort and attention that his government devoted to the creation of his public image gradually turned him into a superhuman figure in the eyes of many. Film played a crucial role in the creation and dissemination of this image and helped Atatürk to advance his project of building a new “imagined community” of the Turkish nation. But despite the impact of film and film-making on the political and cultural life of Early Republican Turkey, there is almost no research that has analysed this footage. Atatürk on Screen uncovers various film archives to reveal the significant, albeit paradoxical, role of film during this period. Enis Dinç shows that while film-making was crucial for the creation of Atatürk’s public image and the presentation of Turkey’s new modern image to the world, it also posed risks as it could be re-used, re-edited and re-framed for the purposes of counter-propaganda. The main analysis in the book is of the film footage itself including rare contemporary cinematic sources which have never received comprehensive analysis before. The book also makes use of other primary sources such as letters, memoirs, newspapers, reports, newsletters and production files, providing readers with a multi-layered account of the period Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Materials Chapter outline Chapter 1: Early cinema in the Ottoman Empire Public cinema in the Ottoman Empire Wartime cinema Conclusion Chapter 2: Filming the struggle for independence (1919–23) Domestic film producers Foreign film producers Orphan films Mustafa Kemal at the cinema Conclusion Chapter 3: Performing modernity: The film of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on his Forest Farm The making of Mustafa Kemal’s film Preliminary Speeches (Scene I) The Fountain (Scene II) The Garden (Scene III) The Cows (Scene IV) The Poultry (Scene V) The Sheep (Scene VI) The Tractors (Scene VII) The Machine Shop (Scene VIII) Woman, Lovely Woman (Scene IX) The fortunes of the film Conclusion Chapter 4: How to impress an American: The power of the motion picture Who was Julien Bryan? Arrival Bryan meets Atatürk The many afterlives of Bryan’s footage Conclusion Chapter 5: Father of all Turks: How The March of Time newsreel series represented Atatürk Newsreel and The March of Time Father of all Turks Intertitle 1 Intertitle 2 Intertitle 3 Intertitle 4 Conclusion Epilogue: Atatürk in retrospect Atatürk compared to other leaders of his time and of earlier periods Atatürk’s image in the official media of his day and in today’s media Concluding remarks Bibliography Filmography Archival sources Private sources (unpublished) Newspapers and journals Online sources Books and journal articles Index