Yilmaz Guney (1937-1984)

Quotation

During my whole life as a creator, I have had to use indirect means to express my thoughts, and I must frankly admit that to date my works have not totally expressed what I wanted, either in their style or in their spirit. The dominant element in these works is that they are a compromise.

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Biographical

Yilmaz Guney (April 1, 1937-September 9, 1984) is a Turkish (kurdish) film director, writer and scenarist.

Born in 1937 to a Kurdish family in a village near the southern city of Adana, Guney studied law and economics at the universities in Ankara and Istanbul, but by the age of 21 he found himself actively involved in filmmaking. As Yesilcam, the Turkish studio system, grew in strength, a handful of directors, including Atif Yilmaz, began to use the cinema as a means of addressing the problems of the people. Only state-sanctioned melodramas, war films and play adaptations had previously played in Turkish theaters, but these new filmmakers began to fill the screens with more artistic, personal and relevant pictures of Turkish life. The most popular name to emerge from the Young Turkish Cinema was that of Yilmaz Guney. Guney was a gruff-looking young actor who earned the monicker "Cirkin Kral," or "the Ugly King." After apprenticing as a screenwriter for and assistant to Atif Yilmaz, Guney soon began appearing in as many as 20 films a year and became Turkey's most popular actor. More than a screen idol, Guney was a Kurd who believed in the Kurdish people and their way of life, as well as being personally committed to social change.

Although the early 1960's brought some political reform to Turkey, Guney was imprisoned in 1961 for 18 months for publishing a "communist" novel. The country's political situation and Guney's relationship with the authorities only became more tense in the ensuing years. Not content with his star status atop the Turkish film industry, Guney began directing his own pictures in 1965 and, by 1968, had formed his own production company, Guney Filmcilik. Over the next few years, the titles of his films mirrored the feelings of the Turkish people: Umut (1970); Agit (1972); Aci (1971)Â ; Umutsuzlar (1971).

After 1972, however, Guney would spend most of his life in prison. Arrested for harboring anarchist students, Guney was jailed during preproduction on Zavallilar (1975) (completed in 1975), and before completing Endise (1974), which was finished in 1974 by Guney's assistant, Serif Goren. This was a cherished role that Goren would repeat over the next dozen years, directing several scripts that Guney wrote laboriously while behind bars.

Released from prison in 1974 as part of a general amnesty, Guney was re-arrested that same year for shooting a judge. During this stretch of incarceration, his most successful screenplays were Suru (The Herd) (1978) and Dusman (1979), both directed by Zeki Okten.

"The Herd, in fact, is the history of the Kurdish people, but I could not even use the Kurdish language in this film; if we had used the Kurdish language, all those who took part in this film would have been sent to jail..." Guney said in his last interview with "journalist Chris Kutschera".

After escaping from prison in 1981 and fleeing to France, Guney won the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival for his film Yol, whose director was again listed at the time as Serif Goren. It was not until 1983 that Guney resumed directing, telling a brutal tale of imprisoned children in his final film, Duvar (1983), made in France with the cooperation of the French government.

He died of stomach cancer in 1984, in Paris, France. [This article in part is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Yilmaz Guney.]

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