Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving Image Art: Cinema Beyond Europe

208 Pages·2015·2.94 MB·English

by  Nilgun Bayraktar

Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving-Image Art
Joining attention to aesthetic experimentation with a focus on sociopolitical concerns, Mobility
and Migration in Film and Moving-Image Art offers a detailed account of the ways recent
cinematic and artistic works engage Europe’s increasingly diverse and complex relationship to
migration. With a focus on projects that explore the sociopolitical tensions that have
surrounded migration in Europe since the 1990s, Bayraktar draws on theories of migrant and
diasporic cinema, projected image art, and mobility studies to provide historically situated
close readings of films, videos, and cinematic installations that concern migratory networks,
infrastructures, and places across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Probing the notion of Europe as a coherent entity and a borderless space that enables free
movement, this interdisciplinary study underscores the ways European ideals of mobility and
fluidity are deeply enmeshed with immobility, forced migration, illegalization, inequality,
racism, and xenophobia. With a specific focus on diverse forms of mobility such as labor
migration, postcolonial migration, undocumented migration, and tourism, this book studies the
new counter-hegemonic imaginations invoked by the work of established filmmakers such as
Ayşe Polat, Fatih Akın, Michael Haneke, and Tony Gatlif as well as video essays and
installations of artists such as Kutluğ Ataman, Ursula Biemann, Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo,
and Ergin Çavuşoğlu. Challenging aesthetic boundaries as well as national and cultural ones,
the works analyzed depict Europe as always already complex, heterogeneous, and decentered.
Ultimately, Bayraktar demonstrates the degree to which recent transformations in the cinematic
form parallel Europe’s concurrent geopolitical transformations: Just as the borders of
contemporary Europe have multiplied and become highly flexible and widely dispersed, the
aesthetic and institutional borders between cinema and art have also become blurred,
producing a new form of moving image art that defies easy categorization.
Nilgün Bayraktar is an Assistant Professor in the Visual Studies Program at the California
College of the Arts. She received her PhD in Performance Studies with a Designated Emphasis
in Film and Media Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses
on transnational cinema, migratory aesthetics, film/video installations, site-specific art, new
media, and performance.
Routledge Advances in Film Studies
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.
15 Stardom and the Aesthetics of Neorealism
Ingrid Bergman in Rossellini’s Italy
Ora Gelley
16 Postwar Renoir
Film and the Memory of Violence
Colin Davis
17 Cinema and Inter-American Relations
Tracking Transnational Affect
Adrián Pérez Melgosa
18 European Civil War Films
Memory, Conflict, and Nostalgia
Eleftheria Rania Kosmidou
19 The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film
Radical Projection
Jennifer Lynde Barker
20 The Politics of Age and Disability in Contemporary Spanish Film
Plus Ultra Pluralism
Matthew J. Marr
21 Cinema and Language Loss
Displacement, Visuality and the Filmic Image
Tijana Mamula
22 Cinema as Weather
Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change
Kristi McKim
23 Landscape and Memory in Post-Fascist Italian Film
Cinema Year Zero
Giuliana Minghelli
24 Masculinity in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy
Gender as Genre
John Alberti
25 Crossover Cinema
Cross-Cultural Film from Production to Reception
Edited by Sukhmani Khorana
26 Spanish Cinema in the Global Context
Film on Film
Samuel Amago
27 Japanese Horror Films and Their American Remakes
Translating Fear, Adapting Culture
Valerie Wee
28 Postfeminism and Paternity in Contemporary US Film
Framing Fatherhood
Hannah Hamad
29 Cine-Ethics
Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice, and Spectatorship
Edited by Jinhee Choi and Mattias Frey
30 Postcolonial Film
History, Empire, Resistance
Edited by Rebecca Weaver-Hightower and Peter Hulme
31 The Woman’s Film of the 1940s
Gender, Narrative, and History
Alison L. McKee
32 Iranian Cinema in a Global Context
Policy, Politics, and Form
Edited by Peter Decherney and Blake Atwood
33 Eco-Trauma Cinema
Edited by Anil Narine
34 American and Chinese-Language Cinemas
Examining Cultural Flows
Edited by Lisa Funnell and Man-Fung Yip
35 American Documentary Filmmaking in the Digital Age
Depictions of War in Burns, Moore, and Morris
Lucia Ricciardelli
36 Asian Cinema and the Use of Space
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Lilian Chee and Edna Lim
37 Moralizing Cinema
Film, Catholicism and Power
Edited by Daniel Biltereyst and Daniela Treveri Gennari
38 Popular Film Music and Masculinity in Action
A Different Tune
Amanda Howell
39 Film and the American Presidency
Edited by Jeff Menne and Christian B. Long
40 Hollywood Action Films and Spatial Theory
Nick Jones
41 The Western in the Global South
Edited by MaryEllen Higgins, Rita Keresztesi, and Dayna Oscherwitz
42 Spaces of the Cinematic Home
Behind the Screen Door
Edited by Eleanor Andrews, Stella Hockenhull, and Fran Pheasant-Kelly
43 Spectacle in “Classical” Cinemas
Musicality and Historicity in the 1930s
Tom Brown
44 Rashomon Effects
Kurosawa, Rashomon and Their Legacies
Edited by Blair Davis, Robert Anderson and Jan Walls
45 Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving-Image Art
Cinema Beyond Europe
Nilgün Bayraktar
Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving-Image
Art
Cinema Beyond Europe
Nilgün Bayraktar
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of Nilgün Bayraktar to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
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and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bayraktar, Nilgün
Mobility and migration in film and moving image art: cinema beyond Europe / by Nilgün
Bayraktar.
pages cm. — (Routledge advances in film studies; 45)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Emigration and immigration in motion pictures. 2. Identity (Psychology) in motion
pictures. 3. Experimental films—Europe—History and criticism. 4. Video art—Europe. I.
Title.
PN1995.9.E44B39 2015
791.43′6552—dc23 2015028272
ISBN: 978-1-138-85883-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-71768-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
To my parents Şaziye and Şükrü Bayraktar and to William Weprin, with love
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Cinematic/Artistic Takes on Migration and Mobility in Contemporary
Europe
PART I
Transnational Flows in Cinema
1 Cross-Border Mobility and Confinement in Turkish German Cinema: Countess Sophia
Hatun and The Edge of Heaven
2 Performative Encounters and Mediated Memories in Maghrebi French Cinema:
Exiles and Hidden
PART II
Fragmented Journeys in Moving-Image Art
3 Location and Urban Marginality in the Site-Specific Video Installation Küba
4 Tourism and Undocumented Migration in Southern Europe: The Video Essay
Sudeuropa
5 Social Infrastructures of Undocumented Mobility in the Multiscreen Video Installation
Sahara Chronicle
Afterword: Points of Departure
Bibliography
Index
List of Figures
I.1 Still from Temporary Detention Center (2007). Courtesy of Adrian Paci, Galerie Peter
Kilchmann, Zurich, and kaufmann repetto, Milan.
1.1 Still from Countess Sophia Hatun by Ayşe Polat (1997)— The unnamed migrant worker
from Turkey (Tuncel Kurtiz).
1.2 Still from Countess Sophia Hatun— The migrant worker and Countess Sophia (Sabine
Wolf).
1.3 Still from Countess Sophia Hatun— The migrant worker.
1.4 Still from The Edge of Heaven by Fatih Akın (2007)— Nejat (Baki Davrak).
1.5 Still from The Edge of Heaven— Nejat.
1.6 Still from The Edge of Heaven— Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay) and Nejat.
1.7 Still from The Edge of Heaven— Ayten and Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska).
1.8 Still from The Edge of Heaven— Nejat and Yeter (Nursel Köse).
2.1 Still from Exiles by Tony Gatlif (2004)— Zano (Romain Duris) in his Paris apartment.
2.2 Still from Exiles— The exiles from the global South.
2.3 Still from Exiles— Zano burying his violin in Paris.
2.4 Still from Exiles— The old photograph of Zano’s father in Algiers.
2.5 Still from Hidden by Michael Haneke (2005)— Laurents’ house in central Paris.
2.6 Still from Hidden— Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliet Binoche).
2.7 Still from Hidden— Majid (Maurice Bénichou) and Georges.
3.1 Installation view of Küba by Kutluğ Ataman (2005) at Theatre der Welt, Stuttgart, 2005.
Commissioned by Artangel. Co-produced by Artangel; Carnegie Museum of Art; Lehmann
Maupin Gallery; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art
Contemporary; and Theatre der Welt. Courtesy of Artangel.
3.2 Installation view of Women Who Wear Wigs/ WWWW (1999) at Tanas, Berlin, 2008.
Courtesy of Kutluğ Ataman.
3.3 Installation view of The 4 Seasons of Veronica Read (2002) at Istanbul Modern, Istanbul,
2010. Courtesy of Kutluğ Ataman.
3.4 Installation view of Küba at Theater der Welt, Stuttgart, 2005. Courtesy of Kutluğ Ataman.
3.5 Negrelli Barge, Küba: Journey Against the Current, Kutluğ Ataman and TBA21/Thyssen-
Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, 2006. Photo by Michael Strasser. Courtesy of
TBA21.
4.1 Still from Sudeuropa (2005–2007)— Abandoned migrant boats, Lampedusa, Italy.
Courtesy of Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo.
4.2 Still from Sudeuropa— Lampedusa Airport. Courtesy of Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo.
4.3 Still from Sudeuropa— Lampedusa Airport. Courtesy of Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo.
4.4 Installation view of Sudeuropa at Centre d’art contemporain Genève, 2007. Courtesy of
Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo.
4.5 Still from Sudeuropa— Lampedusa Detention Center. Courtesy of Maria Iorio and Raphaël