Yılmaz Güney

Yılmaz Güney
Yılmaz Güney in Cannes Film Festival for Palme d'Or of Yol.
Born	(1937-04-01)1 April 1937 Yenice, Karataş, Turkey
Died	9 September 1984(1984-09-09) (aged 47) Paris, France
Other names	Çirkin Kral (Ugly King)
Occupation	Film director Screenwriter Actor
Years active	1958 – 1983

Yılmaz Güney (born Yılmaz Pütün, 1 April 1937 – 9 September 1984) was a Turkish film director, scenarist, novelist, and actor of Zaza, and Kurdish origin, who produced movies in Turkish.^[1][2][3][4] He quickly rose to prominence in Turkish Film Industry. Many of his works were devoted to the plight of ordinary, working class people in Turkey. Yılmaz Güney won the Palme d'Or with the film Yol he co-produced with Şerif Gören at Cannes Film Festival in 1982. At constant odds with then Turkish Government, he fled the country and later lost his citizenship.

Background

Yılmaz Güney was born in 1937 in the Yenice county of Adana. His father was Zaza from Siverek and his mother was Kurd from Varto.^[4] His parents migrated to Adana to work as cotton field laborers. As a result of his family background, young Yılmaz grew among the working class. This was a strong background for his future works which generally focused on a realistic portrayal of downtrodden and marginalized strata of the population in the country. Güney studied law and economics at the universities of Ankara and Istanbul, but by the age of 21 he found himself actively involved in film-making.

Career in Turkey

As Yeşilçam, the Turkish studio system, a handful of directors, including Atıf Yılmaz, began to use cinema as a means of addressing the problems of the people. State-sanctioned melodramas, war films, and play adaptations had mostly previously been played in Turkish theaters. These new filmmakers began to shoot and screen more realistic pictures of Turkish/Kurdish life. Yılmaz Güney was one of the most popular names to emerge from this trend, a gruff-looking young actor who earned the moniker Çirkin Kral ("the Ugly King" in Turkish) or "paşay naşirîn" in Kurdish (Sorani dialect). After working as an apprentice screenwriter for and assistant to Atıf Yılmaz, Güney soon began appearing in as many as 20 films a year and became Turkey's one of the most popular actors.

The early 1960s brought restricted freedom to Turkey, and Güney was imprisoned from 1960 to 1962. In prison he wrote what some labeled a "communist" novel, They Died with Their Heads Bowed.^[5] The country's political situation and Güney's relationship with the authorities became even more tense in the ensuing years. Not content with his star status atop the Turkish film industry, Güney began directing his own pictures in 1965. By 1968 he had formed his own production company, Güney Filmcilik. Over the next few years, the titles of his films mirrored the feelings of the people of Turkey: Umut (Hope, 1970); Ağıt (Elegy, 1972); Acı (Pain, 1971); The Hopeless (1971). Umut is considered to be the first realistic film of Turkish Cinema, the American director Elia Kazan was among the fist to praise the film; “Umut is a poetic film, completely native, not an imitation of Hollywood or any of the European masters, it had risen out of a village environment”.^[6]

After 1972, however, Güney would spend most of his life in prison. Arrested for harboring anarchist students, Güney was jailed during preproduction of Zavallılar (The Miserable, 1975), and before completing Endişe (Worry, 1974), which was finished in 1974 by Güney's assistant, Şerif Gören. This was a role that Gören would repeat over the next dozen years, directing several scripts that Güney wrote in prison.

Released from prison in 1974 as part of a general amnesty, Güney was re-arrested that same year for shooting Sefa Mutlu, the public prosecutor of Yumurtalık district in Adana Province, to death in a night club as a result of a drunken row^[7] and given a prison sentence of 19 years. During this stretch of incarceration, his most successful screenplays were Sürü (The Herd, 1978) and Düşman (The Enemy, 1979), both directed by Zeki Ökten. Düşman won an Honourable Mention at the 30th Berlin International Film Festival in 1980.^[8]

Exile and death

Grave of Yılmaz Güney at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

In September 1980, Güney's works were banned by the new military junta. Güney declared, “There are only two possibilities: to fight or to give up, I chose to fight”.^[9] After escaping from prison in 1981 and fleeing to France, Güney won the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival for his film Yol, whose director in the field was once again Şerif Gören. It was not until 1983 that Güney resumed directing, telling a brutal tale of imprisoned children in his final film, Duvar (The Wall, 1983), made in France with the cooperation of the French government. Meanwhile, Turkey's government revoked his citizenship and a court sentenced him to twenty-two extra years in jail.^[5]

Yılmaz Güney died of gastric cancer in 1984, in Paris, France.^[5]

Filmography

Actor

Director

Biography

A biography of Güney, Halkın Sanatçısı, Halkın Savaşçısı: Yılmaz Güney, was published by Dönüşüm Publishing in 1992, and reprinted in 2000. Its publisher was fined in 2001 because of some of the book's content, although this was overturned in 2003 when the relevant law was repealed.^[10]

Films about Güney

Yilmaz Guney: Rebel with a Cause (Karzan Kardozi, 2013)^[11]

The Ballad of Exiles Yilmaz Guney (Ilker Savaskurt, 2016)^[12]

See also

• List of Turkish film directors

References

External links

• Yilmaz Güney at the Internet Movie Database
• Interviews and information (French)
• Great Directors profile of Yılmaz Güney, Senses of Cinema
• Picture gallery on saradistribution