Gözde Naiboğlu, Post-Unification Turkish German Cinema; Work, Globalisation and Politics Beyond Representation

Abstract

The period that started with the unification of the two German states in 1990 now coincides with the years when second generation Turkish German filmmakers who grew up in Germany started their productions. With the expansion of the demographic volume of immigrants in Europe and the increase in the activity of new generation immigrants in the film industry, studies in the field of immigrant cinema have also increased since the 2000s, and Turkish-German Cinema has become an important topic among them. Naiboglu's work on Post-Unification Turkish-German Cinema brings a new perspective to the atmosphere created after and the migration of workers to Europe, which is one of the main themes of migration cinema. The book examines the post-merger Turkish-German cinema with an ethical, emotional and labor focus. Shifting his focus from long-standing concerns of integration, identity and cultural conflict, Naiboğlu argues that these films no longer emphasize the conflicts between immigrants and citizens. Returning to the neglected roots of this cinema, which is based on labor migration, he focused on working life and its reflections in films. In films; It calls for a rethinking of established ideas of class, community, and identity, focusing on the presentation of new expressions of experience under late capitalism through themes of work, unemployment, precarious and illegal work, social reproduction, exhaustion, and instability. In this direction, it proposes a new approach to Turkish-German Cinema literature, which is mostly based on identity and representation, and exemplifies post-representation approaches.