Absinthe #19, Our Spotlight on Turkey is Available Now

Absinthe 19 is a special issue focused on the literature and art of Turkey and features great poetry and prose by Ece Temelkuran, Gülten Akın, Gökçenur Ç., Seyhan Erozçelık, Sami Baydar, Güven Turan, Oğuz Atay, Bilge Karasu, Murathan Mungan, Mine Söğüt, Şebnem İşigüzel, Mehmet Yashin, Ahmet Büke, and Mustafa Ziyalan. In addition to our book, film, and music recommendations, the issue includes cover art and a portfolio by artist Gözde İlkin.

Check out more here.

Absinthe Video of the Week: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Enjoy a trailer for the excellent Turkish film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and a winner of the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival.  We'll have more information on the film in Absinthe 19, our spotlight on Turkey, publishing this April.



Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Trailer) from Cinema Guild on Vimeo.

The "Flowering" of Turkish Cinema

A number of very fine Turkish films have been released in the U.S. in the last few years, including films by Fatih Akin and Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

Writer Kieron Corless in Sight & Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute, reviews the latest effort by Asli Ozge--Men on the Bridge--and claims that the film is further evidence that "Turkish cinema continues to flower."

(Men on the Bridge) represent(s) the best of what’s happening in sections of (Turkish) cinema: a willingness to grapple with the big themes and ask the right questions, a socially engaged cinema largely untainted by didacticism, which is generally purveyed in solidly naturalist style and firmly embedded in ordinary lives and real worlds, usually at the sharp end of economic circumstance.