Re-Imagining Queer Cinema Finding the Accent in Queer Filmmaking

MA Programme in Film Studies

Supervisor: Maryn C. Wilkinson Second reader: Marie-Aude Baronian MA thesis by: Yunus Emre Duyar

Amsterdam, 26th June 2015 Word Count: 17,825 2

Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ...... 7 1. Queer Films and Beyond...... 14 1.1 Queer Culture and Film ...... 15 1.2 Gender Performativity and Film ...... 17 1.3 Queer and the Rural ...... 20 2. Queer Filmmaking as Accented Cinema ...... 24 2.1. Accented Style ...... 25 2.2. Mode of Production ...... 31 2.3. Chronotopes of Homeland and Life in Exile ...... 35 2.4. Journeying, Border Crossing and Identity Crossing...... 43 2.5. Epistolarity ...... 48 CONCLUSION ...... 54 Works Cited ...... 57

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the people who were there for me during this year of hard work. First of all, I would like to thank my advisor Maryn Wilkinson for providing me with meticulous feedback along the way, her unwavering support and just being there for me in every way. This paper would not have been possible without Marie-Aude Baronian encouraging my initial thesis idea during the course Film Theories & Practices. I would also like to thank other lecturers for nurturing my academic capabilities and my classmates who shared the several highs and lows of being a student in producing original thinking on films. I would like thank Reyhan Baykara, for her words of encouragement and all around psychological support during the whole year. I would like to thank dear friends Charlotte Marland and Elif Ozdemir for proofreading my work and giving me good feedback along the way. And lastly, I would like to thank the queer filmmakers who are invested in their films against all odds and produce such masterpieces that capture many sides of being queer and other scholars cited in this paper, who helped me understand the complexities of the queer experience.

INTRODUCTION

I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch the terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

Audre Lorde (Lorde 113, emphasis in original)

Experiences of being a queer individual traditionally involves an attempt to come out, or move to a different place, in an attempt to claim new space and gain social recognition; however, facing hostile treatment is often part of the equation. The notion of moving to urban places for the freedom of queer individual often results in failed attempts to integrate, which creates problems of belonging. George Chauncey, a scholar with a special interest in the history of the gay culture, states the following on the attempt of coming out in his article “Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public: Gay Uses of the Streets”: “There is no queer space; there are only spaces used by queers or put to queer use. … Nothing illustrates this general principle more clearly than the tactics developed by gay men and lesbians to put the spaces of the dominant culture to queer uses” (224). Indeed, in the largely heteronormative space, queer individuals translate their personal spaces (which is mostly assumed to be that of heteronormativity) into a queer one by coming out. From this point of view, urban areas have been traditionally regarded, and put to use, as places of arrival for queer subjects, where the queer individual – estranged or not – goes through a transformation and displacement that shapes perception and identification mechanisms. As happens with every culture and sub-culture, art plays an important part in laying the foundations of a new culture. Film is one of these veins of art that the queer culture has heavily tapped into for constructing the queer culture and queer spaces. It is this formulation of places that this paper is focused on, and it is a meditation on what spatial formulations around gender and sexuality means for the queer and how these issues are reflected on in films. Although cinema has played an important part in the forming of a queer culture, the stories that have been told about queer subjects remain largely monolithic. While stories of coming out and having a family have constituted a large part of mainstream queer narratives, queer subject as part of different cultural contexts – where different mechanisms of being

queer is present – are largely ignored by the mainstream cinema. By erasing the differences in each and every queer experience, these narratives mostly involved reiterated stories from a mainstream point of view. As a result, stories of coming out, gay marriage and having a family set the cornerstones of the mainstream queer culture. Although there are films telling unique queer stories from different cultural perspectives, these films often go unmentioned and are often categorized under the umbrella genre of queer cinema. Another central aim of this paper is to bring these queer films to the foreground and revision how these queer films can be located in relation their engagement with identity politics in film. Queer films’ narratives are generally interested in traumatic experiences that are strongly tied to having a queer identity. Especially in alternative and independent works such as The Turkish Bath (1997), My Own Private Idaho (1991) and XXY (2007), these experiences are analysed under different interacting mechanisms of what makes an identity. In these films, queer characters’ experiences include feelings of loneliness and entrapment in heteronormative societies. From this perspective, being queer can resemble to being displaced and trying to fit in a new land which might not welcome the queer subject eventually. However, queer cinema is, of course, not the only filmmaking tradition that is fascinated with the politics of displacement and its representation in filmic form. One of the prominent scholars who are focused on the politics of displacement is Hamid Naficy, an Iranian-American film scholar with influential work published on exilic, diasporic and postcolonial filmmakers. His book An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001) offers a comprehensive list of filmmakers who have exilic, diasporic and postcolonial identities (Naficy 10). Naficy’s framework analyses similar elements of filmmaking caused by displacement in these filmmakers’ works and groups these under the term ‘accented cinema’ (10). By bringing out the stylistic differences that these filmmakers have from the mainstream films, Naficy’s book creates a diverse platform, where the national context does not necessarily inform one’s filmmaking style (19). His book opens up the limitations that such categorizations bring about and centres film style around filmmaker’s personal and social experiences (19). Naficy’s conceptual framework defines several characteristics, including film style, production techniques, use of several literary devices such as chronotopes, epistolarity and border writing. One of the central premises that the accented cinema rests on is the displacement of the accented filmmaker from their original homelands to Western

metropolitan areas, which creates an “accent” in the films used by these directors (Naficy 4). However, this displacement does not only represent a physical move from one country to another. The reasons behind the displacement, the time of the displacement and the experiences related to the displacement, both on the individual and the collective level, are also important for the formation of an "accent" in the filmic language (Moodley 66-67). Similarly, as will be seen in this paper, some queer films that are not characterized as part of accented cinema (in terms of how they deal with displacement) can still be vested with similar characteristics that are caused by the experience of displacement. The reason why the filmmakers used in this paper would not be called as being ‘accented’ are all queer filmmakers still living in their home countries. However, their films are marked with the feeling of change brought about by displacement. I will use this initial observation and expand on it throughout my paper. The films analysed are: Zenne Dancer (2012) by Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay, The Long Day Closes (1992) by Terence Davies, Weekend (2011) by Andrew Haigh, J’ai tué ma mère (2009) by Xavier Dolan and Pariah (2011) by Dee Rees. Revisiting queer filmmaking in the context of accented cinema will be helpful in addressing the existence of such a vein in queer filmmaking that involves the works of various queer filmmakers across the globe, all of whom are assumed to be united by the shared feeling of displacement. Zenne Dancer is about the friendship of three people coming from different backgrounds. Can (Kerem Can) is a male belly dancer who is actually asexual, Ahmet (Erkan Avci) is a Kurdish man who hides his sexuality from his parents and Daniel (Giovanni Arvaneh) is a German man on a photography project in Istanbul. The film is mainly about the struggles of being a queer person in Turkey and how even the urban life in Istanbul cannot provide shelter to Ahmet, who is murdered by his homophobic parents in the end. Weekend is about Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New), who meet at a bar and spend an entire weekend before Glen flies to Portland for his education. The film’s narrative is mainly structured around questions of having a stable relationship as a gay man, which is addressed in the context of unexpectedly romantic weekend-long romance of the two. Pariah tells the story of Alike (Adepero Oduye), a young, black lesbian woman who feels constricted by her gender identification. The film illustrates how Alike feels like she is forced into the butch lesbian type and how she cannot express her sexuality to her parents. The Long Day Closes is about Bud (Leigh McCormack), a young boy in a working class family of Liverpool. The

film’s focus on Bud’s (not yet realized) sexuality is positioned against his religious upbringing and the bullying he goes through at school, which portrays an alienated image of the character. Lastly, J’ai tué ma mère is about Hubert (Xavier Dolan), a young gay man and his relationship with Chantalee (Anne Dorval). The film captures the troublesome relationship between the two characters and how Hubert’s sexuality enhances the alienation the two experience. When we look at these films, one can see the differences in the experiences each queer character goes through and how they can be analysed in relation to each filmmaker’s cultural and personal statuses as queer individuals. However, the paper will also analyse the similarities that these films have regarding each filmmaker’s style. Naficy’s work on accented cinema has gained the attention of film scholars ever since his book's publication in 2001. One of the earliest scholars meditating on accented cinema is Patricia Pisters. In “Micropolitics of the Migrant Family in Accented Cinema: Love and Creativity in Empire”, Pisters uses accented cinema to ponder on the possibilities that accented cinema brings in terms of reformulating the discourse surrounding the migrant family. Pisters brings Hardt and Negri’s abstract ideas about the migrant body into dialogue with the concrete study of accented migratory films of Naficy. Hardt and Negri propose a system of control that governs the twenty-first century, which is called “Empire” (Pisters 198). Distinguishing it from imperialism, Hardt and Negri’s Empire is a “decentred and deterritorializing apparatus that manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies and plural exchanges through modulating networks” (qtd. In Pisters 198). Using Foucault’s society of discipline, Hardt and Negri argue that the Western bourgeois family and the dissolution of the non-Western family through migration are some of the methods for the creation of the society of control (Pisters 198). Pisters argues that in an attempt at coming to terms with their “lost heimat”, accented filmmakers turn their camera to the family, instead of averting it, and help emerge new narratives regarding the migrant body (Pisters 211). Pisters’ work makes use of Naficy's formulation in order to bring the highly conceptual ideas of Hardt and Negri and challenge them with accented cinema's focus on the family. Like Pisters, Subeshini Moodley also uses accented filmmaking for developing a postcolonial argument for a feminist filmmaking practice. She uses two films by Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta, who are both immigrant filmmakers. Both Pisters' and Moodley’s works use accented cinema’s efforts to bring defining elements such as race, gender, history, geography, ethnicity and nation into foreground and use them as ways to challenge other restrictive or monolithic works.

However, they do not engage with the conceptual framework critically. This paper differs from Moodley’s and Pister’s works in that the examples used in the context of accented cinema take a critical stance in addressing the notion of displacement. Zinaid Meeran is a scholar who brings feminist film theory and accented filmmaking into conversation, but contrary to Moodley and Pisters, she uses multicultural feminist film theory in order to investigate “regressive trends in accented cinema” (9). She compares two films, Inch’Allah Dimanche (2001) and Lila dit Ça (2004), the latter of which have the textbook characteristics of accented cinema but is actually a feature film. Inch’Allah Dimanche, on the other hand, has a classical linear narrative and makes use of mainstream production techniques but manages to maintain the thematic concerns of accented filmmaking (Meeran 1). Meeran’s work is important in having a critical approach to accented filmmaking by using two feminist films and it illustrates how challenging the framework is helpful in addressing the ‘accent’ in films that are usually overlooked. In a similar attempt to that of Meeran, this paper’s aim is addressing queer films that would not be identified as having an accented style by referring to different scholarly works produced in queer theory or queer film studies. Asuman Suner, a film scholar with articles published on identity politics in cinema, challenges the definition of accented filmmaking in her article titled “Outside in: ‘accented cinema’ at large”. Her argument is based on the claim that cinematic styles and themes associated with accented filmmaking can also be identified in examples of national cinemas or films that are often grouped under the vague umbrella term of the world cinema (Suner 379). She chooses three films by Kurdish-Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi, Hong-Kong director Wong Kar-wai, and Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan as her case studies. Her paper examines these directors, who are not exilic/diasporic in the traditional sense used by Naficy, yet their works reflect patterns of accented filmmaking. Suner’s aim is to re-think accented cinema in scope of the changing nature of national conditions and cultural systems at play (379). She states that defining accented filmmakers as artists who immigrated to the West reinforces the division between the “Western culture” and “other cultures”, and causes the other to be “defined on the basis of its difference” from the West (Suner 378). By illustrating how her case studies fit in the framework of accented filmmaking, she attempts to blur the limiting boundaries set by Naficy’s accented filmmaking and proposes to incorporate the rapidly changing social environments into the scope. Similarly, Will Higbee’s conception of

the “cinema of transvergence” in “Beyond the (trans)national: towards a cinema of transvergence in postcolonial and diasporic francophone cinema(s)” builds upon Suner’s line of thinking. Higbee proposes a new take regarding national and transnational cinemas. He proposes that the "cinema of transvergence" goes beyond the limits of the (trans)national cinema (80). By focusing on the works of Algerian-French filmmakers Merzak Allouache and Mahmoud Zemmouri, whose works often shuttle between French and Algerian filmmaking but never belongs to either group, his aim is to show that postcolonial and diasporic cinemas can function within the same nation and culture (Higbee 90). The questions that this paper will ask build on the criticisms made by Meeran, Suner and Higbee in their critical approach to the notion of displacement. This paper will show that displacement is an experience that leaves its marks on the language of the filmmaker, regardless of the specifics of the displacement. However, rather than only criticizing the framework of accented cinema, the paper is more interested in how the conceptual framework of accented filmmaking can be used for addressing these marginal and independent queer films. What this paper wants to do is meditate on the differences of queer discourses and their reflection in queer films by using accented cinema’s framework. On the other hand, discovering the accent in the queer cinema will also help discover the question of whether or not there are different cultural, personal and political conditions that should be taken into account. In the end, the paper will hopefully specify the queer cinema at large by addressing the cultural and personal nuances for each filmmaker. In order to engage with these independent authorial queer films, the first chapter will first look at how scholarly work produced in queer studies can help understand the different mechanisms of the experience. The first chapter will look at Richard Dyer’s categorization of mainstream and radical queer cultures and will argue that using a radical queer culture as opposed to the mainstream helps analyse queer films that take the individual experience as the point of departure in film narrative and style. By using Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity, the chapter will argue further that queer identity is a set of acts that is reinforced by stylized repetition of acts and also interpreted by each person performing the gender act. It will thus be argued that the films at hand can be looked at by using Butler’s framework in order to state the differences on queer filmic identities that is bound to cultural and personal mechanisms. The last section of the first chapter will refer to Judith Halberstam’s criticism of urban and rural distinctions made for the queer identity and will

argue further that the position of the queer filmmaker stuck in this formulation of the urban and the rural is also important in analysing a filmmaker’s film style. In the second chapter, I will add to the analysis made already in the first chapter and I will inspect each film under the categories proposed by Naficy. The purpose of the second chapter is to incorporate a more comprehensive framework to look at how the experiences of queer filmmakers themselves can be addressed as part of an analysis. The categories selected from Naficy’s book are important in addressing the effect of filmmaker’s displacement in the film’s narrative, style and production. Therefore, the second chapter will illustrate how each queer film interpret displacement in its own terms but still manage to leave its mark on the style of the film. Therefore, queer films will be argued in their similarity to accented cinema but it will also be discussed that queer films differ from accented films in engaging with the experience of displacement critically. The conclusion reviews then reviews these findings and examines the hypothesis given above. It will be argued that using the conceptual framework of accented cinema in order to theorize the existence of these queer films as an accented cinema is helpful in addressing the different sides of the queer identity and experience. These questions will be posed in recommendation for future research.

1. Queer Films and Beyond

I love queer. Queer is a homosexual of either sex. It’s more convenient than saying ‘‘gays’’ which has to be qualified, or ‘‘lesbians and gay men.’’ It’s an extremely useful polemic term because it is who we say we are, which is, ‘‘Fuck You.’’

Spike Pittsberg (qtd. in Smith 280)

In this paper, I have chosen to keep the focus on queer cinema because, compared to gay or lesbian cinema, it better describes the scope of the project. However, considering that the word ‘queer’ is used in different ways, a description of what I mean by ‘queer’ is necessary. While for some, the word ‘queer’ is just another hip word for describing homosexuals, it should be understood as inclusive of all non-straight sexualities in this context. According to queer theory, sexuality is not only composed of one’s sexual orientation, but it also encompasses social, cultural and historical conditions that are part of these sexual orientations and/or behaviours (Benshoff and Griffin 1). In other words, the word ‘queer’ can be used for referring to any sexuality that is not defined as part of a normative heterosexual procreative sexuality. Queer cinema, similarly, understands filmic sexualities as complex parts of human identity that cannot be viewed separately from cultural, historical and social contexts. Queer films can focus on one or more queer characters while exploring how fluidity of all sexualities is related to film production or reception (Benshoof and Griffin 2). On the other hand, these films might carry the queer authorial voice, which means that they also function as vessels to relay queer experiences of filmmakers. These films differ from early examples of queer characters in mainstream cinema, which often used stereotypical characters that only served the plot or were used for comedy effect. Although mainstream cinema used queer characters ever since its early years, mainstream cinema turned its back on queer characters in film during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, unwilling to face a backlash with the growing hostility against queer people (Benshoff and Griffin 10). This is when an explosion of independent queer filmmaking began to emerge and filmmakers such as Todd Haynes and Gregg Araki established their careers. These films, some examples of which include My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Paris is Burning (1991) and Poison (1991), have more complex and multidimensional portrayal of queer characters.

Moving away from the stereotypical portrayal of queer characters in Hollywood, these new queer films often explore sexuality in relation to other conditions such as gender, race, class and age (Benshoff and Griffin 11). Named “New Queer Cinema” in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992, B. Ruby Rich traces this new queer filmmaking movement in her article with the same title. These films are different in the way they renegotiated subjectivities, implemented new genres and reimagined histories from a queer perspective (Rich 15). New Queer Cinema, in this sense, questions how inadequate categorizations such as ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ are by portraying the cultural human experience (Benshoff and Griffin 11). In a similar way, the films analysed in this chapter also place the queer human experience in an extensive set of cultural and personal factors. Like the films of New Queer Cinema, these films cross imaginary boundaries of filmmaking and draw from several filmic styles in order to establish their own queerness (Benshoff and Griffin 11). This chapter will analyse this new movement of queer filmmaking based on their portrayal of human experiences. The purpose is to show that every queer filmic experience is multifaceted in its relationship with the conditions that lead to it. This chapter will look at the diversity of every queer filmic experience by inspecting how different sides of the queer experience are explored in filmic contexts. The first section will look at how the queer experience is explored in terms of its association with the queer culture at large. The second section will look at how every queer experience is performed in a spatially and temporally conditioned mechanism and will look at other conditions forming the queer identity, which are illustrated with reflections from the films at hand. The third section will then look at the complex nature of queer identities in relation to the use of queer filmic spaces. Each section is meant to build on each other in order to dig deeper in various mechanisms at play behind the queer experience, and the argument is based on how these films reflect on these issues. In doing so, this chapter will investigate how queer films and filmic spaces, along with many other aspects of queer identities, are convoluted in nature.

1.1 Queer Culture and Film

Richard Dyer states that, while culture does not necessarily have the agency to perform political work, it is a tool for carrying out a political agenda by way of producing cultural

products that are part of the politics (Dyer 15). Regardless of its form and influence, we identify with the shared experience of culture through works of art, which eventually helps us express ideas and construct our identities (15). This role of the culture and its products take a special form when it comes to the "hidden" and "invisible" queers (15). Queer culture helps us find similar people, realize that we are not alone, form connections and ultimately identify ourselves as queer. Albeit questionable, popular culture with its Lady Gaga, the It Gets Better Project and RuPaul’s Drag Race might help the queer subject identify with the culture and shape their identity based on the discourse built by these products. The fact that ‘queer’ is inclusive of all sexualities does not necessarily mean that queer experience and culture is one dimensional. According to Dyer, one being “traditional” and the other being “radical, queer culture can be separated into two groups regarding the realization of one’s identity (Dyer 16). While traditional queer culture is indicated by “learning and adopting” camp behaviour in order to be queer, radical queer culture is indicated by coming out into the already-existing queer movement and an already altered world (16). The traditional queer culture, although necessary for claiming a general queer space, is largely restricted by its usage of a single homosexual identity (Dyer 22). Radical queer culture, on the other hand, sees individual experiences as being central to queer narratives (Dyer 23). Therefore, radical queer culture arises as opposed to the compartmentalization of the mainstream queer culture, where the difference is accepted in a world of categorizations. To Dyer, radical queer culture relied on the imagery of traditional queer culture for drawing its own imagery (Dyer 26). While traditional queer culture consisted of drawing a map of queer lifestyles; radical queer culture engaged in a conversation with it to differentiate its own language, and became “ironic, critical and celebratory” (26). In this sense, films discussed in this paper are part of the radical queer culture in its engagement with the queer experience. Unlike mainstream queer films portraying queer lives as part of an overarching and monolithic queer experience, queer films highlighting the singular nature of each experience provide us with a more comprehensive meditation on how people live their sexuality, while being distinctively homosexual (Dyer 28). These films, instead of making conclusions, ask questions without the need to have them unanswered, which runs against mainstream cinema’s tendency to generalize and conclude. Hence, compared to narratives of traditional queer culture, films of the radical queer culture have narratives that are ‘queer’ themselves. In Weekend by Andrew Haigh, for instance, the queer experience is discovered in

the context of two British men having a weekend together before parting for good. Instead of exploring it as a purely sexual identity, the protagonist Russell’s (Tom Cullen) queerness is revealed as part of his identity as an orphan who was brought up by foster families. Therefore, his desire to settle down and have a family is interpreted in terms of Russell’s lack of family as a child. Mainstream queer cinema might have interpreted such a desire with the motivation to reflect that queer subjects can also form reproductive familial structures. However, Weekend is able to take a critical stance by drawing from individual experience. While radical queer culture, as defined by Dyer, provides a wider scope for alternative works of queer culture to be understood better, it falls short in its attempt at providing a wider scope of analysis for queer films in particular. Dyer’s definition of radical queer culture as opposed to mainstream queer culture is distinctive in radical queer culture’s attempt at locating queerness in individual experiences. However, Dyer’s formulation in taking individual experience as the point of departure might gloss over multidimensional aspects of a queer identity, aspects such as race, culture, family, social status, etc.. Therefore, radical queer culture serves as the starting point for films that are interested in individual and contextual aspects of queer experiences, but it might need to be explored by using a more comprehensive framework that does not ground queer identities only in individual experiences.

1.2 Gender Performativity and Film

As mentioned before, queer studies, and likewise queer film studies, are focused on the fluidity of all sexualities and how every sexuality draws from several different factors such as culture, race, nation, social status, etc. In this context, Judith Butler’s contributions are important in their influence on later scholarly works to come. Her article, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” creates the foundation for her work on her conception of gender performativity, which is further developed in the book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1999). Butler’s theory of gender performativity begins by stating that, with an aim to represent women adequately, feminist theory created a language defining the category of the ‘woman’ (Gender Trouble 2). However, this kind of identification of the woman created a politics of representation where the criteria of being a woman must be met before one can be adequately represented (Gender Trouble 3). This attempt, naturally, comes together with the limitations drawn around gender definitions. Cinematic genders, intentionally or not, serve as

reflections on these gender definitions. Mainstream cinema, in particular, draws heavily from a one-sided view of queer characters, where stereotypes such as the ‘gay best friend’ or the ‘butch lesbian’ are used frequently. Therefore, as explained by Butler, these attempts at representing a gender by way of categorization work against the fluidity of sexualities and limit representations of queer subjects and experiences. In order to overcome the hurdle of categorization, Butler offers that gender is not a “stable identity” from which performances spring, but it is rather an identity embedded in time and realized through a “stylized repetition of acts” (“Performative Acts” 519, emphasis in original). In other words, gender is fluid in its essence and repetitive performance of associated acts grounds the gender and transforms it into an entity that forms an influential part of one’s identity. Butler arrives at this conclusion with a critique of feminist theory’s phenomenological approach to gender. Phenomenology places one’s subjective experience in the context of a reciprocal relationship with surrounding political and cultural conditions (“Performative Acts” 522). This is to say that, feminist theory has tried to comprehend how political and cultural structures are reinforced through individual acts and how these acts can be understood as part of structures surrounding these acts (“Performative Acts” 522). Applied to queer films, it can be said that experiences of queer characters are shaped by their political and cultural contexts, but these filmic experiences are also understood in relation to the contexts they are embedded in. However, defending that individual acts have a “unilateral” or “unmediated” relationship with oppressive conditions surrounding gender and sexuality is limited, and this approach runs the risk of only addressing the indirect result of such conditions (“Performative Acts” 525). In a similar way, understanding the queer filmic identity in an unmediated, cause-effect relationship with the surrounding heteronormative context would be limited in its understatement of the filmic representation of transforming and transformative sociopolitical contexts. The transforming and transformative nature of the socio-political contexts in relation to gender can be explained further with an example from Zenne Dancer. In one of the opening scenes, while the mise-en-scène is filled with colourful drag costumes, the film emphasizes Ahmet’s reaction, who seems to be uncomfortable with Can’s flamboyant attitude (Figure 1). After mocking Can, he points at a Turkish bear calendar on the wall, stating that he is also a bear. As can be seen from the still in Figure 1, bear culture in Turkey is different in its

interpretation of the Western bear culture within the context of Turkish bath/Seraglio themes. This scene serves as a reflection on how social and political systems surrounding sexuality are transformed in accordance with the culture in question, and how personal acts are shaped around these contextual differences as well (“Performative Acts” 525).

Figure 1. Ahmet in the dressing room of Can, and Turkish bear calendar in Zenne Dancer

In order to defuse the risks that come with a phenomenological gender acts interpretation of the feminist theory, Butler provides an understanding of gender acts in a “theatrical” sense (“Performative Acts” 525). Similar to the feminist theory, Butler’s interpretation of theatrically-based gender acts also argues a less individual view of gender acts, while at the same time putting less emphasis on phenomenology (“Performative Acts” 525). Just like a script that survives its actors, a gender act also survives its performer, yet it is also interpreted and individualized to some degree by each performer (“Performative Acts” 526). Applied to cinema, queer films might serve as a reflection on how being queer is a theatrical performance, which needs an individual actor to rehearse and repeat it in order for the act to become reality once again (“Performative Acts” 526). Adapted to the case of Zenne Dancer, Butler’s theatrically-based gender acts can be used to state that the film emphasizes Ahmet’s performance of the ‘masculine’ gay man with his bodily movements, gestures and the stylization of his body, which are repeated in a continuous basis. Can, on the other hand, realizes the performance of a ‘feminine’ gay man through his belly dance, his choice of clothing and his way of speaking. The film emphasizes the fact that the actors are already on stage as part of their performances. Just like a script, gendered body acts are interpreted and acted differently by each actor in their culturally different context (“Performative Acts” 526). In this way, the film emphasizes the gendered act Ahmet plays as the ‘masculine’ gay man within the cultural

restrictions that comes from his Kurdish heritage and conservative, rural background in southeastern Turkey. Similarly, Can is portrayed as playing his gendered body act within the confines of the urban and western background he comes from. The film thus underlines the fact that each performance has as much a complex relationship with space as with culture. Although Ahmet lives in Istanbul and is part of the gay culture, he is still bound to his southeastern roots and home via his family and culture. As opposed to mainstream queer films’ tendency to show urban life as queer and embracing, Zenne Dancer shows the troublesome distinction made between the urban and the rural, and how both of them are estranging for Ahmet. The following section will expand further on how these films address the troubling urban-rural distinction made in filmic discourses.

1.3 Queer and the Rural

In her book In a Queer Time and Space (2005), queer theorist Judith Halberstam uses the story of Brandon Teena, an American trans man who was raped and murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska, for her meditation on the distinction between urban and rural spaces in relation to queerness. She states that most of the theories produced on homosexuality in the last century presume that queer culture has an intimate relationship with urban geographies, and concludes that, in rural spaces, individuals with non-normative sexualities can easily be detected and punished for it (Halberstam 35). This formulation, which resonates to some degree in many cultural and political discourses, explains why urban spaces are viewed as environments where queer subjects can be anonymous and free. Similarly, narratives of many queer films are also structured around this assumption, and queer characters’ realization of their queerness is portrayed to be simultaneous with a need to move to an urban city. In this formulation, rural life is positioned as opposed to the queer urban life, and queer characters’ rural pasts are portrayed as places of claustrophobia and homophobia. The films that are analysed in this paper take a critical look at this distinction of the urban and the rural. To give an example, Weekend takes place in Nottingham, not a typical ‘gay city’ as compared to the urban London. Andrew Haigh notes on his choice of location in an interview: “I knew that I didn’t want to shoot in London. I wanted to shoot in a city that was kind of a provincial nowhere town, so it wasn’t like a liberal Mecca, like Soho in London” (Bowen “Andrew Haigh Weekend”). Haigh’s choice of location shows the critical engagement with the queer subject as embedded in various spaces, where the urban does not

necessarily welcome the queer and the rural does not necessarily stand for homophobia and violence. Kath Weston’s article titled “Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imaginary and the Great Gay Migration” states that the stereotyped division of the rural and urban “located gay subjects in the city while putting their presence in the countryside under erasure” (Weston 262). This erasure of the queer presence in the rural space creates a pressure to move to an urban space, where the queer subject might experience estrangement and disappointment in the new alienating urban space (Halberstam 30). The imminent alienation in the urban space is concurrent with a pull created via the assumed queerness of urban spaces. In other words, because of this perceived opposition of homophobic rural and queer urban spaces, queer subject is in a forced immigration from the rural to the urban, never belonging to either in an in-between state. Zenne Dancer is one such film with a storyline closely engaging with this perceived push-and-pull mechanism of urban and rural spaces. Inspired by their friendship with Ahmet Yildiz, a victim of homophobic murder committed by his father, filmmakers Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay reflect on this assumed difference between the Turkish ‘western’ and the ‘eastern’ in the film’s storyline. In mainstream cultural discourse, eastern and western parts of Turkey designate more than geographical places. While eastern parts of the country are assumed to be provincial with conservative cultures, western Turkey – Istanbul in particular – is associated with an urban, queer quality. This notion is critically analysed throughout the film via the protagonist Ahmet. The film focuses on how he is closely watched by his conservative and hostile family, even though he lives in Istanbul – the epitome of the urban and free queer space. Zenne Dancer is critical of how queer imaginary is not only about a dream to be free as a queer individual, but an urban space is needed for this dream to be realized (Weston 274). Such films question that the queer dream in relation to this distinction between the urban and the rural is symbolic, and this dream requires a different place of freedom that may not be provided at all (Halberstam 30). Dee Rees’ Pariah further questions this distinction between queer and non-queer spaces by focusing on a single urban place: Brooklyn. By constantly changing clothing between school and home, Alike is performing the gender deemed appropriate by her family and the one perceived as suitable for her gender expression in the queer scene (Figure 2). Her attitude, body language and actual language also change along with her specific performance.

While she is performing the lesbian African-American woman with a tomboy attitude among her friends, and talks in an urban slang, she acts like a middle-class, straight girl with her family. The film’s portrayal of two distinct performances in a single, urban and seemingly queer space leads to the question that there is more to the distinction that is constructed in an urban-rural relationship, one that includes many different conditions such as race, family, social status, sex, etc.

Figures 2. Alike before and after: Her two distinct gender performances in Pariah

As discussed by Halberstam, queer studies frequently offered an understanding of communities as an aggregated model of many individuals, rather than “as a complex interactive model of space, embodiment, locality and desire” (45). As films like Pariah and Zenne Dancer illustrate, queer film studies also benefit from an interactive model of study including several different factors affecting filmic languages and discourses built around these languages. The observations made in this chapter give rise to the thought that the queer experience and the queer identity is too complex to be argued with a framework devoid of multidimensionality. As the distinction made between mainstream and radical queer cultures illustrate, the films analysed in this paper avoid placing queer experience in a map of queer experiences and differentiate each queer filmic experience by drawing from individual experience. Judith Butler’s criticism of phenomenology and proposal of theatrically-based gender acts shows that, queer filmic experience cannot be analysed only in terms of individual experiences. Butler’s argument shows that queer acts are as much part of specific cultural contexts as it is appropriated, acted and repeated by each queer filmic character. Halberstam’s criticism of the assumed queerness of urban spaces show how it complicates the queer

individual’s relationship with their rural background and how this is reflected in the filmic discourses analysed, which engage with this distinction critically. Through the analysis of different cultural and philosophical thinking around queer film studies, this chapter illustrates that the queer experience on the screen is approached in a critical stance. These films engage with the queer identity by taking into account the various individual and cultural conditions that help shape the overall queer experience. However, experience of queer filmmakers and how this relates to their filmic language and production techniques might also help us look at these films more extensively. The next chapter will do this and examine how queer films can be examined in relation to the filmmaker.

2. Queer Filmmaking as Accented Cinema

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift opened between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.

Edward Said (Said 357)

This quote from Edward Said, a Palestinian American scholar of postcolonialism and postmodernism, hits close to home for exilic, diasporic and postcolonial filmmakers. Hamid Naficy’s work on accented cinema argues that these filmmakers’ identities as displaced individuals have an influence on their filmic languages and film production processes they go through. This is similar to Halberstam’s argument on the distinction between urban and rural places and how this divide forces the queer subject on an exile to urban cities (30). The assumed queerness of the urban life often forces the queer subject to move to an urban city, which creates a tension between the urban space and the rural past. Whether this takes place via coming out or not, the experience is simultaneous with a need to realize and act one’s own sexuality. The films analysed in this paper reflect on this tension between the urban and the rural, and locate the queer character in an interstitial position in this divide. The autobiographical qualities of these films reflect the interstitiality of queer filmmakers themselves. The fact that these filmmakers still live in their homelands show the transnational quality of displacement influencing the film style. The purpose of this chapter is to look at the displacement that these filmmakers go through and how this experience transforms their films. The first section looks at different components of the film style that accented films have and these components will be analysed in queer films. The second section looks at alternative modes of production that queer filmmakers use, which is a result of their interstitial positions. The third section analyses the references made to the notion of the homeland and the host land and how it is bound to the time of the displacement in queer films. The fourth section looks at how queer characters go through a transformation process on the screen and how it mirrors the same experience queer filmmakers undergo. The fifth section looks at what devices queer films use in order to accentuate the division between the queer filmmaker and the homeland to further highlight the in-between state of the filmmaker.

Guided by Naficy’s book on accented filmmaking, the purpose of this chapter is to show that queer films can be analysed within the framework of accented cinema and to illustrate that the notion of displacement is a complex mechanism.

2.1. Accented Style

In the introduction to his book, Naficy sets out his motivation for defining a corpus of accented cinema. He states that many independent exilic filmmakers – filmmakers such as Abid Med Hondo, Michel Khleifi and Mira Nair – who make films about the experience of exile and their homelands, are often categorized as national, Third World, Third Cinema, identity cinema or ethnic filmmakers (Naficy 19). Naficy argues that these categorizations often undermine the importance of the cultural and political conditions that create these films (19). In this way, accented cinema serves as a way to account for the complex, inconsistent and regular aspects of these films and illustrate the effect that displacement has on these filmmakers’ work. Similarly, queer films engaging with the politics and culture of a specific place in time are often categorized under the rubric of the national, Third World or queer cinema, and these categorizations often efface the varying degrees of complexities that these films have. Queer film studies are more interested in the diegetic aspects of a film than how queer filmmaker as a displaced subject influences film production and language. For this reason, queer film studies also need a more comprehensive framework, one that includes various aspects centred on the filmmaker’s own experiences as a queer subject. Accented filmmakers have an affinity with the homeland and the host land to some degree, but the mechanisms of this relationship divides them into three categories. Exilic filmmakers constitute one of these categories, and it refers to filmmakers who have had to develop an authorial style under the restrictions imposed by their countries’ totalitarian regimes (Naficy 11). Those filmmakers who choose to remain in the site of struggle are in an internal exile, and filmmakers on an external exile free themselves from the oppressive regime of the homeland only to lose their voices in the highly competitive and polyphonic global film market (11). This trauma and rupture from the homeland feeds exilic filmmakers’ language, where they remain to be engaged with both old and new lands, while never fully belonging to either (Naficy 12). Although diasporic filmmakers also have different identities before and after the trauma of the rupture from their homelands, diasporic identities are collectively defined (Naficy 14). In other words, diasporic filmmakers differ from exilic

filmmakers in their involvement with not only the homeland, but also with other displaced subjects with the same roots. This relationship with compatriot communities inform their work, which often stress “multiplicity and addition” as opposed to the “binarism and subtraction” of exilic filmmakers (Naficy 14-15). As a third category, postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmakers differ from diasporic and exilic filmmakers in their emphasis on “ethnic and racial” identities within the host country (Naficy 15). This means that, while exilic and diasporic films engage with “there and then” in the homeland, postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmakers engage with the life “here and now” in the country they reside (15). Queer filmmakers are often located in the interstices of these three groups of accented identities. The filmmakers explored in this paper all reside in their homelands, which might lead to their categorization as internal exilic filmmakers. Further, in oppressive and homophobic states and cultures, the politics of the internal exile might be more visible in the filmic discourses serving the queer movement for freedom. However, the division between the urban and the rural spaces, and the move to the urban city for a relatively free life create a geographically internal exile that nevertheless carries the qualities of external exile. Deterritorialized within the same homeland, these filmmakers exist in the liminalities between the urban present and the rural past, and their films are informed by this nostalgic relationship with the past and the troubles experienced in the present urban. Andrew Gorman-Murray states that moving out of the parental home to come out does not necessarily require a migration of great distances, as leaving home for the realization of the queer identity might be just as important for queer subjects (117). On the other hand, queers filmmakers also engage with the queer communities in these urban spaces. By coming together in queer urban spaces, the connection with the queer compatriot community in the big city takes on the politics of diasporic communities. Lastly, although being queer does not reflect bloodline relations like that of postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmakers (such as African-American, Latino- American or Asian-American), queer films represent an “irrevocably split identity” and a stasis between two opposing cultures (Naficy 16). These two cultures might represent heteronormative and queer cultures, but they might also be related to an ethnic identity that is much more heteronormative than the dominating culture (which is the case in Zenne Dancer). As stated by Naficy, diaspora, exile and ethnicity are not stable and they might turn into one another or merge with each other under certain circumstances (17). By carrying certain

qualities of three different identities, queer filmmakers might represent exilic, diasporic and ethnic identities at the same time. Naficy states that the accented style is a group style, which means that it has a consistent use of film techniques that is shared by several filmmakers (20). In this sense, accented style brings together a group of filmmakers who share certain qualities stemming from the experience of displacement and deterritorialization (21). This experience influences one side of the accented style, and another component of accented style is constituted by the exilic and diasporic traditions that existed before these filmmakers (Naficy 22). Similarly, queer filmmakers also derive from both their own experiences as displaced subjects and queer filmmaking traditions that existed before them. Naficy states that the accented style is not a fully established style, but rather an emergent category that is a set of “undeniable personal and social” experiences (26). The structure of accented filmmaking is located in the filmmaker’s own experiences of displacement, named “accented structure of feeling”, which include dysphoria and euphoria at the same time (26-27). Particularly, exilic films are driven by the pull of the homeland, which is signified as too sacred a place to be played with (Naficy 27). The underlined importance of the homeland brings with it a sadness which is the result of being apart from it; sad and alienated people are central to accented films for this reason. When we look at Zenne Dancer’s storyline, for example, we see the friendship of three alienated characters: Daniel, a German photo-journalist scarred by his last photography project in the Middle East, Can, a male belly dancer trying to avoid serving in the military and Ahmet, a Kurdish, southeastern university student living in Istanbul. Ahmet emerges as a predominantly sad and alienated queer character in the film. The film focuses on the tensions that the character goes through: although he does not want to go back home, he is still attached to it via his family. Zenne Dancer illustrates the compelling pull of the homeland, which is highlighted with a sense of terminal loss. According to Edward Said, although exilic character’s life is filled with certain glorious moments, these are only efforts in order to “overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement”. The film also emphasizes these moments in the character’s life, some of which is his romance with Daniel, and preparations to leave Turkey for good. Naficy states that the accented individual’s body is often put into doubt, which is a result of the exile that is coupled with hostility in the new country (28). This leads to an elevation of sensations, which often help to evoke flashes of memories and reinforce

connections with the homeland (Naficy 28). The juxtaposition of multiple places and nonlinear narrative structure constitute the “tactile optics” of accented films, which is motivated by the multiple losses that the characters go through (Naficy 28-29). In the opening sequence of Pariah, to give an example, we see an example of these distracted tactile optics. As can be seen in Figure 3, the camera cuts from Alike sitting uncomfortably at a lesbian bar, to a shot of a woman singing, to another shot of drinks, and finally establishes its gaze on Alike. The tactile optics in this scene reminds Alike of her displacement in the queer scene because of her expected gender performance as the butch lesbian, and her imminent loss that results from her parents’ reaction to her sexuality. Therefore, accented style in Pariah offers an “ocular” and “ideological” perspective on displacement (Naficy 30). While ideological is revealed via accented structures of feeling, ocular is explored via the tactile optics.

Figure 3. Use of tactile optics in Pariah

Naficy traces the roots of accented cinema to Third Cinema, which is a Latin-American cinema of liberation that draws upon Italian neorealist film aesthetics and a political criticism of oppression (30). Teshome H. Gabriel elaborates further on this tradition of filmmaking and states that Third Cinema films are made mainly in Third World countries, but they can be made anywhere and by anyone as long as they carry their engagement with opposition and liberation (2-3). Accented films are not as politically engaged as Third Cinema films because

of their close relationship with individual histories, ethnicities, nationalities and deterritorialization rather than the people, but they still deal with authoritarianism and oppression to some degree (Naficy 30-31). One thing that is shared by both the Third Cinema and accented cinema is the attempt to portray a fetishized picture of the homeland; and the portrayal of the fetishized homeland precedes the time of displacement (Naficy 31). To give an example, Terence Davies’ film The Long Day Closes is an account of the filmmaker’s childhood in a lower middle class neighbourhood of Liverpool in the mid-1950s. Although the diegetic character Bud is bullied at school and is agonized by his sexuality, the film’s portrayal of his family and neighbourhood is a blissful one. The scene in Figure 4 is one of these moments, where the camera captures a long shot of Bud’s mother and siblings in a mise- en-scène à la The Last Supper. The scene gives clues to the spectator regarding Bud’s religious attachments and his constructed portrayal of the home. Hence The Long Day Closes shows the “historically conscious, politically engaged, critically aware, generally hybridized and artisanally produced” qualities of queer films (31).

Figure 4. Bud’s Christmas dinner in The Long Day Closes

As accented filmmakers are individuals transplanted in Western countries by separation from their Eastern homelands, the consciousness of the border emerges in accented films (Naficy 31). The effect of the border stands for the blurred identity, vagueness and chaos (31). In J'ai

tué ma mère, the protagonist Hubert stands at one such border: he is overly attached to his mother but hates her at the same time, he lives his sexuality freely, yet without the knowledge of his mother. Naficy states that as a result of the trauma caused by the chaos of the border, accented films are characterized by “amphibolic characters” whom Naficy calls “shifters” (32). Border shifters are defined by multiple, conflicted identities and perspectives (32). Hubert is also characterized by his identity as a son and as a queer subject, and these identities are in conflict because of his mother’s inherent homophobia. There are scenes, such as the one in Figure 5, where Hubert’s and his mother’s relationship mechanisms change in a moment’s notice from love to hate against each other. Torn between his two identities, Hubert shifts back and forth between two sides of a metaphoric border, which highlights his accented identity.

Figure 5. Hubert with his mother in two following sequences in J'ai tué ma mère

Accented cinema is based on a poststructuralist view of authorship, which sees authors as “fictions within their texts who reveal themselves only in the act of spectating” (Naficy 33). This is to say that, instead of putting the reader in the position of an object, poststructuralism positions the reader as an active agent in bringing together the traces of the author in a text. Roland Barthes explains this by saying that in order to for the authorial voice be manifested, the author needs to disappear (148). According to this formulation, putting both the author and the spectator/reader in a subject position suggests that the spectator’s interpretation of the text might not necessarily equal the actual author creating the text (Naficy 34). If we apply to Weekend by Andrew Haigh or Zenne Dancer by Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay, the stories told do not equal the creators of the text. In the case of Weekend, spectators are provided with the filmic text about a gay man from Nottingham who works as a lifeguard; and Zenne Dancer is based on Binay and Alper’s close friend Ahmet Yildiz. However, Naficy comes

over this by putting “the locatedness and the historicity of the authors back into authorship” (Naficy 34). This is to say that, accented filmmakers should not only be seen as expressive authors with distinctive voices, but their identities as displaced subjects should also be seen as part of the formulation. Therefore, accented filmmakers inhabit their texts in various forms, which positions them in an interstitial position in the self-inscription they apply to their filmic texts as well (Naficy 35). Even though each queer film discussed here have varying degrees of self-inscription, they are not only motivated by their own cinematic languages, but also each queer filmmaker’s own experiences as displaced subjects1. Influenced by the double consciousness of being queer and being displaced, these authorial filmmakers emphasize exile as a subject of their films, but they also signify upon the exile as an emotional experience that leaves a mark on their very identity (Naficy 22). The next section will look at how accented filmmakers and queer filmmakers similarly engage with the production process of their films.

2.2. Mode of Production

The interstitiality of accented cinema reflects itself in production, distribution and consumption methods as much as it does in the accented style. Naficy explains that cinema’s mode of production, as is the case with any creative industry, is dictated by the mainstream trends in production and consumption (40). Cinema, as one such product, is generally produced with the aim of consumption, therefore the spectator’s behavior has an influence over how these films are produced and how they are marketed. For this reason, while mainstream cinema is mainly produced for consumption by a worldwide audience, art-house cinema is produced for a niche market, which limits and affects production methods in return. Before the advance of the free market, Hollywood depended on the studio system, where films were controlled centrally, from production to their consumption. Financial and sociopolitical shifts around the world gave way to a new mode of production, which is more interested in the global marketing, distribution of products and services rather than the production of the film itself (Naficy 41). Films started to become “intertextual products”, “franchises” or “software” that acted more like brands or products and less like creative works

1 Dolan’s J'ai tué ma mère probably have the highest degree of autobiographical self-inscription among the selection. He states in an interview that the film’s storyline was based on his relationship with his mother and that it was a cathartic experience for him (Cinémotions, “Entretien avec Xavier Dolan, réalisateur de 'J'ai tué ma mère').

(41). In other words, films have turned into massive cultural products with on-going post- production efforts to increase the profit margin. Global premieres, actors/actresses with astronomical fees, DVD releases and various related merchandise now constitute an integral part of the film industry. Accented filmmaking is not driven by this market-oriented approach to film production; in fact, Naficy defines accented filmmaking by its defiance of the global market (41). Queer films are also similar to accented filmmaking in this sense: although mainstream queer cinema has gained traction in the global film industry, most queer films still rely on alternative modes of production and consumption. Accented form of production can best be described as an “interstitial” alternative mode; that is, compared to dominant modes of production, its particularity emerges but it also co-exists with the dominant mode of production (Naficy 43). To give an example, filmmaker Dee Rees used festivals to attract attention and possible investors for Pariah. Originally written as a graduation project, Rees decided to turn it into a short film in order to set the style of the film and also showcase her work to future investors of her feature film (Davis, “Writer/Director Dee Rees Talks Pariah, Bolo, Large Print, and HBO TV Series with Viola Davis”). With a budget of under 500,000 dollars, Dee Rees completed Pariah in 19 days in a converted funeral home in Brooklyn (Zack, “‘Pariah’ director Dee Rees confronts disapproval”). After its first premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the film was picked up by Focus Features, NBC’s art-house films division (Zack, “‘Pariah’ director Dee Rees confronts disapproval”). Dee Rees’ method is common among queer filmmakers, who both use mainstream channels of distribution, but also use alternative methods of production and an active approach in raising funds to produce their works. The dominant mode of production may influence the alternative production methods; however, the dominant production modes need alternative modes in order to stay relevant and dominant (43). The alternative mode of production utilized by accented filmmaking is placed in relation to the postindustrial cinema modes described by Naficy; while they are not driven by profit, they are still made possible with the capital, which takes the form of several different public and private funds (43). To give an example, in order to fund J'ai tué ma mère, Xavier Dolan used his own savings of 150,000 dollars that he earned as a child actor (Historica Canada). When he ran out of his fund halfway through the film and the production company dropped the project, he met a veteran production manager, who secured him funds through the Quebec cultural development corporation SODEC (Historica Canada). As is the

case with Dolan, scarcity of public funds might require the accented filmmaker to invest in their films financially, which shows that accented cinema is driven by money, but not defined by its existence, or lack thereof. The accented mode of production is a part of the “minor literature” formulated by Deleuze and Guattari: the limitation of the accented individual, the amateurishness and the imperfection are all reflected in the production methods (Naficy 45). The imperfection and the contradictory nature of these films lead to limitations in the funds and the commercial space provided for these films (45). For this, accented filmmakers’ role in these films are “multifunctional” because these filmmakers often have to juggle different roles in the production, and they are “integrated” because accented filmmaking requires filmmakers to contribute to the financing and exhibition of their films (Naficy 46). Similarly, queer filmmakers also form a part of this minor literature, where alternative modes of production and post-production are integral to the entire process of filmmaking. To give an example, Andrew Haigh’s film Weekend was produced with only 120,000 pounds in 15 days (Clare 786). But the budget limitation reportedly enabled him to “strip the mechanics of filmmaking” to capture the intimacy between the two main characters (Bowen “Andrew Haigh Weekend”). For this, he used handheld cameras and used real settings with no extras (Bowen “Andrew Haigh Weekend”). Therefore, budget limitations also define the techniques used in the film, some of which are amateurishness, imperfection and a small crew (Naficy 45). From this perspective, the amount of the original budget for The Long Day Closes (1,750,000 pounds) does not sound too low for an independent queer film (Beckman, “The Long Day Closes”). However, a studio replicating Davies’ childhood Liverpool had to be created, and for this reason Davies had to leave out some camera effects in order to produce the film with his available budget (Beckman, “The Long Day Closes”). Therefore, even Davies’ relatively high budget is defined by the limitations that ultimately influences the techniques and aesthetics that the filmmaker can make use of. The reason that these filmmakers encounter budget limitations is partly because accented and queer filmmakers occupy a paradoxical place in the film industry, and they produce “contradictory, unstable, usually short-lived” films (James 18). However, this does not necessarily mean that queer filmmakers and accented filmmakers exist on the peripheries of the film industry (Naficy 46). These filmmakers benefit both from a global audience and a local one at the same time. They use their interstitial identities to form a solidarity resulting

from their designated differences, while opposing a homogenous ‘we’ at the same time (Bhabha 270). Just as the shifter characters in their filmic border writings, accented and queer filmmakers switch between their multiple identities in order to secure more funding and audience. To give an example, Zenne Dancer was shot with an estimated budget of around 1,000,000 euros, with support from the Human Rights Programme of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Similar to accented filmmakers accessing international funds via their interstitial nationalities and cultures, queer filmmakers – especially in cultures with more visible censorship and homophobia – often receive funding from international pro- LGBT institutions and public funds. The queer culture and queer films are located at the “intersection of local and global”, and queer filmmakers, like accented filmmakers, mediate between these contradictory identities (Naficy 46). For this reason, interstitiality and multiplicity are not only a way for the filmmakers to use various resources in film financing, but these characteristics can also be identified in terms of various roles they play in the production of a film. A clear example would be Xavier Dolan, who juggles several roles as the director, producer, actor and the costume designer in his film J'ai tué ma mère. Other filmmakers mentioned here are also interstitially located in the film production process: Rees, Binay and Alper, Haigh and Davies all wrote and directed their films. While this multiplicity of roles enables the queer and the accented filmmaker to overcome financial obstacles in order to produce their films, it also provides the filmmaker with a tighter control over the film. By taking on several different roles in the film, queer filmmakers act as accented filmmakers in order to shape its aesthetics and become its author (Naficy 49). As can be seen with filmmakers presented above, most independent queer filmmakers need to perform several roles, consult low-budget shooting techniques, benefit from different funds and be an active agent in the entire production process in order to reduce costs. The above illustrations show how queer filmmakers often work with very low budgets, and also work around several obstacles to produce authorial works that are not only motivated by their identities as displaced subjects, but also by what kind of limitations the film industry impose on these filmmakers. The next section will inspect how the experience of displacement and deterritorialization inform references to homeland and host land in queer filmmakers’ films.

2.3. Chronotopes of Homeland and Life in Exile

Accented films express the politics of displacement via references to certain places embedded in a relationship with a certain period in time. Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin proposed that chronotopes, the literal meaning of which is “time-space”, are units of analysis for identifying the configurations of cultural forces that shape discourses in terms of their spatial and temporal aspects (Naficy 152). In other words, chronotopes are signifiers in literature that help identify the specific references to spaces in relation to the story. Applied to cinema, cinematic chronotopes help unfold the filmic discourse in reference to certain temporal and spatial locations (152). Since they embody the exilic, diasporic and postcolonial subject’s relationship with the host land and the homeland, accented films’ discourses are mainly identified by its use of chronotopes. In the context of queer filmmakers, the notion that small towns are hostile for queer subjects lead to the formulation of urban areas as natural environment for queers (Halberstam 15). For this reason, queer subjects often experience a need to move to these urban areas for living their sexualities freely, eventually creating similar mechanisms of the homeland and the host land. Even if this move takes place within the confines of the same city, moving out from the parental home leaves marks on the queer filmmaker’s style and the references made to their ‘homes’. One tendency of the accented cinema is to construct a utopian relationship with an imagined homeland before the time of the displacement, these are primarily expressed via open chronotopes of nature, landscape and landmarks (Naficy 152). Applied to queer films, a prominent example would be in Zenne Dancer. The only time we see the three characters in an open chronotope is when they all go to the beach. They seem relieved, free and joyful; however, there is no one around. In the case of Zenne Dancer, the only open chronotope they seem to enjoy serves the message of the narrative that queer displacement has a convoluted structure (Figure 6). Being an urban city, Istanbul is seen as a queer area. However, the film’s usage of open chronotopes suggests that the formulation of the urban queer fails in the case of Istanbul. Traditional discourses around nature have considered nature to be uncontaminated, and after the “defeat” of the nature by the humanity, nature came to connote a place of deep harmony (Naficy 156). Taken at this end, urban life and social structures might represent contamination, especially for queer identities. For this reason, a nature without the humanity and its heteronormative social structure represents the real homeland for the characters of the film.

Figure 6. Ahmet, Can and Daniel having a photo shoot at the beach, with Can dancing in the background in Zenne Dancer

Another film that critically engages with open chronotopes is The Long Day Closes. In accented films, shots of open spaces are generally used to refer to a utopian homeland. However, this is different in the protagonist Bud’s case; the only time that the film uses long shots of an open space is when Bud sits on a rooftop with his friend in the final scene of the film (Figure 7). However, a dark lighting scheme is used together with the diegetic sound of a static radio sound draws a picture of claustrophobia. During this scene, one important detail is the conversation Bud has with his friend, looking at the stars Bud says: “The life in them started when Jesus was alive” (The Long Day Closes). As will be discussed further, the film emphasizes Bud’s awareness of his sexuality and the extreme guilt that the character feels because of his religious upbringing. However, as a character who is still yet to perform his queer identity, he cannot find solace in the boundlessness that the open chronotope can provide. Facing the destruction of the homeland, exilic characters’ tendency is to return to the “structural authority” of the nature (Naficy 156). For Bud, the film stresses an impending loss of the homeland that will take place with Bud’s realization of his queer identity. To encounter this, Bud is portrayed in long shots when with his family, the provider of the social structural authority, or the film theatre.

Figure 7. Bud watching the sky with his friend in The Long Day Closes

As opposed to the stability and the idealized open chronotopes that the homeland provides, the experience of the life in exile after displacement takes place is represented via feelings of claustrophobia and imprisonment (Naficy 153). Named closed chronotopes, these dystopian images are revealed in the form of dark and small environments, dark lighting and restricted mise-en-scène (153). In The Long Day Closes, although he seems to be fairly happy with his family, Bud does not have any peers of his age in his close surroundings. As a student in an all boys’ Catholic school, Bud is bullied by his classmates. In the shot below, Bud is waiting to be dismissed after lice check. While his classmates are enjoying the rain, he is portrayed on corner of the frame. The mise-en-scène crowded with the character’s classmates is followed by Bud positioned in the frame by himself. Following this, the frame slowly shifts to show silent Bud only, with the school nurse’s dull voice: “Lice!”, “Clean!” (The Long Day Closes). The frame finally stabilizes with a window to Bud’s right, then Bud looks out the window to see himself alone in the window. Opposed to the scene above, this is his nostalgia for his sense of ‘home’. Although still a reserved child, he is much happier when he is around his family. The film’s usage of open and closed form of chronotopes illustrate that, for Bud, claustrophobia of the closed spaces and the nostalgia for home takes place on a daily basis.

The film thereby emphasizes the relationship the protagonist has with his social environments, which is made complex by his sexuality.

Figure 8. Bud after lice check in The Long Day Closes

The usage of closed chronotopes throughout the film highlight the crisis the character goes through because of the clash of his sexuality and religious beliefs. Bud is mostly portrayed in dark and static, dull spaces when he is alone by himself. Embedded in a religious filmic context, Bud’s sexual desires conflict with his belief system. After timidly eyeing the half- naked construction worker, he dreams about him (crucified and screaming) and then tries to make up for his guilt by nervously praying (Figure 9). The mise-en-scene is dark and claustrophobic during these bouts of feelings unidentified by Bud, representing religion as a closed chronotope of claustrophobia for the protagonist.

Figure 9. Bud nervously praying after his dream in The Long Day Closes

According to Naficy, the emotional relationship with the ‘home’ and the claustrophobic relationship associated with the life in exile can be expressed via a neighbourhood, a town or even a special corner of the house (52). Naficy maintains that our relationship with home is often taken for granted; for this reason, displacement or emplacement is a signifier of the

realization of separation and the nostalgia attached to the home (52). Since this displacement and placement takes place at a certain point history, the emotions attached to home is bound to time as well (Naficy 52). In the context of the queer subject, the realization of the queer identity, performing it, having to hide one’s sexual identity often entails moving from one place to another. This displacement may involve a move from one country to another; however, it might simply be a placement to more metropolitan areas of the same country, or even distancing oneself from their immediate surroundings emotionally. From this perspective, queer films’ take on closed and open chronotopes are complex, yet this displacement is time-bound in the realization of the queer identity and, as explored in the examples below, brings about emotional attachment to ‘home’. The examples below illustrate how these films deal with experience of coming out in terms of displacement and how the usage of open and closed chronotopes highlight this fact. In Pariah, Alike does not seem to belong to her queer friend circle, nor her family. Her closest friend is a butch lesbian, dressing in baggy clothing. Alike also dresses like a butch lesbian whenever she is with her friends and she changes into different clothing before she goes home. Whenever she is alone with her friend or at the lesbian strip club she frequents, the setting is dark, with neon lights of different shades of purple and green. In the shot below, Alike is at the strip club, wearing a strap-on dildo she does not want, and sitting uncomfortably alone (Figure 10). In the shot illustrated below, she is at the centre of the frame, yet she is barely visible. She watches her surroundings without any involvement with it. In her book Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships and Motherhood among Black Women (2011) Mignon Moore analyses black lesbian women and gender roles they play in their relationships. Her research into the quite intersectional community reveals that most Black women try to portray a specific gender role, in this case butch or femme, when they are in lesbian social life because of their perceived need to create a “particular aesthetic self” (qtd. in Daniels 263). Alike is going through a similar need to portray the butch character, which is influenced by her lesbian friend. However, she feels uncomfortable in this role. For Alike, closed chronotopes are not only embodied by her oppressive and heteronormative family, but also the stereotypical categorization of the black lesbian community. These closed chronotopes signify that she is not comfortable with the queer performance she is expected to play, she does not want to be the butch lesbian. This mirrors her home life. Her mother’s constant desire to control her casts a shadow on Alike’s life, which is represented by the

mostly claustrophobic and dark house. This contrast is most obvious during the shots after Alike comes out and chooses to leave home after being beaten by her mother. Suddenly, we start seeing Alike in open spaces with lighter colours in the frame; Alike seems to have found her home, which is accepting her sexuality without the need to conform a specific gender performance (Figure 10).

Figure 10. Alike in the lesbian bar / Alike at a rooftop confronting her dad in Pariah

In J’ai tué ma mère (2009), Hubert also has a troublesome relationship with his mother. This is reflected in the mise-en-scene of his mother’s house, which is decorated with cheap furniture and is dark (Figure 11). He escapes his maternal home to first stay with his father, who does not want him. Then he seeks refuge at the house of his teacher, but she cannot host him long enough as well. In the end, Hubert and his mother Chantale’s conflict lead to Chantale sending Hubert to an all boys’ boarding school. Hubert gets bullied and escapes the school with his boyfriend’s help and goes to the cabin where he used to live with his mother as a child. When Chantale is informed by the male principal of the school that Hubert ran away and advises her to find a father figure for him, Chantale has a breakdown and reveals the pains of being a single mother trying to raise a child. The final scene of the film is Chantale finding Hubert at the cabin, sitting beside him and they watch the open scene together, without saying a single word. This open chronotope is juxtaposed with concluding scenes of what seems to be young Hubert and Chantale running around in the cabin, seeming to be very happy. In J’ai tué ma mère (2009), the closed chronotope represents the conflict arising out of the lack of communication between Hubert and Chantale, where the open chronotope identifies the nostalgia for the loving relationship between the two.

Figure 11. Hubert and Chantale sitting by the cabin / Old footage of Hubert and Chantale at the same cabin home in J’ai tué ma mère

Chronotopes of Weekend is constructed around the idea of romance for Russell. Grown up in foster care, Russell longs for a family life and sharing a household with a partner. Although there is no clue as to him hiding his sexuality, he does not seem comfortable sharing the details of his romantic life with his friends. The shots before he meets Glen at the bar shows him alone, in a dark setting. Below is the shot of his place before he heads outside to meet his friends, and Glen later that night (Figure 12). The setting is dark and quiet, he fills the frame, wearing dark clothing and smoking pensively. He is surrounded by dark furniture, all of which highlight the closed chronotope that Russell is embedded in. Russell’s closed chronotope seems to be caused by his life as a single man and his desperate desire for a relationship and settling down, which is further explored with the start of his weekend-long relationship with Glen. In the shot provided below, Russell and Glen are discussing their first night together, while Glen is recording it on a sound recorder for an art project. The same surroundings illustrated before are portrayed with lighter colours, and daylight fills in the room as if it opens up the barriers of his house (Figure 12). Although Naficy’s description of open chronotopes favour external locations, Russell’s open chronotope is home, as long as it is shared with a lifelong partner. For Russell, homonormativity is not associated with the state benefits of being part of a recognized family, it is about romance and his life to be spent with another person (Clare 795). For this reason, Russell’s nostalgia is for the notion of a family and stability that is lost early in his childhood, and the film’s distinct usage of open chronotopes highlight the character’s need to return to it.

Figure 12. Russell at his home / with Glen in Weekend

Although other characters also experience different levels of displacement expressed via chronotopes, Zenne Dancer’s portrayal of Ahmet almost strictly involves closed chronotopes. During sequences that focus on Ahmet, closed chronotopes become more claustrophobic and dark. Ahmet's mother tells her husband that Istanbul is not the right place for Ahmet and his sister because it is full of ‘filth'. However, what is interesting is that the closed chronotope seems to be embodied by the mother. A dominant character and the apparent representation of religious and traditional values, she brings the claustrophobia with her to Istanbul. The moderately cheerful student house of Ahmet and his sister feels claustrophobic when Ahmet's mother is present. The shots given below illustrate how restricted Ahmet and his sister feel and how relieved they become after their parents are gone. The positioning of the characters in the first shot also reveal the clash between Ahmet and his mother. In closed chronotopes, mise-en-scène indicates that the space and time is determined by an external agency, and therefore closed chronotope indicates control and distance (Naficy 154). In Ahmet’s case, closed chronotopes are an indication of the control inflicted on by his mother, religious and moral values pertaining to his culture.

Figure 13. Ahmet and his sister, with and without their parents at their student house

As can be seen in the examples above, like accented films, queer films also rely on the use of chronotopes for referring to certain spaces embedded in a time-bound relationship. Although the feelings associated with closed chronotopes (claustrophobia and imprisonment) and open chronotopes (boundlessness and timelessness) remain the same, the experiences related to their use and how these devices are used differ greatly among different filmic contexts. Instead of engaging with known narratives of coming out in the context of urban-rural opposition, these films use open and closed chronotopes in different ways in an attempt to point out the multi-faceted structure of the queer identity in relation to family, social structure, religion, race, etc.. The next section will look at how queer filmmakers use journeying and various forms of identity crossings in connection with the experience of displacement.

2.4. Journeying, Border Crossing and Identity Crossing

Journey narratives tend to be popular in some literary genres and cinematic traditions, and it is also understandable that journeys form an important part of the narrative in accented films. Identified by the effect that displacement has on the filmmaker, journeys are simultaneous with separation, identity change and placement in a new country (Naficy 222). The placement in a new area also means gaining a new identity and thus exilic and diasporic communities form an association with both their small class identifications and a global identification at the same time (222). The constant contact with the local and the global also brings with it a focus on the interstitiality of the subject. The exilic, diasporic or the postcolonial subject moves from their sub-discourses into the global. This is also true for queer subjects; small communities of queer individuals now have access to, and is a part of, the global queer culture. Similarly, queer subjects also move from their identities in relation to their specific cultures to a global narrative of queer subjects as identities contestatory of heteronormativity. For this reason, narratives of journeying are important for the queer filmmaker. Naficy states that, in accordance with Bakhtinian chronotopes, the theme of journeying take three main directions: “outward journeys of escape, home seeking, and home founding; journeys of quest, homelessness, and lostness; and inward, homecoming journeys” (223). Home-seeking journeys are dominated by two directions. The first one being the movement to the West, where the individual seeks shelter in the assumed welcoming nature of the unknown (Naficy 224). As a counter movement, however, we can also encounter individuals who are not content with their lives in the West and seek shelter in the East in

homecoming journeys, where their previous homes are located (224). Queer film narratives generally takes the shape of the journey of home-seeking and homelessness; alienated queer individual seeks home in the metropolitan and anonymous life of the West, often being alienated in urban queer spaces as well. Zenne Dancer’s narrative on Ahmet is predominantly a journey of escape and an interrupted home-seeking. When we look at the storyline, Ahmet leaves his deadly homeland for his university studies, and searches for his home in Istanbul, where he hopes that anonymity will provide shelter for realizing his sexuality. However, he is stalked by his parents who want to find clues about his private life. After Daniel convinces Ahmet to come with him to Germany, we see the beginnings of an escape. In the shot below, Ahmet is at Daniel’s home making his final arrangements to move to Germany (Figure 14). A suitcase is positioned centrally in the frame, and Ahmet comes to the centre of the frame in order to be handed his passport from Daniel. The suitcase is an important symbol for the exilic subject: containing souvenirs from the homeland, it stands for both movement, deprivation and deterritorialization (Naficy 261). Unfortunately, Ahmet is killed before he gets to leave the country for good. His sister, whose life is equally claustrophobic, continues the journey of escape that is interrupted by Ahmet’s death. In the shot below, Ahmet’s sister Hatice returns to Istanbul after she plucks up the courage to rise against her oppressive mother (Figure 14). She steps out of a bus, with a backpack in hand. Like Ahmet, she is also centrally positioned in the frame. Breaking her connection with her family, she is free to roam but her backpack is a symbol of the loss of a family at the same time.

Figure 14. Ahmet and Daniel preparing to travel / Ahmet’s sister Hatice coming back to Istanbul in Zenne Dancer

Naficy states that journeys predominantly take place West-ward in accented films, and they involve many forms including escape, emigration or exile (Naficy 225). Although the journey

Ahmet attempts to embark on is distinctively of an escape and a prematurely interrupted home-seeking, Alike takes on a journey of home-seeking in Pariah. When we look at the storyline, after coming out to her parents, Alike is beaten by her religious mother. Although her life is not in danger, the daily differences in her performance of her sexuality confirms that she cannot perform her gender and live with her family at the same time (see Figure 2). In the final scene, we see Alike boarding on a bus with a suitcase (Figure 15). This scene is juxtaposed with another scene of Alike reading a poem she wrote: “My spirit takes journey / My spirit takes flight / Could not have risen otherwise” are the lines the character reads during this shot (Pariah). Leaving her parental home, Alike’s journey is that of home-seeking in a new life, not particularly so far away from that of her parents in a physical sense, but it definitely represents a change in the protagonist’s life. Since the film finalizes on a positive note, the suitcase is a symbol for freedom and change initiated by her displacement.

Figure 15. Alike leaving her parental home in Pariah

In Weekend home-seeking takes the form of search for homonormativity. After meeting with Glen, the film’s storyline and the focus changes to emphasize Russell’s search for a family, domesticity and marriage. The dark and the lonely characteristics of Russell’s house is transformed into a familial and cosy diegetic environment. In “(Homo)normativity's romance: happiness and indigestion in Andrew Haigh's Weekend”, Stephanie Clare states that

homonormativity has a promise of happiness for Russell, who grew up without any family (788). “Contemporary economics and psychology have turned towards happiness attempting to generate rules to predict where happiness lies,” says Clare, regarding Russell’s search for homonormativity and family (788). For Russell, the happiness lies in marriage, and marriage brings with it a promise of home and stability. Therefore, the film emphasizes a metaphysical journey of home-seeking for Russell, where home is represented by familial life and the security of a lifelong relationship. In the case of Bud from The Long Day Closes, Terence Davies’ autobiographical character seems to be surrounded by the familial bliss that Russell is searching after. A first impression of the film shows the life of a family of workers, who seem to be happy. However, moments of familial bliss is interrupted by Bud’s emerging homosexual desires, and he is terrified of these desires. The character is still a child who hides his sexuality from everyone, there is no definitive home-seeking journey for Bud yet. However, his journey is of homelessness: he does not belong to his new school and although he seems happy with his family, sudden flashes of his desires keep him on a constant check. To make up for this feeling of homelessness, Bud seeks temporary shelter in film theatres. In Bud’s case, the journey is neither of homelessness nor home-seeking, but the moment in character’s life is pregnant with the possibility of both. Scenes of Bud being ashamed of his sexuality, when coupled with the scenes where he seeks temporary shelter in film theatres, convey the idea that Bud will eventually take on a journey of identity-crossing. Xavier Dolan’s J’ai tué ma mère also illustrates a journey of homelessness, but this one is not caused by an internal conflict as is the case with Bud. The protagonist Hubert seems to be content with his identity. The storyline follows moments of intense fights between Hubert and his mother Chantale, and considered together with the dark lighting and the crowded, claustrophobic mise-en-scène of his parental house, it can be said that the parental home is not welcoming for Hubert. When analysed together with Hubert taking temporary shelter at his teacher’s house, his boyfriend’s house and ultimately at his childhood cabin house highlights the fact that Hubert is on a journey of homelessness and home-seeking at the same time. One diegetic detail in the film is its focus on Hubert taking various different vehicles, without never truly arriving anywhere. The character is shown in a bus (Figure 16), in his teacher’s car, in his mother’s car, in his boyfriend’s car and even on foot on a highway. Closed spaces of vehicles generally have a special relationship with the open places of nature

and nation, where vehicles stand for journeying and identity crossing (Naficy 257). In Hubert’s case, the vehicle does not help Hubert complete his journey of identity crossing. The complicated relationship Hubert has with his mother returns the focus on the relationship and his parental home. For this reason, Hubert never really arrives at a place with his journeys. As the final shot of the film establishes (see Figure 11), his home is defined by the loving relationship with his mother. Eventually, the journey Hubert goes through turns out to be a homecoming journey, illustrating the intertwined structure of placement and displacement (Naficy 229).

Figure 16. Hubert and his mother at his parental home / Hubert leaving his parental home temporarily in J’ai tué ma mère

Accented films have a troublesome relationship with journeying. Whether it is a homecoming journey or a journey of homelessness, the exilic character’s search and journey is often interrupted by not being able to discover or salvage oneself (Naficy 237). Queer subjects are also stuck between two places that they might not feel like they completely belong to. General tendency in queer literature is to formulate an opposition of urban and rural, which create a unidirectional journey of escape in order for the sexuality to be realized. However, the risk in such an assumed binary opposition silences other ways of relocation that queer subjects embark on for performing their identities (Murray 110). The different paths of relocation analysed in this section shows that movement from parental home and performing one’s queer identity takes on multiple forms of intertwining journeys. Therefore, as is the case with chronotopes, queer films’ usage of journey as a metaphor for identity crossings take several different forms. The final section of this chapter will look at how queer films utilize epistolary devices and accented speech that are used heavily in accented films.

2.5. Epistolarity

Epistolarity can be defined as the usage of letter’s properties for creating meaning in literature (Altman 4). According to Naficy, exile and epistolarity coexist in accented films because both are representative of displacement, distance and the need to bridge these gaps that the accented filmmaker experiences (101). As discussed in previous sections, although it takes different forms, displacement also constitutes an important part of the queer subject’s identity and therefore it is understandable that queer films also use epistolary devices to address these gaps. A common form of epistolary media in accented filmmaking is letters, written and read in the filmic narrative. Alike in Pariah is an aspiring writer, which is a medium where she feels like she can truly express herself. Except for the few uses of telephone as an epistolary tool, the poem that concludes the film – written by Dee Rees and read by Alike – is a chief epistolary tool that Alike uses to express her distance and displacement. “Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise / For even breaking is opening / And I am broken / I am open,” reads Alike, which is juxtaposed with a sequence shot of her boarding a bus to go to a summer university program (Pariah). The use of epistolary media here is for conversation between Alike and her teacher, but it is also a communication of Alike’s true feelings with the audience. Until that point, Alike does not show how she truly feels or what she thinks, poem serves as the bridge facilitating the conversation between Alike and the audience. Another interesting thing to note in the film’s non-diegetic environment are opening and closing credits that seem like they are written on the pages of a notebook (Figure 17). In this sense, Pariah engage with the traditional epistolary form to cross the boundaries of diegetic and non-diegetic addressees.

Figure 17. Opening and closing credits in Pariah

In film narratives, direct discourse is when a character’s thoughts are delivered quotations; compared to the direct discourse, indirect discourse takes place when the character’s thoughts are delivered without quotation, which happens via several camera effects to deliver the character’s mental processes (Naficy 102). Thirdly, free indirect discourse is used to interject the thought processes of a diegetic character into an otherwise indirect discourse (Naficy 103). Since accented films are defined by various interactions between diegetic and non- diegetic addressees and addressers, they make use of different styles for the expression of this multifocality (Naficy 103). To give an example, in Zenne Dancer, when Ahmet explains Daniel why he cannot disclose his homosexuality with his parents, the indirect discourse of the film is interjected with a flashback into Ahmet’s childhood. Apart from that, the film begins and ends with a narration by Daniel, another diegetic character. Like accented films, the interchanging use of indirect and free indirect discourses express the ambiguity of subjective positions and identities in this film.

Figure 18. Ahmet talking about his mother in Zenne Dancer

One of the features of epistolary devices is being communitarian: taking several different forms such as electronic mails, telephones, video recordings, etc., these devices link people across varying degrees of spatial, temporal and cultural distances (Naficy 105). In this way, epistolary devices bring people together with scopophilia and epistophilia; while scopophilia represents a desire for a homeland that is usually given a female gender, and epistophilia stands for a desire to explain the background of a rupture from the homeland (105). Applied to queer films, scopophilia might be represented by a desire to be accepted to the motherly parental home, while epistophilia is the desire to explain the specifics of such a rupture from parental home. In J’ai tué ma mère, the diegetic character Hubert uses video diaries, all of

which is focused on his mother (Figure 19). The video diaries sets themselves apart from the rest of the film with its black and white photography and intimacy of the mise-en-scene. These videos these shots seem like a diary that is incidentally addressed to the audience. The content of these videos represents the character’s scopophilia in his search for a loving mother-son relationship, and his accounts of Hubert and Chantale’s dysfunctional relationship has the epistophilic quality of explaining the rupture from home. Since the scopophilic and epistophilic qualities of accented films coexist, accented epistolary films are fictional and documentary at the same time, which is the case for J’ai tué ma mère as well (Naficy 105).

Figure 19. Hubert shooting his video diary in J’ai tué ma mère

With the advent of technology, letter writing as a form of communication almost completely left its place to electronic forms of communication. For this reason accented films are also focused on these epistolary devices as narrative agents (Naficy 132). The psychological characteristic of the telephonic epistle is the simultaneous existence of both distance and proximity (132). For example, in Zenne Dancer, Ahmet talks with his parents on the phone frequently and he also comes out to his father on the phone, talking Kurdish. In fact, this is the only time that we hear Ahmet talk his native language, which further stresses the displacement and the distance between him and his parents. His death is brought about when he fails to pick up the phone when his sister calls to warn Ahmet that their father is going to

kill him. During these scenes, the importance of the telephone as the epistolary device increases. A shot of Ahmet’s sister trying to call Ahmet to warn about his father is juxtaposed with a shot of Ahmet saying goodbye to Can before leaving for Germany. These two different scenes of Ahmet talking on the phone with his father and Ahmet’s sister not being able to reach him illustrates how the telephonic epistle embodies the “near but far” feature of this communication at the same (Naficy 132).

Figure 20. Ahmet coming out to his father in Zenne Dancer

In Weekend, the epistolary device is a sound recorder used by Glen. After their first night, Glen tells Russell that he lets men that he sleeps with describe their night together and explains that it is for an art project. The second time we see the sound recorder is when it is given as a departing gift from Glen to Russell before he moves to Portland (Figure 21). Russell plays the record, and we hear Russell’s voice on the sound recorder, awkwardly saying that he does not know where to begin, and then Glen says “Just start from the beginning” (Weekend). With this final scene, the films draws a circle of the narrative where Russell gains access to by using the sound recorder. For many exiles, according to Naficy, identity is not based on belonging with a physical space anymore, but instead based on a “transnational web of group affiliation by means of the epistolary media” (Naficy 132). By

playing the sound recording, Russell is reliving the romance that he had with Glen, who is far away from him.

Figure 21. Russell with Glen’s sound recorder in Weekend

The Long Day Closes is marked by little or no epistolary devices; we do not see the protagonist Bud using any of the epistolary devices. However, this lack of epistolary devices serve a purpose for Bud’s alienation. The film portrays Bud as a character who has homosexual desires but he is not at a stage to admit them to himself yet. Apart from moments of extreme religious guilt, he has a warm and happy relationship with his family and surroundings. At a first glance, one can even say that the film is about the life of a happy worker family. In this filmic context, since Bud is not at the stage of realizing his sexuality and distancing himself, the lack of epistolary media conveys the idea that there is not a displacement taking place yet. Use of epistolary media in accented cinema serves to understand that accented films are politically engaged counterhegemonic films (Naficy 150). By blurring the boundaries between different types of diegetic and non-diegetic addressees, these films are contestatory of mainstream filmic narratives and the responses these films usually prime in audiences (150-51). Similarly, queer films engage with epistolary media in order to highlight the displacement that is taking place for the queer subject. By using the epistolary media in

different forms of displacement, these films critically analyse the notion that queer displacement is not unidirectional, yet this does not take away from the similar experiences of deterritorialization that the queer subject goes through. The above sections in this chapter have shown that queer films operate in a fashion similar to accented cinema. Even if the displacement takes place within the borders of the same city, it was shown that queer filmmakers engage with different mechanisms of homeland and host land associations that diasporic, exilic and postcolonial ethnic identity filmmakers have. This chapter have demonstrated that the multifaceted identity that queer filmmakers have as part of their experience of displacement enables them use different forms of filmic style such as border writing and identity crossings. Moreover, similar to accented filmmakers, their multiple identities also help queer filmmakers use different forms of film production and funding, which eventually influences their authorial styles. Different from accented films, queer films engage with displacement in a multifaceted way. Rather than illustrating the transnational displacement that some queer films reflect on, the films analysed in this chapter show the critical reflection on how the feeling of displacement have similar accented structures of feeling associated with it. Similarly, exilic, diasporic and postcolonial ethnic identities can be seen as forms of gender identity as performance that Butler describes, where the repetition of acts associated with these identities enable the accented filmmaker with an attempt to capture “home” (Naficy 285). By revisiting queer films as accented cinema, we can identify the experience of displacement and deterritorialization that the queer filmmaker goes through and how these two seemingly distinct traditions of filmmaking are linked in their engagement with the politics of identity in film.

CONCLUSION

Considering that the current multinational, multicultural world comes with different identity politics that can complicate structures of belonging even in the smallest societies – especially when it comes to being queer – this thesis has looked at how queer films addressing such diversities can be considered from a more exhaustive framework of film analysis. In this context, the main aim of the thesis is to find out if the personal and cultural experiences of the queer filmmaker as a displaced subject has an effect on their film language and how these traces can be traced in the whole film production process. In order to go about answering this question, the first chapter looked at how academic thinking produced so far on queer film studies and queer theory can help us understand some these independent and authorial queer films. By looking at Richard Dyer’s work and mainstream and radical queer cultures, it was concluded that films mentioned in this paper are part of the radical queer culture in their attempt to base each queer filmic context on individual experience. Following Judith Butler’s criticism of phenomenology in feminist studies and argument for theatrically-based gender acts, it was shown that these films reflection on queer experiences cannot be explored solely in relation to individual experience. Adapting Judith Butler in the context of film studies illustrated that gender acts are part of social and cultural contexts, but they are also acted, repeated and individualized to some degree. The final argument of the first section applied Halberstam’s analysis of the discourse on how urban areas are posed as queer-friendly, while rural areas are seen as hostile to the queer. It was argued that, while this binary opposition is true to some degree, it also places queer subjects in a forced exile, an experience which shapes their identities. In relation to the exile queer subject goes through, the second chapter looked at how the experience of displacement manifests itself in different stages of film production and influences the authorial style of the filmmaker. It was shown that, no matter what form this displacement takes, queer filmmakers still have some characteristics of exilic, diasporic and postcolonial ethnic identity filmmakers in their filmic expressions of the idea of a homeland and the estrangement they go through in exile. The chapter further argued that queer filmmakers have multifaceted identities as queer subjects, which is illustrated in the characters that travel metaphoric borders. It was illustrated that these filmmakers – similar to accented filmmakers – use their multifaceted identities in order to make use of alternative and mainstream film production methods. Taking an active role in their films starting from

inception to distribution, these queer filmmakers develop an authorial style that is a result of their interstitiality. It was also shown that the queer films analysed in this paper engage with the politics of displacement different from accented filmmakers. Specific references to the homeland and the host land, the theme of actual and metaphoric journeying, identity crossing, and the use of epistolary media in order to highlight the rupture from the homeland are all explored in the context of an exile taking place within a country or a city. As the analysis above shows, queer cinema can be reimagined as accented cinema in order to address an alternative queer filmmaking that is focused on culture and context specificity of each queer experience. This analysis helps position these queer films as part of the author style that the accented cinema also subscribes to. However, like accented cinema, analysing queer authorial voice in terms of the experience of displacement also nuances this observation. Moreover, the increased complexity of narratives in these new examples of queer filmmaking render useless monolithic categorizations such as World Cinema or the National Cinema. Every culture has their own related issues around identity politics and their own cinematic devices for reflecting on these, which run the risk of being underrated under such broad categories. By pointing out the ways in which the selected films fit in with the spectrum of accented cinema, my purpose is not to criticize or downplay the theory proposed by Naficy. Queer filmmaking and accented filmmaking are studies extensive and exciting in their own right and placing one of them into the framework of the other would not be paying the framework its due. In the current cosmopolitan world, the cultural differences between each member of a society are wide and diverse enough to leave their imprints on the language used by artists. Being queer, or diverging from norms in any way, leaves its mark on a filmmaker’s language whether the person in question lives in the same country or not. By analysing queer films using the framework of accented cinema, this paper pointed out the similarities between each vein of filmmaking, which revolves around identity politics. Analysing queer films made by queer filmmakers from the perspective of accented filmmaking is beneficial to analysing queer filmmaking, as it might benefit from the differences in individual queer lives and cultures pointed out by accented filmmaking. The end result of such a comparison is to hopefully illustrate that the issue of categorization is present in even queer filmmaking, a tradition of filmmaking which is focused on diversity. This paper hopefully contributes to film studies in approaching categorizations critically and

allowing film studies to be more flexible in addressing issues that require an adaptable approach to shifts in critical thinking. Similar to the accented style, queer style is not a fully realized and established film genre. It is constantly evolving as the thinking around the entire queer studies evolve, and as the name itself aptly suggests, it denies adapting hegemonic categorizations. However, both accented cinema and queer cinema reimagined as accented cinema help us understand the similarities that these displaced filmmakers have, regardless of gender, race or nationality. Therefore, the evolving nature of both studies require future research to keep up-to-date in approaching the relationship between identity politics and film.

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