Early Cinema in the Ottoman Empire

UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Performing modernity: Atatürk on film (1919-1938) Dinç, E. Publication date 2016 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Dinç, E. (2016). Performing modernity: Atatürk on film (1919-1938). General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:24 Sep 2021 Chapter 1 Early Cinema in the Ottoman Empire The aim of this chapter is to arrive at an understanding of the specific meanings of cinema in the Ottoman context in which Atatürk grew up, by comparing the early history of cinema in Europe and the US with the history of cinema in the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By placing Atatürk in his historical context, more specifically his social and cultural milieu, the chapter intends to reveal the general framework within which his ideas on cinema emerged. Unlike the mainstream view, which regards Atatürk as a man whose ideas anticipated cinema’s future success, this chapter offers an alternative approach focusing on the social, cultural and political forces that shaped Atatürk’s vision of cinema. The Beginnings of Cinema in Europe and the United States In the nineteenth century, several attempts were made to capture and display certain phenomena or actions in motion pictures in Europe and the United States. The inventors of these cinematic technologies included scientists, photographers, showmen and others.1 In the US, the English-born Eadweard Muybridge, who was already a famous photographer, managed to project sequences of photos of a galloping horse onto a screen in motion by 1880.2 Following Muybridge and the work of several others, the French physiologist Étienne Marey was able to record multiple images of flying birds.3 According to Mary Ann Doane, the inventors of these technologies were dealing with one of the most important questions of modernity in the nineteenth century: how to 1 Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 3. 2 Ibid., 3; Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 163. 3 Barnouw, Documentary, 4; Briggs and Burke, A Social History of the Media, 164. 19 make time visible, representable and storable,4 so that the human struggle against its inexorable passage could be won. Alongside other technological inventions such as the railway, the steamship and telegraphy, cinema was seen as a medium that could help people achieve a victory over time and space. Thus, the intense nineteenth-century US and European interest in institutions such as archives, museums and zoos, and technologies such as photography and cinema may be understood as resulting from a desire for a kind of “protection against time” 5 in a rapidly changing environment. By capturing motion instantaneously and then enabling this past experience to become a present experience in the future, visual archival technologies such as photography and cinema could emancipate human life from the boundaries of time.6 As the technical experiments of these and other inventors produced successful results and were widely acclaimed, professional inventors from the US and Europe realized the commercial potential of motion pictures, and became interested in developing the experiments further.7 In 1894, Edison managed to use his invention of the Kinetoscope to project film in a so-called “peep-show.” Edison’s kinetoscope, however, was technically limited and allowed only one person at a time to watch a moving film with an eyepiece.8 One year later, on 1 November 1895, Max and Emile Skladanowsky were able to screen nine films with their invention of the Bioskop at the Wintergarten, a high-class variety theatre in Berlin, the heart of the German Empire.9 In December 1895, one month after the Skladanowsky’s screenings, Louis Lumière of the Lumière brothers introduced their invention of the Cinématographe by screening films for an audience of thirty-five people at the Grand Café in Paris. In 1896, they presented their films to a larger audience at the Empire Music Hall in London.10 4 Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 190. 5 Ibid., 82. 6 Ibid., 82-83. 7 Barnouw, Documentary, 4-5; Briggs and Burke, A Social History of the Media, 164. 8 Barnouw, Documentary, 5; Briggs and Burke, A Social History of the Media, 164. 9 Ibid., 164. 10 Ibid. 20 The pioneers of cinema provided motion pictures for cafés, theatres, arcades and traveling shows. In the initial years of cinema, it was not difficult to please an audience because they were easily intrigued by images moving on the screen.11 The Lumière’s catalogue, for instance, consisted of actuality films, 12 in which everyday activities, events and places were filmed without being structured into a narrative or coherent whole. The subjects of the films made in the initial years of cinema, such as La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon, 1895), Repas de Bébé (Baby's Meal, 1985) and L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, 1895), indicate that initially there was indeed a fascination with the recording and representation of movement in time.13 During this period, therefore, the cinema emerged from and contributed to the archival inclination of the nineteenth century.14 However, unlike the other archival technologies, cinema could not only capture and store the experience of the present, but, through its subsequent screening, could also turn this experience of the past into the experience of the present for its spectators.15 The Beginnings of Cinema in the Ottoman Empire As technological inventions were following each other at a dizzying speed in Europe and the United States, the news of the “moving pictures” quickly reached the Ottoman Empire. In particular, the publicity activities of the Lumière brothers for the cinematograph attracted the interest of non-Muslims working as photographers.16 Istanbul’s famous photographers Thedore Vafiadis (of Greek 11 Frank Kessler and Eva Warth, “Early Cinema and its Audiences,” in The German Cinema Book, ed. Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter and Deniz Göktürk (London: BFI, 2002). 12 Actuality films (Actualités) were short films showing real-life activities, topical events or news. See Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell, A Dictionary of Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4-5. 13 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 62-63. 14 Ibid., 23. 15 Ibid. 16 Ali Özuyar, Babıâli'de Sinema (İstanbul: İzdüşüm Yayınları, 2004), 13. The person Özuyar refers to as Diradour is most probably Istanbul’s famous Armenian photographer Onnik Diraduryan. 21 origin) and O. Diradour (of Armenian origin) were already in correspondence with the Lumière brothers about their cinematograph in 1895-96.17 Diradour published articles in different Ottoman journals to introduce the new invention, but he did not receive the attention he expected from either the Ottoman government or the public.18 The crucial role of non-Muslims in adopting the modern Western technologies of photography and cinema was due partly to the way certain religious and ethnic backgrounds were associated with certain crafts, and partly due to who had access to and an interest in new technologies coming from abroad. The Greek and Armenian elites of the capital were familiar with Western culture thanks to their cultural and commercial relations with Europe. Some of the wealthy families sent their sons to Europe to be educated there. 19 As a result, they were culturally more ready to adopt new visual technologies from the West such as photography and cinema. In 1896, the Lumière brothers sent their representatives to introduce the cinematograph in several countries, including the Ottoman Empire. 20 Although we have some information about the Lumières’ operators’ filming activities in the Ottoman Empire, we do not know whether they were allowed to screen their films to an audience.21 What we do know is that the Lumières’ operators faced some difficulties when they crossed the Ottoman border with their new machine.22 According to Özön and Özuyar, this was partly because the device was new to the Ottoman bureaucrats and partly due to Sultan Abdülhamid II’s 17 According to Özuyar, they already corresponded with the Lumière brothers before the public screening at the Grand Café in December 1895. Diradour sent them a letter on 30 September and Vafiadis on 3 October 1895. See Özuyar, Babıâli'de Sinema, 13-14. 18 Ibid. 19 Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 62. 20 Barnouw, Documentary, 11. According to Barnouw, of the Lumières’ operators, it was Alexandre Promio who worked in Turkey. Özön also states that it was Promio who filmed Turkey.

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