Book launch
Women's New Cinema in Contemporary Turkey: As If We Were Free, As If a Beautiful Life Were Possible focuses on contemporary women filmmakers in Turkey who realise the "impossible" and the "necessary" by attempting a feminist film culture under the current restrictive political regime. The "feminist" in this feminist film culture is Sara Ahmed's kind, which understands feminism as a "sensible reaction to the injustices of the world." In this sense, the book discusses that contemporary women's filmmaking in Turkey is not about creating a counter-discourse to the male gaze or an oppositional cinema against the patriarchal one, but it is a sensible reaction to the injustices of the country. While theorising emerging women's cinema in Turkey and identifying new perspectives on film methodology, narrative, characterisation, and documentary style, the book also explores women's collaboration, resistance and ethics in relation to Turkey's identity.
Film (Melbourne) premiere
Dream Workers (1h 26') is an intimate and daring journey into women's creativity, dreams, and life's unexpected confrontations, told through the intertwined stories of eight women filmmakers and a village women's theatre group from Turkey.
Pinar Fontini - Director, Author
Dr Pinar Fontini is a film director/producer and researcher who lectures in the Media program at RMIT University.
She works at the intersection of Middle Eastern Cinema and Feminist Film Studies. Her research explores women's filmmaking, especially in the Middle East, as a form of communication, solidarity, and a space of 'radical possibility'. Her scholarly work has been published in leading journals including Camera Obscura, Feminist Media Studies, Studies in Documentary Film and Senses of Cinema. Her first monograph, Women's New Cinema in Contemporary Turkey: As if We Were Free, As If A Beautiful Life Were Possible, was published by Edinburgh University Press (2025), and its Turkish translation will be published by Agora Books. She is the recipient of the Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in the PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne (2023).
Her feature-length documentary films have received numerous accolades worldwide. Dream Workers screened at the prestigious International Adana Golden Boll FF, Documentarist which Human Rights FF and is hosted on the international art-house streaming service MUBI. And What's the Name of the Film? screened at the International Antalya Golden Orange FF, MUBI, Taste of Anatolia FF and the Doing Women's Film and Television History Conference VI, UK. It is the recipient of the Grand Award at the International Antalya Golden Orange Film Forum 2021 and shortlisted for the IDFA Forum 2021.
