Background
Yilmaz Guney was born on 1 April 1937 in Adana, Turkey.
Actor director novelist screenwriter
Yilmaz Guney was born on 1 April 1937 in Adana, Turkey.
The child of poor Kurds, he managed to get to university, and he began writing. That soon got him into trouble with the Turkish authorities (this in the late 1950s), and he may have sought some shelter in working as an actor.
He was good-looking, and appealing enough to win a place in Turkish cinema as an heroic figure. But he could hardly help himself from getting involved in political stories, which led to his arrest. While in prison in the early sixties he wrote a novel. They Died With Their Heads Bowed.
As time passed, he became more involved in writing and producing his films, but as the subject matter became more urgent and provocative, he was jailed again in the early seventies. Then in 1975 he was arrested again on false murder charges and given a very long sentence. Somehow he continued to function as the long-distance director of projects while still in jail: The Herd and The Enemy. Those prepared the way for Yol, written by Guney in jail and actually realized by Serif Gören according to Guney’s instructions: as such, it is one of the most moving film protests against tyranny. He escaped from prison in 1981 and was able to finish the editing of Yol. He made one other film, The Wall, before his death.
For the general Western audience Turkey on film is Alan Parkers Midnight Express. No one doubts the worth of that film, or its power. But it says something bleak about our regard for Moslem countries that Giinev’s story, and his films, are relatively unknown. Had he been European, his story would have been told by now—he would be Al Pacino or Gérard Depardieu. He would be a legend.
The Hungry Wolves
1969The Fugitives
1971The Poor One
1975The Seven Bastards
1970When directors in and out of Hollywood despair of the hard time they are having, they should be reminded of the story of Yilrnaz Giiney. That process would bring several vital questions to life—not least, what are the movies for? Are they a career, an entertainment, a business, or may they even be the most effective way of enlightening a population and thus ensuring the victimization, and worse, of the filmmaker? There are young people in the comfort of southern California who tell you they would die if they could not make “their” movies. Yilrnaz Giiney made his, under the most impossible conditions. And he died, of cancer, in a foreign country, deprived of his own citizenship, at the age of forty-seven.