This practice-led research investigates the problematic representations of women from ethnic minorities in the context of Turkey. It questions the ways in which Turkish cinema conceals the ‘other’ ethnic and cultural differences and represents female identity. It seeks to address this problem through newly created artworks: a series of animation and video works aiming to evoke traces of ‘other’ female ethnicities in Turkish society. The case study, Istiklal Avenue,is an important location that was formerly inhabited by ethnic minorities and was the birthplace of Turkish cinema (Yeşilçam) in 1914. This location forms a platform for the research to find new forms of representation through spatial mappings in the specially created artworks. The thesis is situated in relation to the existing literature on historical representations, from the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul to the period that marks the Istanbul Pogrom (1955), and to contemporary representations of women, especially Asuman Suner and Gönül Dönmez-Colin’s analyses of non-Muslim women in New Turkish Cinema. The methodological approach of the thesis is shaped by the investigation of Turkish cinema and site-specific research at Istiklal Avenue. Svetlana Boym’s (2001) idea that cultural references are usually hidden within the details of ‘reflective nostalgia’films is an important concept which is referred to throughout the thesis. The term ‘shock effect’, which Suner (2010) employs for Turkish reflective nostalgia films, is used in the thesis to describe moments of rupture in the collective memory and consciousness of Turkish society regarding the histories of the ethnic and religious minorities of Turkey. Visual and aural dissonances are created in the artworks to evoke traces of these histories. The first artwork uses the voice-over of the female protagonist Madame Lena in the film Whistle If You Come Back (1993)to create an audio-visual and spatial map for these repressed identities, but the female voice in the final artwork generates a more intensified evocative experience, described by adopting Catherine Clément’s term ‘rapture’ (1994). The research also looks at the difference between ethnic identities through the spoken Turkish of ethnic minorities of an older generation, to explore the viewing of the artworks in different cultural contexts. As well as theoretical and historical research into the female voice,architectural and other visual details are used as research material to make artworks. On-site investigations reveal how various film techniques and montages inform cognitive and psychogeographic mapping, which is put into practice to achieve a spatial understanding of Istiklal Avenue. This investigation leads to the discovery of Botter House, a culturally and historically significant building,which enables the thesis to examine female presence in public space by investigating the flâneuse of the nineteenth-century Istiklal Avenue. Through the artworks, this study proposes that spatial representations, reconstructed from visual and vocal details,can contribute to the representation of repressed ethnic identities, and can question the politics of the representation of ethnic minority women in Turkey.

This thesis looks at independent film and video cultures in Britain from the mid 1970s to late 1980s. It examines a period of time in which diverse radical film- and video-makers in Britain contributed towards struggles against capitalism, patriarchy, racism, colonialism and homophobia. New social models of film and video production and exhibition were developed, such as the film collective, and new alliances were built to campaign for changes to social policy and legislature. The study examines this moment in order to clarify the capacity for radical discourse to bring groups together and impact on dominant cultural forms such as television. The thesis explores the interrelation between public debate, institutions and individuals. It uses public sphere theories to examine alternative reading publics, and media such as film, video and television. It argues that independent film and video in Britain at this time, including activist documentary, currents of counter-cinema and avant-garde film, was largely concerned with creating and circulating counterpublic discourses. These counterpublic discourses consolidated and expanded oppositional groups, and set out to change aspects of society as a whole. The thesis gives an account of the diversity of the influences on independent film and video, from socialist and liberation movements, to popular radical histories and psychoanalytic and Marxist film theory. Attention is given to the Independent Filmmakers’ Association as an agent of change between filmmakers and state, notably in terms of national film and broadcasting policy. There is a case study of Marc Karlin’s television film For Memory (1986), which looks at the fate of socialist memory under televisual regimes; and a case study of Stuart Marshall’s Bright Eyes (1984), which looks at issues of sexuality, identity and counter-history during the AIDS crisis. The thesis argues that during this period, independent film- and videomakers helped to transform television into a vital site of counterpublic discourse.