This thesis explores recent Turkish-German film through a radically postrepresentationalvision of aesthetics and ethics. Post-representationalism as amethodology involves confronting conventional cognitive and hermeneuticapproaches to film, and going beyond representational schemes and nationalparadigms for a closer engagement with the aesthetic. This thesis puts emphasison tropes such as movement, gesture, process and becoming through anengagement with the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as analternative to the theoretical models that dominate the scholarship on migrant anddiasporic cinemas which place emphasis on dualisms and notions such as culturaland national identity. It attempts to broaden the discussions on post-ReunificationTurkish German cinema by exploring a wide range of works including fiction,documentary and artist films dealing with labour migration from Turkey toGermany. The first chapter focuses on Thomas Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy andChristian Petzold’s Jerichow (2009) as ‘Berlin School’ films that convey adistinct aesthetic approach to labour migrants and their second generationoffspring in Germany, which tends to focus on questions of work and thechanging nature of labour under globalisation. The second chapter looks atdocumentary films by Thomas Arslan, Aysun Bademsoy, Harun Farocki andSeyhan Derin to re-evaluate the dominance of historical narratives and reassessthe documentary form as an archival and creative practice through new politicaland ethico-aesthetic paradigms. The third chapter investigates social realist genrecinema through Feo Aladağ’s Die Fremde (2011) and Yüksel Yavuz’s KleineFreiheit (2003) to explore whether new encounters with conventional aestheticsthat zoom in on gestures and movements can call into question the limitation oflinguistic and semiotic terms and categories of analysis. These chapters aim tomove beyond representational and definitive frameworks in favour of a creativecritical engagement with migrant film as a political vocation, which carries withinitself the potential to invent new forms of thought, resistance, movement andpeople.

C’est après deux opus sur l’immigration turque en Allemagne que le réalisateur turc-allemand Fatih Akin décide d’explorer la période la plus sombre de son pays d’origine. Avec le film The Cut (2014), il clôt la trilogie Liebe, Tod und Teufel. Ce mémoire réfléchit sur l’utilisation du genre Western dans la représentation du génocide arménien. Nous ferons tout d’abord un court historique du genre Western et de la représentation génocidaire au cinéma, pour ensuite analyser le film d’après la notion de genre et voir dans quelle mesure l’utilisation d’un genre connu universellement permet à Fatih Akin de ne pas justifier ses choix esthétiques. Au cours de cette analyse, nous nous baserons sur quatre éléments clés afin d’établir un lien avec le genre Western: la figure du héros, les paysages, le mythe de la frontière ainsi que le titre du film lui-même. Le but de ce travail ne sera pas d’être comparatif, mais bien de déterminer dans quelle mesure le film s’inscrit dans le mouvement Postwestern. Enfin, la notion d’identité nous permettra de comprendre de quelle manière le film The Cut s’insère au sein de la trilogie d’Akin. / It is after his second opus on Turkish immigration in Germany that Turkish-German director Fatih Akin decided to explore the darkest period of his country of origin. With the film The Cut, he ends the trilogy Liebe, Tod und Teufel. This master’s thesis reflects on the use of the Western genre in the representation of the Armenian Genocide. We will start with a short history of the Western genre and the representation of genocide in cinema. Then we will analyse the film as per the notion of genre and see under which measure the use of a universally known genre enables Fatih Akin to justify his aesthetic choices. During this analysis, we will use four key elements as the groundwork to establish a link with the Western genre. They are the figure of the hero, the landscapes, the myth of the frontier and the title of the film itself. The intention of this research is not to be comparative, but to situate the film within the movement that is the Post-western. Finally, the notion of identity will allow us to understand how the film The Cut exists within Akin’s trilogy. / Nach seinem zweiten Opus zur türkischen Immigration entschied sich der türkisch-deutsche Regisseur Fatih Akin, die dunkelste Periode seines Heimatlandes zu verfilmen. Mit dem Film The Cut beendet er seine Trilogie Liebe, Tod und Teufel. Diese Magisterarbeit analysiert die Verwendung des Westerngenres in der Darstellung des armenischen Völkermordes in The Cut. Begonnen wird mit einem kurzen Überblick über die Geschichte des Westerngenres, bevor auf die Darstellung des Völkermords im Film eingegangen wird. Im Anschluss wird untersucht, inwiefern die Verwendung des Genres Western Fatih Akin seine filmästhetischen Entscheidungen ermöglicht. Diese Untersuchung basiert auf der Grundlage von vier Schlüsselmotiven: der Heldenfigur, der Landschaft, des Mythos des Grenzlandes sowie des Filmtitels selbst. Die Intention dieser Analyse ist jedoch nicht vergleichender Natur. Es wird vielmehr versucht, den Film in seine Einzelteile zu zerlegen, um ihn in die Post-Western-Bewegung einbetten zu können, ohne dabei das Identitätsstreben der ersten beiden Filme der Trilogie außer Acht zu lassen. In diesem Kontext lässt sich eine Verbindung mit dem Heimatfilm herstellen und es wird ein besseres Verständnis für die Rolle von The Cut innerhalb der Trilogie ermöglicht.

In my dissertation, I discuss three of Akın’s feature films: Im Juli (In July, 2000), Gegen die Wand (Head-On, 2004), and Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven, 2007) in order to investigate Akın’s filmic visions of Europe. Through close textual readings, I analyze three aspects of his films in particular: the spatial conceptions of Europe (city- and landscapes), the sounds of Europe (music and languages) as well as the display of ethnic minorities and the changing urban demography in Germany and Europe. I argue that Akın employs an “aesthetic of heterogeneity” to portray his filmic Europe as a diverse space, in which multiethnic and multilingual music, people, and sceneries are juxtaposed with regions that often have been perceived historically and politically as distinct and complicated. My first chapter discusses Akın’s conceptions and depictions of European Space in In July. By analyzing city- and landscapes, soundscapes, and dynamic spaces in In July, I argue that Akın provides a dynamic, fluctuating, and interconnected European space, including Eastern Europe and Turkey. In my second chapter, I scrutinize language use and dialogue in Head-On to map out the changing demographics in European urban spaces. Ultimately, I argue that Akın moves beyond Hamid Naficy’s theory of “accented cinema” by including accented languages and dialects for all protagonists, including Western Europeans. Through this linguistic polyphony, multilingualism and a diversity of accents are depicted as integral elements of today’s Europe. In my final chapter, I discuss the sound of Europe as depicted in The Edge of Heaven. Looking particularly at music (and music lyrics) in the film, I argue that Akın’s use of dubbed and remixed music (especially by the artist Shantel) underscores Akın’s filmic challenges to (national) European borders. By foregrounding the mixed styles of music, where an “original” becomes hard to decipher, the director shows, on an aural level, that blurring boundaries and multidirectional movement are the predominant components of today’s Europe. / text