Without a doubt, this decade’s most discussed and developed documentary productions in Turkey come from Kurdistan, a name that provokes nationalist panic in Turkey, yet delineates distinct cultural, linguistic, and political boundaries nonetheless. Documentary film productions by Kurdish filmmakers from Turkey determine the major tendencies of this emergent genre, with such productions offering a unique opportunity for a nuanced understanding of national cinema. The larger body of films, fiction and non-fiction termed as Kurdish cinema complicates the category of national cinema, a concept discussed heatedly within the field of cinema studies. Documentary film is proving to be a particularly complex tool for the Kurdish social and political existence, as Kurds lack the official tools of history-writing and cultural preservation that are categorically associated with the capacities of a state. By delving into Kurdish documentary films as products of complex societal, political, and historical processes, the articles in the volume highlight the intersections of media production, film text, and audience reception, and expand on vibrant debates in the field of film and media studies through situated case studies. Bringing these chapters together, this book will stimulate academic discussion around this emergent and lively genre of documentary film production, and encourage further research and publication.

Displacement does not only have an effect on groups' and individuals' ways of relating to their identity and their past but the knowledge and experience of it also has an impact on its representation. Looking at films that represent the experience of displacement in relation to Turkey's minorities, Aesthetics of Displacement argues that there is a particular aesthetic continuity among the otherwise unrelated films. Ozlem Koksal focuses on films that bring taboo issues concerning the repression of minorities into visibility, arguing that the changing political and social conditions determine not only the types of stories told but also the ways in which these stories are told. Focusing on aesthetic and narrative continuities, the films discussed include Ararat, Waiting for the Clouds and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia among others. Each film is examined in light of major historical event(s) and their context (political and social) as well as the impact these events had on the construction of both minority and Turkish identity.

Films often act as a prism that refracts the issues facing a nation, and Turkish cinema in particular serves to encapsulate the cultural and social turmoil of modern-day Turkey. Acclaimed film scholar Gönül Dönmez-Colin examines here the way that national cinema reveals the Turkish quest for a modern identity. Marked by continually shifting ethnic demographics, politics, and geographic borders, Turkish society struggles to reconcile modern attitudes with traditional morals and centuries-old customs. Dönmez-Colin examines how contemporary Turkish filmmakers address this struggle in their cinematic works, positing that their films revolve around ideas of migration and exile, and give voice to previously subsumed “denied identities” such as that of the Kurds. Turkish Cinema also crucially examines how these films confront taboo subjects such as homosexuality, incest, and honor killings, issues that have only become viable subjects of discussion in the new generation of Turkish citizens. A deftly written and thought-provoking study, Turkish Cinema will be invaluable for scholars of Middle East studies and cinephiles alike.

Victor Nunez writes and directs this noirish, Florida-set drama. Timothy Olyphant stars as Sonny Mann, an ex-con who is released early from a three-year prison sentence and returns to his home town in the hope of turning over a new leaf and putting the past firmly behind him. There he makes contact with his former best friend Dave (Josh Brolin), who is now a police officer married to Sonny's old flame Ann (Sarah Wynter). However, despite his resolution to lead a quiet life, Sonny soon finds himself in trouble once again as both his criminal past and his unresolved feelings for Ann catch up with him.

This examination of France's national cinema takes its primary artefact, the feature film and discusses both popular cinema and the `avant garde' cinema that contests it. Susan Hayward argues that writing on French national cinema has tended to focus on either `great' film-makers or on specific movements, addressing moments of exception rather than the global picture. Her work offers a thorough and much-needed historical textualisation of those moments and relocates them them in their wider political and cultural context. Beginning with an `ecohistory' of the French film industry, she then traces the various movements in French cinema and the directors associated with them, including the avant-garde, Poetic-Realist, New Wave and today's postmodern cinema. Her analysis includes, amongst other considerations, the social and political concerns these cinemas reflect.

The Cambridge History of the Kurds is an authoritative and comprehensive volume exploring the social, political and economic features, forces and evolution amongst the Kurds, and in the region known as Kurdistan, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. Written in a clear and accessible style by leading scholars in the field, the chapters survey key issues and themes vital to any understanding of the Kurds and Kurdistan including Kurdish language; Kurdish art, culture and literature; Kurdistan in the age of empires; political, social and religious movements in Kurdistan; and domestic political developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Other chapters on gender, diaspora, political economy, tribes, cinema and folklore offer fresh perspectives on the Kurds and Kurdistan as well as neatly meeting an exigent need in Middle Eastern studies. Situating contemporary developments taking place in Kurdish-majority regions within broader histories of the region, it forms a definitive survey of the history of the Kurds and Kurdistan.