Istanbul as the City of Irrelevant in Turkish Cinema of the 2000s

In this work, which develops with reference to how the city is visualized/showed in 2000’s cinema, conceptual and historical categorization is applied in examining cinema and city subject. When determining the movies to be analyzed, “art” movies in 2000’s are preferred, “popular” movies are excluded. Within this context, movies in the ‘Urbanization of Capital’ period are examined under the subject of irrelevant space, which consist the empirical part of this study are included, namely as C Blok (Zeki Demirkubuz, 1994), Tabutta R？va？ata (Dervi？ Zaim, 1996), Güne？e Yolculuk (Ye？im Ustao？lu, 1999), Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002), Hayat Var (Reha Erdem, 2006), Mele？in Dü？ü？ü (Semih Kaplano？lu, 2007), and ？o？unluk (Seren Yüce, 2010). For the analysis of the movies, “historical criticism” is adopted as a critical approach and “frame analysis method” is used in the cinematographic sense in this study. In the movies, Istanbul poses as a threatening city, since it is not quite possible to live and settle down in this irrelevant space. The characters of the movies in 2000’s cinema, who could not be able to have a sense of belonging with the space and the city, live in Istanbul with unrest. The characters could not be able to establish a sense of belonging with their bodies, as well. The body, as a space of sense of belonging, turns into an irrelevant space with such acts as imprisonment, harassment and torture in the movies