Understanding of realism in documentary cinema and its samples in Turkey

ABSTRACT Since its first days cinema has bewildered audience with the pictures of the living world. Its witness is accepted as the beginning of a growing cinema genre in the following years. This genre is nothing else than the documentary cinema. Documentary cinema can be identified as a 'creative approach to reality'. In the meantime, this approach is its most important problematic. Realism is not a course in documentary cinema. It is a reason of being in documentary film genre. In none of the cinema genre bond to realism is a system as it is in the documentary genre. We can see realist films in the fiction cinema; however, this is just a specific case of using documentary features within complex cinema structure. Realist understanding is the most important difference between documentary and fiction cinema. Realist approach is one of the important features of documentary cinema. This approach leads documentary to set aside some aesthetic elements of the fiction cinema, such as script, mise-en-scene, casting, decor, costume, and lighting. Cinema had begun with a non-fiction tradition in Turkey too. In the following years, people who interested in this new art form, effected development of the cinema. Turkish Cinema has some structural problems since its beginning years. It is no exception for documentary cinema. Realism has no place as a course in Turkish Cinema in any term. We can only mention some realist films. Yet documentary cinema, which is trying to stand still with individual efforts, aims to give audience a slice of the living world. One of the important problems facing documentary, which is meeting with more audience, has been tried to be solved by festivals' and television stations' supports. Thus, we can mention a 'relative' increase in numbers and quality of documentary productions. Increasing works like this, gives hope for Turkish documentary cinema. VI