Perception of human and society in the works of Zeki̇ Demi̇rkubuz

NAME and SURNAME: CAHİT ŞAHİN TITLE: PERCEPTION OF HUMAN AND SOCIETY IN THE WORKS OF ZEKİ DEMİRKUBUZ ABSTRACT Like the New Wave which radically changed the mainstream French cinema, and world cinema afterwards, Zeki Demirkubuz, as the outstanding director of the 90s, also forced the stereotyped and spineless Turkish cinema to change, thereby paved the way for art cinema. Discussed in my thesis is Zeki Demirkubuz who is the first director to train on his camera to shot the changing society afre the military coup of 1980. In my study, I tried to critically analyze the works of Zeki Demirkubuz who is an outstanding figure of New Turkish Cinema after Yeşilçam. The literature survey showed that many thesis written on the works of Demirkubuz barely relied on any kind of cinema theory but existentialism only, praising the positive qualities of the works. In this study, with reference to auteur theory, I tried to construe the social and individual motives that came forward first in the Cahiers du Cinéma as the beginning point of the New Wave, thereby modern cinema. As Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out, I tried to avoid over-commenting and mentioning the similarities only and thus impoverish the text. With an auterist holity, I tried to synthesize the interrelations between common meanings, themes and paths, more importantly the similarities, repetitions, differences, oppositions, symmetrical and asymmetrical structures in the works of Zeki Demirkubuz. At the same time, I tried to understand what codes of society and individuals these works show. Keywords: Cahiers du Cinema, Auteur Theory, French New Wave Cinema, New Turkish Cinema, Zeki Demirkubuz.