Remembering the cinema experiences of 1960s and 1970s in Turkey

In this study which focuses on the cinema-going experiences in 1960s and 1970s of Turkey and the way how these experiences are remembered today, it is emphasized that cinema-going is a social and cultural practice. New cinema history approach, the way how Kuhn evaluate cinema memory as a text and the perspective of oral history which gives voice to silenced communities guided this study. Cinema-going experiences were examined from a historical perspective. The theoretical framework of the thesis builds on the historical turn in cinema studies, historicizing the audience and evaluating cinema going as a social experience. In addition, the relationship between the audience and the cinema, the historicity of this relationship that affects audience's remembering/forgetting and the question of how past is constructed today were also included in the discussion. Within the scope of the field research, oral history interviews were conducted with 30 people who differ in terms of age, gender, education level, area of residence, ethnic identity, religious belief and political view. This study makes an effort to understand and explain the cinemagoing memories of interviewers in 1960s and 1970s through socialization, belonging, culture, identity, class, gender and emotions. This study reveals that in 1960s and 1970s Turkey, going to cinema and watching films turned into a collective activity, the space used as a means of socialization and modernization played a significant role in the construction of collective memory and cinema-going is more than watching films. It was observed that meaning of cinema-going was determined according to class, gender, education level, place of residence and the main emotion that emerged through cinema memories is "nostalgia".