The Portrait of an Artist: "Mehmet Özer" Playing Life

As a dissertation project, a documentary film named The Portrait of an Artist / Mehmet Özer ?Playing Life? has been directed. The first chapter of this work covers the biography of artist Mehmet Özer, his place in the contemporary Turkish Art and his artistic works. The second chapter focuses on the preparation phase of the film (interview, document search, photo shooting etc.), its objectives, the designs prepared for the film and the production information. In this work, we try to be familiar with Mehmet Özer by his own words, his works and their information, the pictures set chronologically from his childhood to our day and his impromptu production performances materialized in his workshop. What does the artist produce? How does he do it? Why did he choose this way? What does he tell in his works? The answers to these questions are tried to be found and given. In the light of the answers, the documentary chooses the word ?game? as the basic concept and this concept affects the perception of the documentary, its philosophy and construction to a large extent. `Living the Game? and `Playing Life? are the names given to the serial works of the artist particularly emphasized in this documentary. The artist, who has transferred the periods in his childhood and the language of the game, thinks that the basic point in life is a game; this game can be a method in life and thus the components he used can both be the ones used in children?s games and the ones taking place in visual narration. This documentary sets out from a point and ends in the same one emphasizing the permenance of life with this point having ?similar beginning and ending?.Key Words: Mehmet Özer, game, point, line, eye, rhythm, documentary