Cinema and social memory: Traumatic representations in recent Turkish cinema

Cinema plays an important role in reconstruction of history, memory and identity; and it reproduces ?the reality?. While the memory fights against the negative reminiscences of past during the reconstruction of history and identity; dissensions, violence, distress, restraint and struggles lead into traumas. Social traumas, that create alienation in society in terms of ethnics, religion, gender and politics, are a part of the systematic violence acts which are generally made by the ones who possess the power and sovereignty with the support of the majority. And this penetrates the collective identity. In this case, ignorance and suppression are reinforced both as a government policy and protection of the national identity and group norms. However, without confronting the traumas, the traces will be indelible and for a real recovery one should be able to settle up and share. In order to heal the traumatic wounds, there should be a common social approach. The most important step is to establish an area to share the effects of the trauma, find the right place to be represented and set the social context with it. The function of cinema starts at this point. Movies with critical and questioning approach that represents those people and creates a platform for them to face with their latent traumas, also allows them to mourn and reconstructs the known understandings, has a very important function in establishing communication with the traumatic memories.