Representation of Turkish folk dances in Turkish cinema, 1960-1970 period

Although Turkey did not actually participate in the Second World War, it experienced the negative effects of the war like many other countries. In the aftermath of the war, moves were made in various fields to overcome these negativities. One of the areas of action has been motion pictures, which constitute one of the soft power elements of the country. In order to benefit from the importance of cinema in shaping the international image and society, especially "social realist" films found their place in cinema. In this sense, the 1960-1970 years were the golden age of cinema in Turkey. The main themes covered in the movies of the period are migration from the village to the city, poverty, betrayal, and local issues. While processing these themes, different disciplines were also utilized. Especially folk dances were frequently preferred.While other branches of art and cinema are seen in academic studies, it is seen that there are very few academic studies that examine Turkish folk dances in cinema. This situation creates an important deficiency on behalf of social sciences. Method: This study was conducted with the "Case Study" design, one of the qualitative research types. Document analysis was used as the data collection technique and the collected data were analyzed by content analysis. Future studies in this field can contribute to the literature in order to close the mentioned gap. The population of this thesis consists of 10 Turkish films from the 1960-1970 period. Qualitative method, which is functional for the field of social sciences, was preferred in the study. The main thesis of the study is the assumption that the cultural and expatriate longing elements of the characters who have adaptation problems by coming from rural to urban areas are underlined to increase the impact and perception on the audience.