Representation of mine workers in Turkish cinema

Anyone who exchanges his/her labour for a fee is defined as 'worker'. The confliction of workers with the capital and the dominant capitalist ideology gives rise to the classification of workers creating a dialectical whole with the effect of their own working experiences and the culture they live in. From this point of view, the worker cinema must present the mentioned experiences and the confliction encountered by workers to its audience with a cinema experience that lays emphasis on the process with cultural values as a whole. The primary aim of the study is to determine how the workers are represented in the films in Turkish cinema including mine workers by separating all the elements of this process into fractions, and to analyse that whether those fractions turned to a class representation in the film by integrating with each other or not. The economic and cultural elements have been categorized thematically in the films handled, and the positions of the film figures in regard to their production relations and cultural domain, specific to mine worker, have been determined with the analysis of film figures and confliction. After this determination, the thematic categories have been dealt with the content analysis method and the class practices in the films have been intended to be presented. As a result of the analyses made on the films Şehirdeki Yabancı (Stranger in the City), Yaşam Kavgası (Fight for Life), Maden (Mine), Bir Günün Hikayesi (Story of a Day), Ekmek (Bread), Yük (Load), Kelebeğin Rüyası (The Butterfly's Dream), Güven (Trust) and Lacivert Gece (Dark Blue Night), it has been concluded that it is not possible to name the films including workers as a main or secondary character as the worker film by just considering their personifications are mine workers. It has been asserted that the worker cinema must contain conflict about working class and produce a class conception regarding the workers. Consequently, it has been concluded that the representation of mine workers in the Turkish cinema is actualized totally within the films handling the class formation and awareness processes as a whole with the production relations, but it is actualized within the films reflecting only some class experiences over individuals giving limited impressions on the class.