Director:  Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti, Lea Massari
Italy, 143', 1960, black & white
Italian with Turkish subtitles

The first of Antonioni’s breakthrough film trilogy, L’avventura proved an “adventure” from its rough, perilous production to its troubled release, including charges of obscenity and immorality. Using a widescreen canvas for the first time, Antonioni’s signature experimental narrative style blossoms fully and radically around absence, initially in the form of a woman’s mysterious disappearance during a trip to an island. The ensuing search is composed of behaviors not fully comprehensible, desires abandoned and central plot points forgotten. Upon this dizzying post-war terrain, truth, love and happiness are unequally exchanged for money, sex and status, and all characters suffer from an emotional seasickness. Antonioni describes with stunning precision his indistinct, inarticulate explorers apprehensively treading toward, in his words, “the moral unknown.”

Story of a Love Affair

Story of a Love Affair

Red Desert

Red Desert

Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point

Identification of a Woman

Identification of a Woman

L’Avventura

L’Avventura

Blow-Up

Blow-Up

The Mystery of Oberwald

The Mystery of Oberwald

Shorts

Shorts

Mosques in the 18th and 19th Century Paintings

Mosques in the 18th and 19th Century Paintings

In the works of western painters, we encounter mosques as the primary architectural elements that reflect the identity of the city of Istanbul. Often we can recognize the depicted landscape as Istanbul simply from the mosques. 

Fluid Identities  Creating an Identity / Hybrid Identities

Fluid Identities Creating an Identity / Hybrid Identities

A firm believer in the idea that a collection needs to be upheld at least by four generations and comparing this continuity to a relay race, Nahit Kabakcı began creating the Huma Kabakcı Collection from the 1980s onwards. Today, the collection can be considered one of the most important and outstanding examples among the rare, consciously created, and long-lasting ones of its kind in Turkey.

Memory of Objects

Memory of Objects

In his book exploring the cultural history of souvenirs, Rolf Potts discusses how such objects assume meaning through personal stories: Objects turn into memories with the stories they hold.