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

Five Unmissable Istanbul Paintings of Félix Ziem

Five Unmissable Istanbul Paintings of Félix Ziem

Félix Ziem is accepted as one of the well-known artists of the romantic landscape painting, and has been followed closely by art lovers and collectors of all periods since. He had a profound influence on generations of artists after him, and was the first artist whose works were acquired by the Louvre while he was still alive.

Niko Pirosmani

Niko Pirosmani

“A nameless Egyptian fresco, an African idol or a vase from Crete: we should behold Pirosmani’s art among them. Only this way it is possible to conceive it genuinely … …You see Pirosmani – you believe in Georgia”.
Grigol Robakidze

Demons, Symbols, and the Cosmos

Demons, Symbols, and the Cosmos

Beliefs surrounding illness and healing in Byzantium stem from the myths, astrology, and magic practiced around the Mediterranean by Jews, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Greeks.