Director: François Caillat
France, color, 2004, 75’
French with Turkish subtitles

A filmmaker travels through the mountain villages along the shores of Alpine lakes to investigate the disappearance of Valérie 20 years ago. She allegedly murdered a Canadian tourist before disappearing without a trace. At least that is how the narrator remembers the story, while passing through the region at the time. Over the course of the interviews, the elusive Valérie seems to disappear a second time, literally engulfed by the Alpine landscape, magnificently captured on film by François Caillat. A haunting, imposing landscape, where chasms and precipices become metaphors, characters in a work of fiction that the camera turns into a documentary. It is a film in the form of an essay in which the director takes his work on memory to its highest degree of abstraction.

L'affaire Valerie

L'affaire Valerie

Trois Soldats Allemands

Trois Soldats Allemands

La Quatrieme Generation

La Quatrieme Generation

Une Jeunesse Amoureuse

Une Jeunesse Amoureuse

Istanbul’s Historical Peninsula in 18th and 19th Century Paintings

Istanbul’s Historical Peninsula in 18th and 19th Century Paintings

With the Topkapı Palace, the center of political authority until the 19th century, and many other examples of classical Ottoman and Byzantine architecture included in its premise the Historical Peninsula is the heart of the Empire. 

A Photographer’s Biography Pascal Sebah

A Photographer’s Biography Pascal Sebah

Following the opening of his studio, “El Chark Societe Photographic,” on Beyoğlu’s Postacılar Caddesi in 1857, the Levantine-descent Pascal Sébah moves to yet another studio next to the Russian Embassy in 1860 with a Frenchman named A. Laroche, who, apart from having worked in Paris previously, is also quite familiar with photographic techniques.

The Ottoman Way of Serving Coffee

The Ottoman Way of Serving Coffee

Coffee was served with much splendor at the harems of the Ottoman palace and mansions. First, sweets (usually jam) was served on silverware, followed by coffee serving. The coffee jug would be placed in a sitil (brazier), which had three chains on its sides for carrying, had cinders in the middle, and was made of tombac, silver or brass. The sitil had a satin or silk cover embroidered with silver thread, tinsel, sequin or even pearls and diamonds.