NOVEMBER 2023 – Literature, Culture & Art Program

BOOK

• İhsan Oktay Anar, Puslu Kıtalar Atlası
• Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
• Alexandre Dumas, Lady of the Camellias
• Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
• Miguel de Unamuno, Fog

MUSIC DISCOVERY OF THE MONTH

• Birileri, Aşık Olmamam Gerek
• Hans Zimmer, Missile Launch
• Apashe & Waishu, Human
• Black Atlass, All I’ve Got

CONCERT

• Rembrandt Trio will be at CRR Concert Hall on November 18th with their repertoire of Mevlana poems, motifs inspired by Turkish and Iranian folklore, and Bach tones.
• Dhafer Youssef, an artist of Tunisian origin who brings together different styles of jazz, traditional music and electronic music, will be at Zorlu PSM on November 21st with “Streets of Minarets”!
• Sufle will be on stage at Dorock XL Kadıköy on November 23rd!
• Buray will give a concert at Jolly Joker Vadistanbul on November 24th.

CINEMA

Upcoming movies:

• Atatürk 1818-1919, directed by Mehmet Ada Öztekin, one of the highly anticipated Atatürk-themed films on the 100th anniversary of our Republic, will be released on November 3rd, and Son Akşam Yemeği, directed by Levent Onan, will be released on October 27th!
• Anatomy of a Fall, a Justin Tiret movie, will meet the audience on November 3rd.
• Starring Johnny Depp in the lead role, Maiwenn’s Jeanne du Barry movie, which is also the director and plays the character of Jeanne in the movie, will be released in Turkey on November 10th!
• Napoleon, directed by Ridley Scott, will be in theaters on November 24th!

Cult movies to watch:

• Director: Michael Haneke / Film: Amour (2012)
• Director: Paolo Sorrentino / Film: Youth (2015)
• Director: Alfonso Cuarón / Film: Rome (2018)
• Director: Robert Bresson / Film: Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

DOCUMENTARY

• Tim’s Vermeer, directed by Tim Jenison, is a documentary about Vermeer’s life that examines the technique used by the artist in Vermeer paintings.
• You can watch the documentary of the popular painter Bob Ross, Bob Ross: Betrayal and Ambition Hidden Among the Happy Little Trees, on Netflix.
• In the documentary Ancient Apocalypse, in which journalist Graham Hancock travels the world in search of evidence of lost civilizations, he explores prehistoric civilizations from Gunung Padang to Derinkuyu.

THEATRE

• The play Freud’un İnsanları, starring Onur Büyüktopçu and Burcu Binici, will be at Ataköy Yunus Emre Cultural Center Müşfik Kenter Stage on November 15th, and at Cevahir Stage Hall A on November 29th!
• Kum Zambakları, the play that deals with the relationship between men and women in both real, ironic and poetic dimensions, will be at Zorlu PSM on November 7th,13th,28th!

Plays you can watch within the scope of Istanbul Theater Festival:

• Presnyakov Brothers’ most performed play, Terrorism, is at Caddebostan Cultural Center on 15 and 16 November.
• Baklava Cumhuriyeti, where social satire and tragedy-comedy are intertwined, will be staged at DasDas on 17th and November 18th.
• Uppercut Dance Theatre, which brings innovation to the Danish dance scene by combining contemporary dance with hip-hop culture and theatre, will be on stage in Turkey for the first time at Süreyya Opera on 17 November and 18 November with their performance titled Bankta!
• The play Istanbul Mon Amour, designed by Işıl Kasapoğlu 30 years ago, inspired by Orhan Veli Kanık’s poem I am Listening to Istanbul, will be performed on November 25 at Notre Dame de Sion and Saint Benoît French High Schools, as well as Galatasaray High School.

EXHIBITION

• Ara Güler’s exhibition, which includes his colorful photographs compiled from his trips to Anatolia, can be seen at the Renkli Anadolu Ara Güler Museum until April 2024.

• Pop-Art artist Jean Baptiste Launay, aka Jisbar, will be at Kalyon Kültür Taş Konak between November 8th and February 14th with his exhibition titled Jisbar in Istanbul.

• The group exhibition 10: Abstractions, Allusions, Mitalaas, curated by Duygu Demir, looks at the last decade of Turkey through the production of artists. The group exhibition will continue at İmalat-hane until December 2nd.

• Galaksinin Fanları the most comprehensive exhibition ever held about Star Wars, one of the most watched series in the history of cinema, contains a fan collection of more than 600 items collected over 40 years. The exhibition can be seen at the Istanbul Cinema Museum until February 2024.

• Award-winning cinema photographer Georges Pierre’in Gözünden Godard exhibition, which you can visit at the Institut Français and Sinematek Cinema House until December 9th, emphasizes the works of Jean-Luc Godard and also the role of set photography.

PODCAST

• Lonely Palette: Art history enthusiasts can follow this channel, where Tamar Avishai discusses and examines a painting in each episode.

• 6 Minute Vocabulary: It is recommended that you follow this channel, which consists of 6-minute episodes where you can improve your English vocabulary.

SUGGESTIONS: WHERE TO VISIT

BOOKSTORE-CAFE DISCOVERY

• Minoa Pera
• Fil Books Karaköy

ART CENTERS & MUSEUMS

Atatürk Museum

Also known as the Revolution Museum, it is actually the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk lived, located in the Şişli district of Istanbul and converted into a museum by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality in 1942. Documents about Ataturk and his reforms, some photographs, and Ataturk paintings from the War of Independence are exhibited in the museum. The painting showing the artist İbrahim Çallı handing over the sword of Nikolaos Trikupis is one of the important works of the museum. At the same time, Kocamemi’s painting of Atatürk’s funeral dated 1939 is also located here.

Atatürk Cultural Center: AKM

With its rich content, AKM Library meets readers as an important research center of Istanbul. There are two different libraries in AKM Library. These are Istanbul Atatürk Cultural Center Art Library and Vitali Hakko Creative Industries Library.

Additionally, Istanbul State Opera and Ballet’s Faust, a 5-act “Grand opera” type opera composed by the French opera composer Charles Gounod, adapted from the first part of Goethe’s Faust, will be performed at the Türk Telekom Opera Hall here on  November 16th and 18th. You can also listen to Mozart’s composition, Don Giovanni, a two-act opera with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte, which will be staged by the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet on November 30th.

Prepared by: Nazperi YILMAZ