Sundance 2018 is just around the corner and anticipation is high as to what themes will be explored among the hopefuls when the festival takes place in January. Founded in 1978, Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the US, annually attracting over forty thousand people to Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. […]
Turkish musical chanteuse Djanan Turan has found herself in the Top 100 of SALUTE – the UK’s new cutting edge music competition being pioneered by Feargal Sharkey, the former lead singer of pop punk band The Undertones. Having beaten over 2,500 musicians to get this far, Djanan now needs public support via SALUTE Music’s innovative […]
Next month, Turkish actor Levent Üzümcü brings his acclaimed one-man show Anlatılan Senin Hikayendir (It’s Your Story Being Told). Written by Cengiz Toraman and adapted by Üzümcü, this contemporary play presents three different stories, starting with Uncle Mehmet from Anatolia. Told with warmth, sincerity and plenty of humour, these everyman tales connect around a common […]
The 61st BFI London Film Festival (LFF) got underway earlier this week. Over a period of 12 days, the festival will screen 243 features from 67 countries in 15 cinemas across the capital. The festival’s eclectic world cinema programming includes four very different Turkish films: Distant Constellation (pictured above), Elene, Grain, and Sulukule Mon […]
An annual opera festival with celebrated artists from across the Turkic work has started. The opening performance of TÜRKSOY took place at the Grand Pera Theatre in Istanbul on Monday night. In keeping with tradition, the series of concerts will also travel to the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus for its final event on […]
For any new playwright, getting the space and support to put on a professional play is tough. For those from Britain’s black, Asian, minority ethnic and refugee (BAMER) communities, it can be harder still. East London’s award-wining Arcola Theatre has a reputation for staging plays from the UK’s diverse communities, including British Turks via its […]
Last month, the long-running London Turkish Film Festival announced it was turning to crowd-funding to help keep it going. So far the campaign has raised just under £1,500. As we enter the last week of the fundraising campaign, we give our readers ten good reasons to support this important festival. 1) LTFF programming puts spotlight […]
London’s leading contemporary art gallery is currently hosting the works of Turkish female artist Fahrelnissa Zeid. Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern, says this major exhibition is an opportunity to re-appraise the “huge, ornate, decorative, multifaceted, brilliantly coloured, swirling abstract paintings” of this pioneering artist. Born into an elite Ottoman family in 1901, Zeid was […]
Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk will be giving a series of talks in Britain starting on 15 September at the Royal Festival Hall, with several other dates across the UK. The tour is inspired by his latest book The Red-Haired Woman and his home city of Istanbul. Pamuk made his writing debut with Darkness and […]
British Turkish film star Mem Ferda is back on the silver screen in a lead role as an East-End gangster in the gripping action thriller London Heist. Driven by “honour and respect”, this pacey, violent drama charts a criminal on the warpath after his father is brutally murdered. Ferda (Pusher, The Devil’s Double) captivates […]
