Yilmaz Güney’s grave in Père Lachaise has a different quality from other memorials. The marker is not made of marble, the warm stone, but rather a cold steel frame. Paradoxically, despite its’ material qualities the grave transmits warmth. Or perhaps this is just the impression one has standing in front of that grave, witnessing a scene in which the passionate, warm, controversial life of Yilmaz Güney unfolds. He would be 73 years old if a stomach cancer (not cured in prison) had not consumed him. Güney died in Paris on September 9th, 1984.

As an exile, he arrived in the French capital in a daring way. Indeed his entire life was adventurous. He managed to fool the military, which had just taken power again (on September 12th, 1980 with the third military coup in thirty years). He managed to break out from the maximum (high) security prison on Imrali island (where Abdullah Öcalan, president of the Pkk, Kurdistan Workers’ Party, has been held since 1999). Güney too was a Kurd. Indeed as he used to say:

«I am an assimilated Kurd. My mother was Kurd, my father Kurd Zaza. I spoke Kurdish until I was 15 years old, at which point I parted from my family. At that time it was said that Kurds did not exist, that the Kurdish language did not exist. But I could hear people speaking and singing in Kurdish. I saw Kurds living in extreme poverty and under repression. My father was from Siverek: I had visited Siverek when I was 16. It was then that I understood who I really was. And when I was 34, I finally visited my mother’s village, Muþ. My film Sürü tells the story of what happened to my mother’s tribe/clan ».

Güney was born on the first of April 1937 in a village near Adana, Yenice. Before arriving in Paris, in the autumn of 1981, Güney stopped at the French-Swiss border to finish the post-production of his film Yol (The Road). A film which would be awarded the Golden Palm in Cannes the following year, giving Güney fame that up to that point he had enjoyed only at home, where he was both loved and hated. Loved by the Turkish and Kurdish left, Güney was a communist, an internationalist. He would never hold back when it was important to take a stance. For this honesty Güney paid a very high price. He spent many years in prison. The last time he was arrested was in 1974, only a few months after his release from prison, thanks to general amnesty. In what became known as the ‘Yumurtalik incident’, Güney shot a judge in a bar. The judge insulted Güney’s wife saying: “if he is a communist his wife is certainly a whore”. Perhaps the shot was fired accidentally. Legends about the episode still flourish. Whatever the true dynamic of the events were, Güney ended up in prison once again. He was sentenced to 9 years in prison which soon became 100 years, because while in prison every article he wrote for the magazine "Güney", which he created, cost him additional years of prison. Facing the perspective of remaining behind bars for his whole life, he decided to escape.

“I escaped from prison – he would say in an interview he made shortly before his death – not from Turkey”. Words that sum up Güney's incredible homesick for his country. For which he does not see any solution but devrim, the revolution. Güney nourished a passion for cinema from an early age. By coincidence, when he was 15 during a summer holiday (in winter he used to work in the cotton fields) he met the father of Melike Demirað (who will become one of his main actresses) who owned a cinema distribution company. He decided not to go back to his village, but to remain in Adana to experience the ‘city life’. He began to write short stories and poems. He worked as a film distributor traveling all around Kurdistan, studying during the day and working nights. With a group of young friends he edited Doruk, an art magazine. «I read – he writes – I always read a lot. I was 18 but I knew English, French and the new American literature. The good amount of the money I was earning, I spent on books. When I was 18, I had some four hundred books. But I missed something ». That something was to define an awareness, a consciousness growing in him. A consciousness coming from his life, from being in touch with the poorest, neglected, oppressed section of the population. In his reading he would soon become acquainted with Nazim Hikmet, the great Turkish communist poet. A new world opened before his eyes. «I managed to get my hands on 'Mavi Gözlü Dev' (The Blue Eyes Giant) and from that moment – he writes – I began to read Nazim Hikmet to my friends». Hikmet’s poems were forbidden. The communist youngsters would meet clandestinely, in hidden places. For Güney they represented an incredible attraction. At the age of 18 (1955), he wrote a short story which was confiscated by the police and he got arrested. "Communist propaganda", was the charge. In the young Güney, who still was Yilmaz Pütün (his real name), the growth as an artist, intellectual, writer and as a left wing man, intolerant of the abuses and repression especially suffered by the Kurds, coincide. At this stage his identity consciousness arousal, so to speak, is in the formative stages.

After secondary school, Güney continued to work but he was already nourishing the idea of becoming a writer. «But to write novels, you cannot stay in Adana. You have to go to Istanbul. Indeed not so much to write novels, but to acquire the knowledge that will make you succeed». In Istanbul Güney studied, worked and tried to meet writers who could help him in his career. Here again and in a deeper manner, he got in touch with communism. And with Atif Yilmaz, of whom he will become script assistant. Yilmaz was shooting a film from a short story by the Kurdish writer Yaþar Kemal. As there was not enough money for production, Kemal himself would pay part. It is at this point that Yilmaz Pütün decides to abandon his surname. From now on he will be known as Yilmaz Güney. A clear statement: Güney means South, a clear stance.

From 1961 to 1963 is in prison. He did not get depressed there but instead gave himself a program to follow: writing the novel he had wanted to write, studying communism - considering that he was defining himself a socialist- and finally thinking about his life after prison. This course of study helped to prepare him to enter fully in the world of cinema, of arts. He wrote that novel he was dreaming of in prison: Boynu Bükük Öldüler (They died with their heads bowed). «I worked for sixteen months – he writes – day and night, in the political prisoner's wing of Nevþehir jail. I used to dream about the people I was writing about. It was like living with them. Once out of prison I tried to publish the novel, but in vain». In 1963 he started to act in films and to become recognized. These films were not necessarily political, as he underlines himself, however they shared the theme of sufferance of the people. In 1966 a friend tried to publish his novel but still it was not the right time. As an actor, Yilmaz Güney became recognized as ‘Çirkin Kral’ (the Ugly King). In 1971, his novel was finally published and a year later it was awarded the prestigious Orhan Kemal award. The book tells about the life in Çukurova, in the '50s. Apart from the poetry of the narrative, it stands out because of Güney’s ability to describe the characters of the book with realism, adhering to the reality in which they live. There is a sensitivity, tenderness and particular poetry in the novel which makes the book one of the most admired of its’ time.

On March 12th, 1971 there is a new military coup, a so-called ‘soft’ golpe, though thousands of intellectuals and artists end up in prison. At this point, the fame of Yilmaz Güney as an actor is at its highest. The ‘Ugly King’ begins to play with the idea of writing a film he would shoot himself. These are the years of the most political involvement for Güney. Winds of the struggle for human rights, of student’s marches in European and USA campuses are blowing in Turkey as well. Istanbul and Ankara universities above all are stirring. Among the student’s leaders is Deniz Gezmiþ. On the left the workers movement becomes stronger and stronger. In 1970 unionized workers are 30% of the workforce and the peasants movement is very active. The Turkish workers party, founded after the 1960 coup, is made up of young people in their twenties. On March 4th, 1970 Deniz Gezmiþ and his comrades kidnapped 4 American soldiers in Balgat (Ankara). After releasing the hostages, Deniz and two comrades were arrested. The trial began on July 16th, 1971. Deniz Gezmiþ was sentenced to death for ‘attempting to subvert the constitutional order’. After the approval of the sentence by the parliament, on May 4th, the president of the Republic Cevdet Sunay refused the grace after consultation with the Prime Minister Nihat Erim. Deniz Gezmiþ, Hüseyin Inan and Yusuf Aslan were hung on May 6th 1972 in Ankara prison. Before the sentence was carried out Thkp-C (Turkish Halk Kurulus Parti-Cepe, Turkish People Liberation Army) organized different actions. Two months after the 1971 golpe, they kidnapped the Israeli consul in Istanbul, Ephraim Elrom. The kidnappers asked for the release of all the revolutionary prisoners. The Turkish government refused to give in to the demands and these hostages were killed. Among the organizers of the kidnapping were Mahir Çayan e Ulaþ Bardakçý. Yilmaz Güney hid in their house. The police followed ‘Çirkin Kral’, who was under control because he was a communist. It is on this occasion, as Ertuðrul Kürkçü recalls, that Güney plays his best role. Çayan e Bardakçý escaped capture. But they would die a little later, on March 30th, 1972 in Kizildere, where three English army officers were kept as hostages. The army would surround the house in the Black Sea killing 10 of the men in the commando. The hostages also would die. Only Kürkçü would survive the massacre.

In prison Güney does not become dishearted. Indeed as a man and artist convinced of his ideas, he continued writing and working. «Social changes – he wrote – educates people and makes their class conscience grow. I was far from the struggle. I did not take part in the working class or peasants struggle. I was far from the reality of life. I had nearly lost myself in the dirt of the bourgeois world. But then the March 12th golpe arrived [1971. NdA]. This helped my consciousness. I knew where I stood - with the working class and with my people. I believe in scientific socialism. I am an artist, an apprentice of socialism. I cannot say that I am a good socialist because I am learning and still have to improve. I will support the struggle with every means available. I am ready to face the difficulties in front of me». He certainly did. Out of prison, thanks to a general amnesty in 1974, he returned within few months. This time charged with murder, in what became known as Yumurtalik incident: Güney shot a judge who insulted his wife.

As previously mentioned it could be said that Güney’s political and artistic growth coincide. In 1970 his film Umut (Hope) was released. It is an innovative film for Turkey because for the first time the huge economic and social gap between internal migrants from the countryside and urban citizens of Turkey is addressed. Influenced by realism and neo-realism (use of non professional actors, for example) the film is an allegory from its first scene. In the first lights of the morning, the streets of a deserted city are washed by a municipal vehicle, to symbolize the ‘under class’ (to which the main character of the film, Cabbar, interpreted by Güney himself, belong) brushed away from society. Cabbar is a good worker but is considered ignorant and illiterate, with no place in a modern city. His only ‘hope’ is the lottery. Umut is not openly a film concerning the Kurdish question, but clearly both Cabbar and his friends are Kurds. Cabbar’s search for survival ends in failure. This is depicted with camera’s perspective which captures his isolation from a distance as he goes round and round the hole he has dug.

Umut represents a turning point for the actor Güney: not the hero who can right the wrong alone, but rather the lonely man who cannot manage anything alone. Addressing the question of unbalance between state and people, the director seems to indicate (suggest) that the only possibility of social change lies with collective action.

What in Umut is loosely sketched, becomes explicit in Sürü (1978) where the conditions and deep social and political divisions within the rural and Kurdish communities in the city. The script of Sürü was written in prison. The direction is finally given to Zeki Ökten. The film is complex and examines the disintegration of the traditional way of nomadic and rural life in Turkey, as a consequence of the land reforms of the '50s and the '60s. But the film is above all a powerful story of the process of historical change among the Kurdish peasants who had always been associated in the mind of many Turks with ignorance, violence, superstition, and backwardness. In this film there is also the direct dealing with the contradiction that Kurds could indeed become modern only by renouncing to their Kurdishness, and becoming assimilated Turks. Indirectly Güney also asks if it is possible to imagine the existence of the modern Kurd, in other words if there is room in Turkey for the existence of a Kurdish identity. These questions will accompany the director throughout his intense artistic activity and short life. In Sürü emerges the impossibility of characters to produce transformations in a reality full of restrictions imposed on them. This idea of Turkey as a prison is a theme that will recur in a deeper way in Yol (The Road) and in the last of Güney’s films, Duvar (The Wall).

If in Umut there is the issue of necessary collective action to produce a change, in Sürü the position occupied by the Kurds in modern Turkey is addressed with four main characters of the film who transform as a result of their journey to Kurdistan. In Sürü the condition of women, oppressed and victim of the feudal organization of the clan is also addressed. Like Umut, Sürü too would be banned by the state, which clearly cannot accept such a harsh criticism and denouncement of the aliened part of its’ population.

In prison once again, Güney writes the script of Yol, which will give him the Palm d’Or in Cannes in 1982. Güney explains in interviews about the film «the jail is the most appropriate subject to describe present Turkey », to describe Turkey after the military coup of September 12th, 1980. Yol is a place of constriction and surveillance where there seems to be no place for any form of political expression. It is a place of heavy military presence, house raids, roadblocks, curfew and extrajudicial executions. But Güney does not stop at the denouncement of post-golpe repressive military regime. The critic also addresses the social condition of the country’s rural areas, still dominated by patriarchal structure. Parallels between state persecution and ‘local’ forms of oppression are plentiful. A country struggling towards modernity in a society still tied to traditions and prejudices, where the control and repression of the state are echoed by the patriarchal control and a system built on honor which guarantees everyone’s behavior is constantly under control by the state - in ‘macro’, by relatives, neighbors and even by strangers in the ‘micro’. It is a prison on two levels which incarcerates both men and women, although in different ways and with different answers. On one hand, the men end up as powerless, unable to rebel against repression. On the other women, who do rebel by breaking rules, pay a huge price.

Duvar is a very hard film, once again about prison-Turkey. The victims of abuse this time are children. In many ways Duvar can be compared to Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, by Pier Paolo Pasolini (released in 1975, some 9 years before Duvar). Apparently without hope, the film tells the story of a prison revolt led by kids. It is telling that the working title of the film was ‘Break the windows so birds could fly free’, indicating that in reality hope is to be found also in the exposure of a brutal regime (in this case the military junta post 1980 golpe) and acting together to rebel.

Yilmaz Güney died in exile in Paris in 1984. He left over a hundred incredibly relevant films.