A research project focusing on films which can be summarized under the term „German-Turkish cinema“, investigated these films as a coherent discourse in their relation to processes of community building and asked which function the audio-visual images fulfill within these processes.

Project "Migrant Melodramas and Culture Clash Comedies: Creating a Turkish-German Sense of Commonality"
(SFB 1171 2015–2019)

How are films, TV-series, and web videos working on producing and modulating a Turkish-German sense of community? These various media were analyzed as tactical means of appropriation – of dominant forms of the western entertainment culture, as well as beyond that – with regards to the affect-economical dimensions of circulating patterns of staging.

In theoretical engagement, the research questions of the project were addressed in discussions of a focus group with filmmakers from the field on the one hand, on the other, they were addressed through a comparative corpus analysis identifying pathos scenes from the Turkish-German cinema.

Building on the eMAEX-approach and drawing from the research on the war film, audio-visual patterns of staging were taxonomically qualified regarding specific affect domains (joy, sadness, thrill, etc.). As a result, five pathos categories could be worked out in the conflict field of inclusion and exclusion: Entering (into the unknown), navigation (harmonic involvement in a familiar/misunderstood environment), being singled out (from a community), separation (being separated from a communally shared context), as well as being crowded (being overwhelmed by surroundings). These pathos categories, completed with narrative patterns, topoi, and motives within pathos scenes, were described in regards to their concrete expressive design on the micro level as well as their dramaturgical relevance on the macro level. Their aim is not to comprehensively grasp every affect dramaturgy within the heterogeneous corpus, but rather to outline specific lines of conflict of the discursivity of the Turkish-German cinema.

Further Reading:

• Hauke Lehmann: Die Produktion des "deutsch-türkischen Kinos". Die Verflechtung von Filme-Machen und Filme-Sehen in LOLA + BILIDIKID und TIGER – DIE KRALLE VON KREUZBERG. In: Ömer Alkın (Ed.): Deutsch-Türkische Filmkultur im Migrationskontext. Wiesbaden 2017, pp. 275–297.

• Nazlı Kilerci / Hauke Lehmann: Beyond Turkish-German Cinema. Affective Experience and Generic Relationality. In: Birgitt Röttger-Rössler, Jan Slaby (Ed.): Affect in Relation. Families, Places, Technologies. London / New York 2018, pp. 259–280.

• Lehmann, Hauke: Deutsch-türkisches Kino zwischen Filmproduktion und Filmkonsum. Gespräche und Analysen zu den Spielräumen filmischen Denkens. Berlin / Boston 2023.

• Lehmann, Hauke: Das Imaginäre des „deutsch-türkischen Kinos“. Zur gesellschaftlichen Erscheinungsweise filmischer Bilder. Berlin / Boston 2024 (in prep.).

• Kilerci-Stevanovic, Nazlı: Poetics of Arabesk: Feeling of Familiarity in Turkish-German Cinema Berlin / Boston 2025 (in prep.).