At sixty, having worked in film for thirty-two years, with his own production company to have artistic freedom and with thirteen feature films to his credit, writer-director mer Kavur is one of the principal figures of contemporary Turkish cinema.

Born in Ankara, in 1944, Kavur was raised in Istanbul. After studying journalism and sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, he went on to study film yat the Conservatoire Indpendent du Cinma Franais. He started his master's on Film History at Sorbonne, but hasn't completed it. He returned to Turkey in 1971 and began making documentaries and commercials. In 1974, he made his first feature film, "Yatk Emine / Emine".

A number of his films received awards at the Antalya Film Festival. "Krebe / Blindfold" (1984), "Amansz Yol / Desperate Road" (1985) and "Gece Yolculuu / Night Journey" (1987) won prizes given by the Ministry of Culture. He has also received the Best Turkish Film of the Year award four times at Istanbul Film Festival. A director of renown, he has won worldwide recognition and several retrospectives of his films have been held in different countries such as Germany (1987, 1993, 1998), Portugal (1987), France (1990, 1993, 1994, 1996), Morocco (1992), Finland (1993), India (1998), Greece (1998), Holland (1998), Italy (1999), USA (2000), Canada (2003). He currently teaches at Bilgi University in Istanbul.

Though Kavur, sometimes referred to as the "Turkish Bergman", is an atypical director, the kind that is difficult to classify, some may claim he is the loyal representative of the waves that have shaken Turkish cinema since the '80s; his films are intimate, ideologically committed, socially relevant and hugely popular. Kavur's earlier films are works that haunt you long after you have seen them; films that make you question the meaning of your own life as well as of the lives of his bizarre heroes. The director is fascinated by characters who live on the margins of a claustrophobic and oppressive society, from which they find their escape only in death - or in conformity. The oppression is psychological, emotional and social and -by implication- political. It would be a mistake to see nothing political and no commitment in his films. Indeed, the commitment is to observing the human condition with clarity and compassion; it is a commitment that does not alienate the alienated. Time and mystery are at the heart of all his later works, for although Kavur renders the world itself in precise and realistic terms, by the end of each film we are left with enigmas, secrets, and unanswered questions about the nature of reality and illusion and the motivations behind his characters' choices. Most importantly, we are left in the presence of ultimate questions about the human condition.

Kavur specializes in "cinematic dreams". His films are enigmatic and chock full of symbolism; his protagonists (usually men) embark on a quest that they -and we- struggle to comprehend. They receive visitations from beautiful, elusive women. Angels? Muses? Ghosts? Goddesses? Unknown. Everyday rituals and mundane tasks are interrupted or altered by surreal events. Above all, past, present, and future collide. Kavur is obsessed with time: clocks appear prominently in almost all of his films. Clockmakers acquire heroic status. Characters claim that the mechanisms of timepieces are directly linked to the human soul. Are the clocks our connection to some fourth (or fifth or sixth) dimension? Are we, as Kavur puts it, just "floating on the surface"?

The earliest film in the retrospective, "Yusuf ile Kenan / Yusuf and Kenan" (1979), offers glimmers of Kavur's definitive style: his fascination with the cobbled streets of Turkey's cities and the green hills of its countryside, his affection for children, and his deep respect for traditional crafts. The predictable plot, which traces two young orphans' struggle to survive on the mean streets of Istanbul, calls attention to the plight of homeless street kids. The influence of Ylmaz Gney, whose work was grounded in political activism and social critique, is keenly felt.

Veering in a completely different direction, "Anayurt Oteli / Motherland Hotel" (1986) offers a harrowing portrait of psychological disintegration. Zebercet, the overseer of an provincial hotel, is fixated on a beautiful guest who has already checked out at the film's start. He desperately hopes she'll return, but it's clear she won't. As the days pass, he becomes increasingly unhinged. Repressed, icy, and downright creepy, Zebercet bears more than a passing resemblance to the manager of the Bates Motel.

If "Motherland Hotel" is a claustrophobic descent into Hell, "Gece Yolculuu / Night Journey" (1987) is an elegiac meditation on art and transience. Ali, a beleaguered movie director, can't generate much enthusiasm for his latest project until location scouting leads him to a "real ghost town," a city abandoned in 1923 by its Greek residents. He decides to remain there, moving into a crumbling church to rewrite his script and to do some soul searching. As he surrenders to the spell of the place, his writing dissolves into memories (real and imagined) and unanswerable questions.

The young photographer in "Gizli Yz / The Secret Face" (1991) is a little less willing to submit to his fate. His tale, modeled on the myth of Parsifal and the Holy Grail, involves yet another mystery lady, a series of broken clocks, photographs of anonymous subjects, and a wise clockmaker. The photographer's determination to uncover the connections among these seemingly disparate elements takes him on a long magical, mystery tour through several cities. Acclaimed novelist Orhan Pamuk wrote the screenplay (Kavur scripted the other three films in the retrospective), and that contributes to the exceptional beauty of this poetic film.

At various points, Kavur's work recalls Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, Alain Resnais, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Carol Reed, and even the writing of Gabriel Garca Mrquez and Italo Calvino. But he has a grace and gravity of his own, at once timeless and, well, time-full.

Kavur's films give a very explicit, tangible sense of such experiences as traveling by train or car or bus (so many of his characters travel or wander relentlessly), how to operate machine tools, how to manage a hotel, what it is like to repair a clock. Yet in the midst of all this specificity Kavur gently but persuasively situates events in a context that summons up myth, the unconscious, memory, and dream. How he "situates" events is one of the distinguishing qualities of his work.
Kavur uses cinematic resources beyond those of direct photography. His camera moves, taking our eyes with it, as he depicts the paths of his protagonists. Memory, dreams, hallucinations can not be readly recognized if a film maker carries us along with his characters into their own state of perception. We, as spectators, will become aware that the film is spiraling inwards only if, for instance, an event is repeated to a different result, and if we see both through the same subjective eyes. This happens to confounding effect in both "Night Journey" and "Akrebin Yolculuu / Journey on the Clock Hand". In his other films his subjective camera merely makes us concerned witnesses to the travails and fulfillment of his protagonists. Kavur also does not hesitate to use the conventions of shot/countershot, or over-the-shoulder reactive dialog, to sunder spectator assumptions, especially in retrospect. In doing so, he ushers us into a world more complete, more rewarding than our own.

Kavur makes his films in a geographic location that has been the crossroads of civilization for as long as recorded history: Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, formerly Byzantium. Time is one of his preoccupations, yet Kavur does not dwell on the ruins of prior millennia. We scarcely see the traces of Roman, Greek, or older cultures, just the presence in the background of ancient walls, roads, and more recent buildings and homes that have survived century's weathering; the newer but eroded buildings infuse of history -and the weight of time- that enriches his films and enlarges their import.

Kavur warns his foreign audience against searching for known references in his films. "They are difficult to find if you don't know Turkish culture What influences me most is the search of an individual for his own cultural identity." In the universality of that search lies the quality and the beauty of mer Kavur's films.