LANDSCAPES REFLECT PSYCHOLOGY: A Conversation with Curator Jaap Guldemond on curating the work of Nuri Bilge Ceylan. By Matthew Gentile

This past January, I spent ten days in Amsterdam.

When I was walking one foggy afternoon with my fiance down the gorgeous canals, an advertisement for an exhibit at the Eye Filmmuseum caught my gaze — called INNER LANDSCAPES.

Intrigued by a wide and tall image of a rolling green hill with a silhouette, I leaned in closer and saw an ad for an exhibit curating the work of a filmmaker with whom I was not yet familiar — that of renowned, Palme’Dor winning auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

Discovering a new great filmmaker is always a euphoric feeling for any cinephile. Though cinema is still a comparatively young art form at just 130 years old, it’s always refreshing to be reminded of just how much great and original cinema there is out there being made in different corners of the world — especially in times when it’s easy to be cynical and concerned for the future of this beloved art form.

Determined to visit this museum, I went back to my hotel that night, logged onto my Criterion account, and selected the one film they had of Ceylan’s — ABOUT DRY GRASSES (which was released in 2023 and won the Best Actress Award for Merve Dizdar at the Cannes Film Festival that year). It’s a masterful film that takes its time in setting up its story, which focuses on a teacher in a remote village in Eastern Anatolia who finds himself accused of abusing a student. Ceylan shoots unconventionally; most of his scenes play out in static or slightly moving masters. Cutting is minimal, movement is deliberate. The actors are blocked to the camera. Watching his work may remind you of his idols: Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Yasujiro Ozu, and Robert Bresson. There’s a passionate and meditative quality to Ceylan’s films — the imagery is so powerful because so much is unsaid.

When I finally visited the Eye Filmmuseum and experienced Ceylan’s Inner Landscapes exhibit— I was struck as much by Ceylan’s films as I was by this exhibit itself. Utilizing many screens and large-scale, cinemascope photographs taken by Ceylan (who himself was a successful photographer before he became a great director) — the exhibit combines behind-the-scenes footage of Ceylan working intimately with his crew, projected clips from his 10 feature films, and expansive landscape photography that manage to evoke all kinds of emotions when you look at them. To walk through this exhibit is to take a portal into Celyan’s mind and artistry — and for those of you in Amsterdam or who are going to Amsterdam before June 1st — it’s an experience not to be missed.

Moved by the exhibit, feeling enlightened and inspired as a filmmaker — I connected with the curator, Jaap Guldemond who has directed exhibits focusing on many of our greatestfilmmakers including Bela Tarr, Werner Herzog, Chantal Akerman, Andrei Tarkovsky.

Here is our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity:

MG: Congratulations on the Inner Landscapes exhibit, it’s spectacular. Can you talk to me about your intention with this exhibit and what it was you wanted to achieve with it?

JG: The program that I started [at Eye] fourteen years ago, was from the beginning on the interface with film and the visual arts — because my background is actually from visual art. Before Eye, I’d been working at the Van Abbemuseum, a Museum of Modern Art in Holland. As a child, probably like many people, I was a cinephile by twelve and from than I’d seen everything here in Amsterdam. But my professional career was really in the visual arts. But my generation, active from the 1990s, was the first generation of visual artists who started working with film and cinema as a tool or as a formal language. I always call this the video shop generation because the 90s was the first time you could get all the films you wanted immediately. You can also even fast-forward it or play it backward. So this was available for this whole generation, which is my generation as well. So there were lots of people like Douglas Gordon, Isaac Julian or Steve McQueen — all those people I worked with at the Van Abbemuseum or slightly later at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. But these are visual artists, so when I was asked to become a Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Eye Filmmuseum, I said what I’d like to do is make a program and exhibition in which it’s really about the interface between art and film. So, where visual art meets film and where film meets visual art. But of course being a film museum, I thought I also had to make exhibitions with - so to say ‘pure’ filmmakers. But how do you make an interesting exhibition with the filmmaker that isn’t just showing the artifacts or the props which is what you normally see in most film museums? And where you completely miss the ‘work’ itself. Which to me is completely uninteresting. And before I got this job, I never visited film museums because I knew it was going to show me something like this…so I tried to find a way to transpose the essence of the work of an interesting filmmaker into an exhibition. So that’s why I started to try to find a way in which to achieve this goal. I’m interested in film as a medium for art. I’m not interested in films as entertainment. Of course, I will see films as entertainment — but for the museum, I’m interested in film as an art. So my direction is about film authors, like Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Antonioni, or Tarkovsky.

MG: The juxtaposition of Ceylan’s photographs and film in the exhibit is incredibly effective, I found. Can you talk about how that came to be?

JG: At first, I didn’t know Nuri Bilge Ceylan was a photographer as well as a director. That I only learned about two years ago. And then I saw his photographs and thought this would be an

amazing photo series, the Turkish Cinema Scope Series — that’s also very connected with his films. And then I thought it would be interesting to find a way to match the films of Nuri with his

photographic work — so often, when putting these exhibitions together, I make fragments/ compilations of the films of the filmmaker, and I choose these fragments to show the gist/

essence of his films — and in this case, I was connecting that with the photographs — so in the end, the whole idea is that you are getting to better know the oeuvre of this filmmaker.

MG: It’s stunning photography. And you can see the similarities between his photographs and his films. The theme of the exhibit, and the title, INNER LANDSCAPES, can you talk about the decision to center Ceylan’s exhibit around that concept?

JG: I think that’s more to do with my visual art background. I’m very focused on the image. For me, in filmmaking, narrative — yes it’s important — but it’s not so interesting to me. I’m very

visually oriented myself. With Ceylan’s films, it’s image over narrative, it’s image over acting and action…and so the image is by far the most important thing. And of course, the psychological play with the characters is important as well, but it’s not a narrative in the traditional way. With Ceylan, the images I remember are those of his landscapes…even when his films are shot in Istanbul, then it’s about the urban landscape. So for me, the landscape is important not just as an image, but because Nuri Bilge Ceylan uses the landscapes to also reflect the psychology and state of mind of his characters.

MG: And he keeps the camera quiet.

JG: Mhm, very quiet. He takes his time.

MG: What do you think young filmmakers and the next generation of cinephiles can learn from Nuri Bilge Ceylan? What might be a good reason for them to explore his cinema if they haven’t yet?

JG: Two different aspects of his work. First, working with a team as small as possible — the way he does — creates much less pressure. Of course, there’s always pressure, but with a

larger crew — there’s more of that and the way he works with a small crew helps him keep the set intimate. He’s working with his family, his friends, whatever. The second: don’t make any

compromises. That’s why he doesn’t work with bigger budgets, he says, because then he has to compromise. So he can easily get money because he has been so successful and won prizes at

Cannes and has French production companies willing to work with him — but he always works with a small budget, so he doesn’t feel any pressure of doing something different than from what he intends to do. So, try to keep it small, and don’t compromise.

MG: Wise words, and I think many filmmakers would agree.

MATTHEW GENTILE is a director and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. His first feature, AMERICAN MURDERER, stars Tom Pelphrey, Ryan Phillippe, Idina Menzel, and Jacki Weaver and was distributed by Lionsgate/Saban and Universal. You can follow him on Instagram at @matthewgentiledirector or his website: www.matthewgentiledirector.com