TATIL KITABI (SUMMER BOOK)

Turkey, 2008, 92 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Seyfi Teoman.

A pleasing glimpse of provincial Turkish life in a town that has its own style and is not dependent on tourists. The film begins and ends with school children. While a little boy is central, the film quickly introduces a wide range of local characters. They go about their daily routines, picking lemons in a grove, buying and selling in the shops as well as welcoming home an older son from military service. He creates some tension in his home, especially with his father, when he wants to go to university instead of continuing in the army.

There are many familiar family themes and tensions but we see them in a Turkish setting with Turkish sensibilities and pace. This makes it an interesting first film by.

1.The impact? The director’s first film? Semi-autobiographical? Turkish provincial?

2.The small city, a city not for tourists, ordinary homes, streets, shops, school, the countryside, the orchards? The lack of a musical score? Ordinary sounds?

3.The opening, the long shot, the children, the focus on the boy? The return to the boy at the end, at the window, the slow tracking back from the school windows, the school, the playground? The end of summer?

4.The introduction to the range of characters, the truck picking up the men and women, dawn, going to the orchards, seeing their work in detail?

5.The shopkeepers, greeting the boy, the uncle and his status in the town, with the family, his shop, influence?

6.The brother, military service, return, the dominant father, the supportive mother, his father wanting him to be in the military, his wanting to go to university? The issue of money?

7.The children in class, the issue of the summer book, its aims, emphasis on reading, the bully taking the young boy’s book, his wanting to borrow the money from his uncle, the book not on sale?

8.The brother and his military service, back in the town, relationships, his father, sick, the visits?

9.The uncle, his role, control? The father, his illness, death? The different family reactions, needing time, life gradually getting back to normal?

10.The details of life in the city, the shops, the public announcements?

11.The resolution, the behaviour of the father, the impact of his death, the mother and her friends, coping with the children? The relations? The brother leaving for the university? The young boy going to school – and the repetition of the opening?

12.The impact of the final tracking back from the school – and the audience experiencing the summer with the characters?