Capstones
Graduation Date
Fall 12-15-2023
Grading Professor
Yoruba Richen
Subject Concentration
Documentary
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Abstract
A Turkish-American Dream
By Hilal Bahcetepe
A Turkish family’s pursuit of the American Dream
Logline : A Turkish-American Dream is a short documentary uncovering the hardships of immigrating to a new country, assimilating, missing community and home while acclimating to a new one.
Synopsis: Filmmaker Hilal Bahcetepe goes back to Istanbul to interview family members about the hardships they faced when she and her parents decided to leave family behind and move to the United States. Through intimate conversations spanning over the course of five months, we get a sense of how difficult it is to leave one’s homeland, and how those difficulties might be exacerbated in the difficulty of assimilating into an unfamiliar country and culture.
Link: https://vimeo.com/896620674
Project Overview
According to the Migration Policy Institute, there are an estimated 45.3 million immigrants in the United States as of 2021. Many of them leave their homes and families behind in pursuit of better economic conditions, opportunities and safety. A Turkish-American Dream begs the question, “is the American dream worth giving up community?”
As global economic conditions become increasingly less sustainable and with prices for just about everything (food, housing, etc.) skyrocketing in the United States, we follow one mother-daughter relationship discussing if life is truly better in the United States than it was or could have been in Istanbul.
The filmmaker interviews her mother, and family members in Turkey who were affected by her family’s decision to leave them behind and start a new life in the United States.
Access
As I am mostly featuring my own family members in this film, it was relatively easy for me to have access to them. While filming verite or footage in public spaces in Istanbul, I made sure to communicate what the film was about with citizens and authorities to gain trust and ensure their safety if I included any footage of specific people, private or religious spaces.
Visual Treatment, Style and Tone
Tackling a bittersweet question, the film is composed of melancholic and dream-like visuals achieved through archived photos, particularly ones taken on film and disposable cameras from the 80s-early 2000s, showcasing life before and after the United States. We also see landscapes, architecture and city life in Istanbul, in a travel-vlog style, seeing the beauty of what was left behind, even amidst issues and problems. The pacing of the film is fairly slow, we pause on certain images, moments and discussions to let emotions resonate with the audience.
The music, composed by Carlotta Romano, is light, nostalgic and compliments the melancholic tone portrayed in the film.
Act One
The filmmaker, Hilal, is on a Facetime call with her mom, Didem, and we see the two discuss the first moments and memories of life in the United States and leaving Istanbul. We learn that after the 1999 Izmit earthquake, along with the decaying economic conditions that followed, the filmmaker, her mother and father made the decision to move to Denver, Colorado.
We see images of Didem’s life in Turkey before and after Hilal was born, enjoying life, looking happy, compared to images we see of their new life in Denver where there seems to be forced smiles and loneliness peeking through.
Act Two
Hilal returns to Istanbul to visit her family. We are first introduced to Didem’s youngest sister, Kamile, who discusses her memories of her older sister leaving the family behind and moving to the United States. After discussing how beautiful Turkey is, she tells the audience that she doesn’t believe moving was the best decision for the family despite potentially experiencing better living and economic conditions.
After Kamile, we are introduced to Sena, Hilal’s cousin and the son of Didem’s oldest brother. Sena, unlike Kamile, believes that despite the country’s superficial beauty, Turkey is riddled with corruption, poor leadership and decaying economic conditions, she believes that the filmmaker’s family’s choice to leave and move to the United States was the best decision they could have made for themselves.
The last family member we meet in Istanbul is Cigdem, Didem’s oldest sister. Cigdem speaks directly with the filmmaker in an intimate conversation about how hurt she was when they left, “you were like my third child,” she says to the interviewer. She is unsure if leaving was the best decision.
Act Three
We return to the conversation between Hilal and Didem over Facetime, back in New York City. This time Didem tells the audience that she believes she made the right decision moving to the United States, that she and her children would not have had the freedom, independence, and opportunities that they did had she chosen otherwise. Despite this conclusion, we hear Didem say she wants to return to Turkey when she’s retired, “I’m accustomed to Turkish culture. I want to live in it,” she says. She also speaks about how lonely she is, but how she has adapted to loneliness, and how her children moving away from her to pursue and build their own lives and careers makes her proud, but only adds to her perpetual longing and loneliness that she hasn’t been able to curb living in the United States for the past 23 years.
Audience
The filmmaker's experience is not a unique one, many first-generation children of immigrants often wonder whether their parents made the right choice. For those who leave home behind in search of building a new one in an unfamiliar place and culture, there is always an undertone of longing compiled with gratitude that are in opposition with each other. Aside from that, everyone struggles with the concept of home, where is it, who is it, and what does it feel like? What is home if not a place, is it a community, the feeling of safety, connection to the culture/landscape? These are the bigger questions that the audience leaves the film with.
Bio
Hilal Bahcetepe is a journalist, writer and filmmaker based in New York City. Upon completing her bachelor's degree at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, she wrote for local and national newspapers in Denver including 303 Magazine, Westword and Hemp Industry Daily covering racial justice in the newly legalized cannabis industry, housing rights and the up-and-coming artists and musicians. While in school to obtain her masters in journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, she completed her first 12 minute short documentary focused on her family’s pursuit of the American dream as part of her final capstone project while also publishing stories for Bushwick Daily and New York City News Service.
As a queer, Middle Eastern and first-generation immigrant from Turkey, Hilal’s goal is to raise more LGBTQ and Middle Eastern voices in the film and journalism industry. She is currently working on a film about the censorship of journalists in Turkey under the current conservative regime, while tying it to the greater, global concerns related to attacks on the press across the world, including in the United States, where Bahcetepe lives and works.
Recommended Citation
Bahcetepe, Hilal and Bahcetepe, Hilal, "A Turkish-American Dream" (2023). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gj_etds/712