Where Do You Draw the Line? - Talks and Workshop Program
Workshop: "Video-Essay Workshop: Women in Cinema"
Time: 17.00 – 19.00
Workshop faciliators : Ayça Çiftçi & Elif Akçalı
Is it possible to reconstruct the image of women in cinema through film editing, to reveal what representation conceals and to free female characters from the boundaries that confine them?
In this workshop, we will bring together our political imagination with creative montage techniques, using the video-essay form as an act of criticism, resistance, and solidarity. Throughout the workshop, we will work with found footage and produce together. Found footage will be provided by the workshop facilitators. Only basic knowledge of programming (via computer or phone applications) is required to participate.
Ayça Çiftçi, is a faculty member in the Cinema Department at Istanbul Bilgi University. Teaches courses in creative documentary production, urban filmmaking, video essay, and film grammar. After completing her BA in Cinema and MA in Cultural Studies, she earned her PhD in Media Arts from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2015. She has taught various theoretical and practical courses in the field of cinema at different universities and institutions and has advised on numerous short film projects. Her short films Bir Yazdan İzlenimler and O Sırada Henüz, which she directed, have been screened at various platforms such as Istanbul FF, Ankara FF, Istanbul Modern, Documentarist, Cologne Tupischturkish Film Festival, and Berlin HIVE Short Film Days. Her feature-length fiction project Saadet, currently in development, won a prize at Meetings on the Bridge. She has been a writer and member of the editorial board of Altyazı Cinema Magazine since 2006.
Elif Akçalı, completed her PhD in Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2014. Since 2015, she has been a faculty member in the Radio, TV, and Cinema Department at Kadir Has University. In addition to teaching editing practice courses, she teaches various theoretical courses on cinema and audiovisual media. Her research interests include film style and aesthetics, documentary and experimental film, gender in cinema, and videographic film studies. Her articles have been published in various journals, including Studies in Documentary Film, Journal of Film and Video, and [in]Transition. The book Mustang: Translating Willful Youth, co-authored with Özlem Güçlü and Cüneyt Çakırlar, was published in 2022. She led the TÜBİTAK project titled “Women on Turkish Screens and Behind the Camera: The Current Image of Representation and Labor (2017-2021).” She is currently a researcher in the ongoing “Reviving, Boosting, Optimising and Transforming European Film Competitiveness – REBOOT” project, led by the University of Vienna under the European Union HORIZON fund.
* The event will take place at Kadir Has University / B 401. Entrances will be through Door D.
* You can register for this talk by clicking the “Register” button on the page and receive your free event ticket. Registrations will open five days before the event (on October 27, 2025, at 5:00 PM), at which time the “Register” button will become visible. The event is free of charge and limited to 20 participants. You can access other events within the program through the “Full Program” button on the page.