ABSTRACT
Old Turkish films, most shot on location in Istanbul, are viewed today across generations with tender regard because they show a city in black-and-white (monochrome), a city that was much poorer and more provincial, a city that is no more. This chapter considers the return of old films and their role in the urban imaginary. It discusses Turkish cinema in the city as an industry broader than, but encompassing, films. The chapter explores the appeal of the medium and black-and-white as a modality of seeing. It examines three feature films from around the beginning of the 1960s that are well known and continue to circulate today. These three films comment on the city's transformation via their characters' conditions and dilemmas of housing. The chapter focuses on one of the films to show how it fictionalized real phenomena in the city, namely new housing developments, infrastructural modernization, and real-estate-speculation-driven corruption.
