Miniature as a Representational Logic in Derviş Zaim’s Waiting for Heaven: Time, Space, and Gaze

that it brings multiple viewpoints together on a shared surface. Rather than foregrounding an illusion of depth, it configures space as a layered arrangement and organizes temporality not along a strictly chronological axis, but through the relation of adjacent moments. In this sense, miniature can be understood as a distinctive representational logic that reshapes both vision and the perception of time and space.The emergence of cinema in the late nineteenth century introduced a medium that, while retaining important traces of Renaissance perspectival logic through its relation to painting, theatre, and photography, also developed framing and editing strategies that loosened that logic. The coexistence of multiple spatial planes in miniature painting, together with its distributed sense of temporality, offers a useful comparative framework for thinking about non-linear and surface-oriented constructions of cinematic time and space.This article examines the possibilities that Ottoman miniature aesthetics open up for alternative constructions of time, space, and gaze in cinema through Derviş Zaim’s Waiting for Heaven (Cenneti Beklerken). In the film, miniature is treated not merely as a historical backdrop or thematic reference, but as a representational logic that shapes the visual and spatiotemporal organization of the narrative. The analysis employs a four-axis model inspired by Roland Barthes’s multi-layered account of meaning, focusing on the visual plane, spatiotemporal organization, spectatorial position, and cultural-ideological meaning. It argues that miniature aesthetics operate in the film as a structuring principle that reorganizes framing, spatiotemporal organization, and spectatorial position, rather than as a merely decorative visual motif.