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The study examines how early cinema influenced public visibility and spectatorship frameworks in Istanbul.

March 26, 2026

Early Film Cultures in İstanbul: Torn Is the Curtain

Key Points

The study examines how early cinema influenced public visibility and spectatorship frameworks in Istanbul.
Archival and historical analysis of cinema cultures in Istanbul
Review of visual publicity and spectatorship literature
Exploration of gendered structures within the public sphere
Highlights how access to visual experiences was organized historically
Unpacks the gendered nature of early film spectatorship
Sheds light on the relationship between cinema and social regulation in Istanbul's public sphere

Abstract

ABSTRACT This perspective engages with Torn Is the Curtain: Early Film Cultures in Istanbul as a work that enables a rethinking of publicity, visibility, and regimes of witnessing through early cinema cultures. Rather than approaching the book as a case limited to Istanbul or Turkey, it situates Balan's study in dialogue with a broader historical–sociological literature that conceptualizes early cinema through visual publicity, spectatorship, and social regulation. Developed around the metaphor of the curtain, Balan's archival and historical analysis makes visible how the public sphere was constituted from the late Ottoman period to the early Republic, how access to visual experience was organized, and how spectatorship was structured in gendered ways.

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