Four Themes and a Movie: Searching for Labor and Its Footprints in Cinematography

When analyzing the literature, studies on labor and cinema are seen to have skyrocketed over the last years. Audiences encountered the movie Iftarlik Gazoz, starring Cem Yilmaz and Berat Efe Parlar, in 2016. This study’s ultimate purpose is to analyze the main dynamics that shape the labor markets in Türkiye based on this movie. The movie uses the flashback method to elucidate the dramatic life story of Adem, a successful primary school student, and at the same time to provide significant hints about the life circumstances of the era. The movie takes place in a small Aegean town quite dominated by silent conservatives and involves the political and sociological conditions of the pre-1980s with a fundamental focus on labor markets. Adem’s family does farm labor, and he supports himself with his own labor. He is a hardworking pupil who likes reading. Upon dropping out of primary school in the 5th grade, he went on to work in the summer as an apprentice under Cibar Kemal Usta, the producer of traditional Turkish mineral water. Meanwhile, Adem had been exposed to the socialist indoctrination process by Hasan, the son of the village headman who had abandoned his undergraduate education as a result of student demonstrations. Adem wants to study and learn, and his elder brother, like Hasan, gives him books and works for Adem’s education. After the 1980s military coup, everything turned upside down, and Adem paid the price just like others. The study uses content analysis as its method. As a result of the content analysis, the following four basic themes emerged: the Akhi tradition (master-apprentice relationship), agricultural capitalism and its laborers, trade unionism and labor consciousness, and the conflict between capitalism and socialism. The first section of the study provides information about the literature review. The second section emphasizes the themes, features, and analysis methods in the movie. The last section of the study frames the findings and their analysis that have come to the fore as a result of deciphering the conversations.