Firat Yücel

documentary maker and editor

Firat Yücel is a documentary maker and an editor who also curates the video series Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema, a subbranch of Altyazı Cinema Association devoted to supporting political film and video makers at risk in Turkey and elsewhere. His editorial and curatorial practice focuses on collective filmmaking and resistance against censorship, while his documentaries tackle themes like exile, surveillance, and right to the city through video-essay, desktop documentary, and biopic, among other forms. 

The research he will carry out during the BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice derives from the questions: Why do we feel obliged to hide auto-censorship? Can we form an alliance of artists claiming exposure of self-censoring in a non-defeatist manner? Can this process help us articulate the political matters which would otherwise stay unspoken? During the fellowship Yücel will work with five film and video makers and investigate the empowering possibilities of exposing auto-censorship. The outcome is envisioned as a video anthology which might evolve into an exhibition.  

Yücel’s latest video, March 8, 2020: A Memoir (2023) was showcased in Go Short, Nijmegen; İstanbul Film Festival, İstanbul; FENDA, Belo Horizonte; Dokufest, Prizren; MakeDox, Skopje; The Bret Llewellyn Art Gallery, Alfred; and Turbulence, Marseille. The latest feature documentary he co-directed with Image Acts Collective, Translating Ulysses received awards at Bloomsday Film Festival, Dublin and FIC.UBA, Buenos Aires. The video series he co-curated, From Below, was screened at Labor Film Festival, İstanbul, 2023. Yücel lives and works in Amsterdam and İstanbul, and is part of the BAK Cell, Utrecht, in the Fellowship for Situated Practice.