MEDIT seminar: Mehmet Burak Yilmaz' research on cinematography

B

Burak M. Yilmaz and Pia Tikka are happy to welcome you to the screening of The Squeeze in the SuperNova Kino (N-406), at BFM, Tallinn University on 18.12. at 16:00 After the screening of the 38 min film we will have possibilities for discussions. Burak will join us via online from abroad to discuss his experiences of the filming as an artistic research process. 

The event is organized as a MEDIT seminar, planned as a celebration of completed work that highlights possibilities to conduct doctoral level artistic research at BFM. The seminar is free and open for the audience, so any colleagues, friends, or family you would like to join us for the screening, please invite them as well. The film team will have reserved seats but the rest of the audience are accommodated at the BFM Kino with first come, first served basis.

The Squeeze accompanies a practice-based artistic research project that investigates how handheld camera movement emerges from the cinematographer’s embodied engagement with a scene. The production was structured to prioritize intuitive, moment-to-moment decision-making by working with a script but without storyboards, minimal blocking, and only brief rehearsal. With this project, we aimed to examine how bodily awareness, spatial presence, and affective responsiveness might shape the moving image. Rather than treating camera movement as a purely technical or aesthetic choice, the work examines it as a form of embodied authorship that influences how cinematic meaning and emotional experience are created.

Bio:

Mehmet Burak Yilmaz is a practicing cinematographer and junior researcher at the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School of Tallinn University. His doctoral thesis explores camera movements and cinematographers as embodied meaning-makers. As a cinematographer, he has shot various fictions, documentaries, and commercials in different countries and he is an active member of the professional film industry.