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Program Director: Dr. Defne Tüzün
İletişim: dtuzun@khas.edu.tr
About the Program
Master’s Program in Cinema and Television is designed with an innovative approach that goes beyond traditional cinema or television formats, encompassing the diversity of contemporary screen cultures, hybrid genres, interdisciplinary intersections, and new narrative forms. The program focuses on creative production forms where cinema, television, and digital media intersect with fictional and non-fictional narratives, offering a contemporary intellectual and practical foundation for students aiming to approach these fields with critical and theoretical depth. With its sensitivity to borderline areas such as experimental film, documentary, video art, and alternative media, the program emphasizes that visual narration cannot be reduced to fixed categories.
Why KHAS?
Each course in our program offers a learning environment where theoretical perspectives and creative practice feed into each other, mutually deepening thought and production. Students are introduced to contemporary cinema and media theories while developing their own forms of expression through writing, image, sound, and editing. Equipped with critical thinking skills, students have the opportunity to carry out a wide range of work, from research-based projects to creative productions.
Our academic staff consists of a team of experts in both Turkey and internationally, combining theoretical knowledge with production practice and open to interdisciplinary work. This allows students to experience an education that is both sensitive to local contexts and open to global perspectives.
Creative or practice-based research projects developed and carried out within the program allow students to apply their theoretical knowledge in the field. The university’s strong technical infrastructure also supports this process: the Media Lab, equipped with a wide range of equipment, a professional-standard editing studio, and other production areas enable students to carry out their projects in a technically equipped environment.
Academic Staff
Bülent Diken is a Professor in Social and Cultural Theory in the Department of Radio-TV and Cinema at Kadir Has University. His research fields are social theory, political philosophy, urbanism, cinema, and terrorism. His books include The Culture of Exception (co-authored with Carsten B. Laustsen, Routledge, 2005), Nihilism (Routledge, 2009), Revolt, Revolution, Critique (Routledge, 2012), God, Politics, Economy (Routledge, 2015), and The New Despotism. The Revival of an Old Monster (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021). His MA teaching consists of two courses titled Social Theory and Cinema and Sociology.
Defne Tüzün is a faculty member in the Department of Radio, Television and Cinema. Her research interests include film theory and criticism, psychoanalytic theory and narratology. Her work in these fields has been published in academic journals such as Cinej, Critical Arts and Studies in Documentary Film. She teaches courses such as Film Language and Criticism, Screen Theories in the undergraduate program, and Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Cinematic Narration, and Cinema and Philosophy in the graduate program. Tüzün is the coordinator of a research project funded by Turkey’s research council TÜBİTAK titled “Family Fictions in Contemporary Turkish Cinema: Roles, Conflicts and Agreements.”
Elif Akçalı is full-time faculty member at Kadir Has University’s Radio, TV and Cinema Department. She teaches practical and theoretical courses in screen studies within the undergraduate and graduate programmes at KHAS. Her research interests include film style and aesthetics, documentary, experimental and essay film, feminist film theories, gender and audiovisual production, and videographic film studies. Her works have appeared in a variety of journals including Critical Arts, Journal of Film and Video and [in]Transition. She is the co-author, with Özlem Güçlü and Cüneyt Çakırlar, of the book titled Mustang: Translating Willful Youth. She recently completed a two-year research project funded by Turkey’s research council TÜBİTAK titled “Women on Screen and Behind the Camera: A Contemporary Outlook of Representation and Labor of Women in Film and TV Industries in Turkey (2017-2021).” Currently she is involved as a researcher in the “Reviving, Boosting, Optimizing and Transforming European Film Competitiveness – REBOOT” project carried out under the leadership of the University of Vienna within the scope of the European Union HORIZON fund.
Esin Paça Cengiz is a faculty member in the Department of Radio, Television and Cinema and the PhD Program in Gender Studies at Kadir Has University. Her research interests include memory and trauma studies, historical films, feminist cinema, experimental film and video, world cinema, and Turkish cinema. Her work in these areas has been published in academic journals such as Cinema Journal, Rethinking History, Studies in Documentary Film, and the International Journal of Communication. Paça Cengiz is the principal investigator of a TÜBİTAK-funded project titled “Invisible Labor of Women Filmmakers in Front of and Behind the Camera in the Turkish Cinema Industry: 1980–1995.” She teaches FTV 532 History, Cinema and Memory and GEN 616 Gender and Memory in the MA and PhD programs.
Melis Behlil is an Associate Professor at the Radio, Television and Cinema Department at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Turkey. She has been a Visiting Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Research Associate at Stockholm University, and a founding member of European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS). She recently completed a three-year funded project titled “Positioning the Spectator in Cinematic Virtual Reality,” and is currently the country coordinator for the Horizon project “REBOOT: Reviving, Boosting, Optimising and Transforming European Film Competitiveness.” She has published extensively on the contemporary Turkish film and television industry, as well as transnational Hollywood. In the BA program, Behlil teaches Film History, European Cinema, and Virtual Reality courses among others, in the MA program, she offers Film Theories and Documentary: Film and Form. In addition to teaching and other academic duties, she writes film reviews for various publications, co-hosts a weekly radio show, and is a member of the Turkish Film Critics Association and FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics).