ABOUT US

Z-1 Film Atölyesi was founded in 1995 by Yavuz Özkan and Aycan Çetin, as a continuation of Z Film, the production company of many national and international award-winning films founded by Yavuz Özkan in 1988.

Atölye opened a fee-free cinema school with a staff of 33 people consisting of cinema masters, artists, academics, philosophers, literary figures, communicators and industry professionals.

A cinema magazine called “Atölye” was published together with the students.

Educational activities at the Z-1 Film Atölyesi continued with lecturers invited from “New York Tisch School of Arts”, “Lodz Film, Television and Theater School”, “Hungarian Academy of Drama, Film and TV” and “Royal Shakespeare Company”.

Atölye gave production support to filmmakers who were going to shoot their first movie. The main ones are “On Board“, “A Madonna in Laleli” and “Leopard’s Tail“.

“Atölye” organized public talks and discussion programs on art, history, and politics, called “Saturday Talks” at Beyoğlu Küçük Sahne. Additionally, in each interview, short films made with the students on the subject were shown.

And also feature films, documentaries, short films, promotional, commercial and educational films were produced by “Atölye”. These films were released at many national and international festivals and TV channels, received awards, and were released in many countries.

In 2009, Yavuz Özkan made an adaptation for the screen from Howard Zinn’s theatre play “Marx in Soho”. After correspondences with Howard Zinn, he received the screenplay rights from him. Work on the project continued until 2012 as a Turkish-French-German-US co-production, but it had to be postponed for a while due to the size of the budget.

Özkan completed the feature film script called “LEGEND“, which he has been working on since 2010, in 2018 and received film production support from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey.

Yavuz Özkan, our master, passed away in May 2019 while he was preparing for the shooting.

At the end of 2019, with the suggestion of Eskişehir, Tepebaşı Municipality, Atölye organized the “Yavuz Özkan Exhibition” in his memory at the opening of the “Art and Life Center”.

The 70-year-old 35 mm editing table, which Yavuz Özkan loved very much and bought for the cinema school, where the filmmakers who made their first films worked, was donated to the Istanbul Cinema Museum, which was opened the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey in 2021, to be exhibited in memory of Yavuz Özkan. 

We continue our efforts with sensitivity to realize the unfinished movie “LEGEND”, which Yavuz Özkan passed away before it could start shooting, as a testament project and cultural heritage.

On the other hand, we see it as a responsibility to leave a note in history by documenting a period, the production of this period and the method of struggle by transferring the 36-year-old institutional “Archive of Z 1 Film Atölyesi” and “the Yavuz Özkan Archive”, who spent 58 years of his 77-year life in struggle for sake of art, culture and labour.

Detailed information about the international IASA Conference held in Istanbul in September 2023, which we see as an important step towards this goal, and the workshop we attended, is available on the News page.

Our preliminary work continues to produce a documentary book and a documentary film.

CONTACT:

E-mail: z1filmatolyesi@z1filmatolyesi.com

cetinaycan@gmail.com

YouTube: Z-1 FİLM ATÖLYESİ