The Beaten Track

March 15 - 31, 2023

Within the scope of the exhibition Istanbuls Today, which opened at Pera Museum in December, the program includes nine film examples from experimental, documentary and fiction genres. The word “uğrak” (the beaten track), which is thought to originate from the Turkish-Mongolian language family, means to stop by and go. The word uğrak, transformed over the years to mean to make a temporary stop and to go frequently, allows us to show the films that transform Istanbul into a place of a haunt.

Until March 31, the program includes Alain Robbe-Grillet's directorial debut The Immortal, in which the static hotel setting of Marienbad is replaced by a magical, surrealistically static Istanbul; Merlyn Solakhan's The City and Tongue Twister, which have rarely been seen in Turkey and which construct Istanbul sometimes as a set, sometimes as a setting, but mostly as the main character of the story; Zombie and the Ghost Train, a tragicomedy directed by Mika Kaurismäki about Zombie, a young musician trying to find a place for himself in a band and in the world; and Maurice Pialat's Turkish Chronicles, a series of five lyrical short films by Maurice Pialat, who traveled to Turkey in 1964 and dedicated himself to the history and people of the country.

Tickets will be available at Biletix and the museum. As per legal regulations, all our screenings are restricted to persons over 18 years of age, unless stated otherwise.

March 15

19:00 Tongue Twister

March 17

19:00 The Immortal

21:00 Zombie and The Ghost Train

March 24

19:30 Turkish Chronicles

21:00 Tongue Twister

March 29

19:00 The City

March 31

19:00 Zombie and The Ghost Train

21:00 Turkish Chronicles

The Immortal

The Immortal

The City

The City

Tongue Twister

Tongue Twister

Zombie and The Ghost Train

Zombie and The Ghost Train

Turkish Chronicles

Turkish Chronicles

Istanbuls Today

Istanbuls Today is a photography exhibition that offers a comprehensive look into contemporary visual narratives from various Istanbuls that are shaped and experienced concurrently with the hope of creating a layered and innovative view of Istanbul's present.

Istanbuls Today

The First Nudes

The First Nudes

Men were the first nudes in Turkish painting. The majority of these paintings were academic studies executed in oil paint; they were part of the education of artists that had finally attained the opportunity to work from the live model. The gender of the models constituted an obstacle in the way of characterizing these paintings as ‘nudes’. 

A Solitary Eagle in the Sinai Desert

A Solitary Eagle in the Sinai Desert

John Frederick Lewis is considered one of the most important British Orientalist artists of the Victorian era. Pera Museum exhibited several of Lewis’ paintings as part of the Lure of the East exhibition in 2008 organized in collaboration with Tate Britain.

The adventure of the Big ‘K’

The adventure of the Big ‘K’

In a bid to review the International System of Units (SI), the International Bureau of Weights and Measures gathered at the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures on November 16, 2018. Sixty member states have voted for changing four out of seven basic units of measurement. The kilogram is among the modified. Before describing the key points, let us have a closer look into the kilogram and its history.