Invisible to the Eye

Director: Zeynep Dadak
Turkey, Germany, 2020, 84’
Turkish with English subtitles

Inspired by Istanbul-born Armenian intellectual Eremya Celebi Komurciyan’s travel diaries from the 17th century, Invisible to the Eye traces this particular itinerary in today’s Istanbul. In his book titled History of Istanbul: Istanbul in the Seventeenth Century, Komurciyan talks to the reader as if he has a camera in hand. When we translate his ‘cinematic eye’ to a contemporary setting, there emerges an endless path on to the multifaceted visual history of this long-standing city. Emulating Komurciyan’s book, the film is composed of eight episodes. Integrating various types of narrative forms, shooting formats and narrational moods, the camera follows a person in a yellow coat and becomes his ‘eye’. The emphasis is always on how we literally ‘see’ the city through a compilation of stories, myths and architectural texture that have accumulated over centuries. Tracing continuities as well as ruptures in places, people and stories, we reimagine a cosmopolitan Istanbul.