Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Monica Vitti, Paolo Bonacelli, Franco Branciaroli
Italy, 129’, 1981, color
Italian with Turkish subtitles
Intrigued by the possibilities presented by the then-new format of video, Antonioni made this experimental work, based on the Jean Cocteau drama The Two-Headed Eagle and starring a regal Monica Vitti. “Respect the etiquette, the ceremonial,” notes a somber character in the story of a queen, trapped in self-exile in a crumbling castle, and the poet/assassin she falls in love with. At times Antonioni stays true to this injunction, lovingly dwelling on every impossibly decorative costume, set, and theatrical pronouncement as if paying homage to his compatriot Visconti. At other times, as if expressing the longings of Vitti’s queen, Antonioni willfully destabilizes the narrative ceremony, using his new technological tools to experiment with color shifts, foregrounded imagery, and other dizzying visual techniques. For Antonioni, video represented “a new world of cinema . . . using color as a narrative, poetic means . . . with absolute faithfulness, or, if so desired, with absolute falseness.”
The Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation’s Orientalist Painting Collection includes two children’s portraits that are often featured in exhibitions on the second floor of the Pera Museum. These portraits both date back to the early 20th century, and were made four years apart. One depicts Prince Abdürrahim Efendi, son of Sultan Abdulhamid II, while the figure portrayed on the other is Nazlı, the daughter of Osman Hamdi Bey.
Pera Museum presents an exhibition of French artist Félix Ziem, one of the most original landscape painters of the 19th century. The exhibition Wanderer on the Sea of Light presents Ziem as an artist who left his mark on 19th century painting and who is mostly known for his paintings of Istanbul and Venice, where the city and the sea are intertwined.
Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 - 19:00
Friday 10:00 - 22:00
Sunday 12:00 - 18:00
The museum is closed on Mondays.
On Wednesdays, the students can
visit the museum free of admission.
Full ticket: 200 TL
Discounted: 100 TL
Groups: 150 TL (minimum 10 people)