Cinema and Ethics Symposium Held

The Cinema and Ethics Symposium, organized by the Department of Cinema and Digital Media and the Department of New Media and Communication at Izmir University of Economics, was held on Friday, May 15, 2026, at the university’s Balçova Campus.

The symposium consisted of two panels focusing on the intersections of cinema, ethics, and philosophy. The first panel, moderated by Ahmet Gürata, featured presentations by Mehmet Şiray from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Özgür Gürsoy from Izmir University of Economics, and Çiğdem Yazıcı from Üsküdar University.

In the first panel, Mehmet Şiray presented a paper titled “Thought as a Form of Life: The Representation of the Philosophical Subject in the Documentary Derrida (2002).” Özgür Gürsoy gave a talk titled “As Rough as the Pain Cannot Be Contained: Cinema, Philosophy and the Limits of Ethical Perception,” while Çiğdem Yazıcı presented “When 12 Angry Men Meets Ethical Logic…”

The second panel, moderated by Özgür Gürsoy, included presentations by Zeynep Talay Turner from Bilgi University, Emre Koyuncu from Ankara University, and Şerkan Şavk, Aysun Akan, and Burcu Saraçoğlu from Izmir University of Economics.

In this session, Zeynep Talay Turner presented “The Silence of the Gaze: Animal, Ethics and Cinema.” Emre Koyuncu gave a talk titled “Herzog’s Claws of Love: Timothy Treadwell on the Borderline between Animality and Admiration.” Şerkan Şavk, Aysun Akan, and Burcu Saraçoğlu presented “Don’t Invest in Feeding! Animals in Yeşilçam between Commodification, Unregistration, Violence and Compassion.”

Bringing together scholars from different universities, the symposium offered a space to discuss cinema through ethical, philosophical, and aesthetic questions.