MY DUYGU

I met Duygu long before I became acquainted with him. I journeyed in the ships he floated on tiny stages, strolled around in tinsel towns he created with god knows what garbage, rested in his gardens, soaked in the rains he rained... He is someone who breathes life into "two props" with an imagination that goes beyond "desire". With him, our theatre stages stripped from the siege of timber stacks and stretched painted rags, and transformed into magical venues that provoke our imagination. Duygu does not "build" sets , he breathes with the plays... His "sets" are the last step of an unfinished process at the most, even when the play meets the audience, not a "result". Then unexpectedly, the theatre stages lost him. Slipping through the velvet curtain, he united with his secret lover, cinema, to whom he flirted with for a long while as a designer and assistant director. Starting from his first film, Yeşilçam met an aesthete adroitly expressing cloaked emotions with effective camera angles, who made use of shadows as well as light. The titles and contents of his films, which he also wrote, are reflections of his passionate personality: He plunges into "Endless Roads", "(I) Live(s) as (I) Die(s)", "(I) Will Not Forgive", "Loves or Kills!" When he returns to his "fatherland", the theatre following the demise of our cinema under the blows of foreign distributors, it's plastic bottles and things and nylons... He tells of that "new world" with materials that will eventually destroy that world: Not with nostalgia but with sharp criticism. Duygu has not envied being "innovative"; he is straightforwardly "new", his last steps are as devoid of prejudice, as startled and investigative as his first... This must be the reason for his constant "freshness". If you are going to be involved in a common venture with him, beware: He won't have a day's peace, nor will he have you have a day's peace. Be prepared to be incessantly questioned, brutally judged. Don't expect any premeditated gestures. Duygu is not a calculated man. He only knows when to pat you on the back. He is a genuine creator, a genuine man. A great tree that buds every season: It's unpredictable in what colours he would blossom or in which season. Who knows, one day he might be back behind the camera... If only!
- Başar Sabuncu