Cinematic Re/Presentation of the New Winter Leisure Activity and its Accommodation Settings and Venues at Turkey’s Mount Uludağ (1950s-1980s)

ABSTRACT Mount Uludağ provided romantic and dramatic settings for storytelling in Yeşilçam, the main moving picture industry of Turkey during the twentieth century. Consequently, Yeşilçam productions became tools to archive historical data, not only of the natural and the built environment of this new winter leisure, but also the socio-cultural profile of a society, and its expectations from winter accommodation/entertainment. This study thus aims to understand the settings and venues of Mount Uludağ during the 1950s-1980s by using Yeşilçam’s productions to evaluate the built environment, architectural settings and venues, accommodation culture, and the architectural characteristics of the hotels/resorts with their formal appearances, interior spaces, décors, and amenities. As the aim is to focalize the human factor in its social-cultural environment, it is an analysis of the re/presentation and an attempt to scrutinize and question Yeşilçam’s approach to this new culture as an “appraisal/advertisement” or a “criticism/warning.”