Artist and filmmaker Nazli Dinçel makes fierce, intimate, visceral, vulnerable, provocative films. Viewing the physical qualities of celluloid as an extension of their body, using handmade processes and working frame-by-frame, Dinçel combines lush, tactile images with a rigorous approach to structure and an emphasis on spoken language. They embed words, often as fractured and “imperfect” etched text, removing the emulsion by hammering, scratching, letter-punching and sewing, all with the mark of the hand. Dinçel examines complex relations between body, desire, sex, flesh, language, images, and filmmaking itself with both lightness and intensity. In addition to working with the photochemical medium, they introduce video, weaving, installation and extended performance into their practice, considering different media as disparate tools for a multiplicity of mind. Aware of the risks and threats to the lives of real bodies, they have developed an ethical and theoretical practice; with an unafraid eye and explicit erotics which refuse to be silenced, a fiercely political position quietly permeates their poetic practice.

photo by Viktorsha Uliyanova