Sis Gurdal

European artists who traveled to the Middle East in the 16th and 17th centuries captured women of the Ottoman Harems as highly eroticized, living lives of uninterrupted pleasure. These women were an embodiment of the Orient, mystery and of sexual license. These paintings do not accurately represent the Middle Eastern woman, but rather the Western man's fantasy of the “Oriental” female; a morally judgmental, yet-still-eroticized image. This film is a modern and reformed postcard of the Eastern woman, represented by the Western male. It’s a critique of the colonial gaze, focusing on her place, space, and subjectivity.