The long and arduous journey of women on screen in Turkey

Summer time is the time for confusion in movie theaters. Among the Hollywood blockbusters and anticipated indie films finally finding release dates after months are the low-budget, low-key Turkish films. One of this week's Turkish releases is O?uz Gözen's "Ya?murlu Gecede: Gülperi" (On a Rainy Night: Gülperi), a film set to bring back to screen the olden stereotypes of women in Turkish cinema.

The film follows two female protagonists, one abandoning her baby to go abroad to become a singer and another working the shifts at a night club, eventually quitting her job to raise the baby in question. Motherhood and working the night clubs, here, are juxtaposed against one another, with each woman punished or rewarded depending on the path they choose.

Female actors and female characters have come a long way in Turkish cinema, finding their unique and multiple voices despite the occasional setbacks. Here is a look at women's journey on screen, from male actors playing female characters a century ago to the rich spectrum of female characters in recent history played, well, by female actors.

If this was the 1910s, the two women in "Ya?murlu Gecede: Gülperi" would be played by men, and if it was the 1920s, they would be played either by Armenian or Russian women. In the brief transition period between the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the new Turkish Republic, cinema was perceived as a sacrilegious art form in which Muslim women weren't allowed to take part.

Cahide Sonku, the first screen goddess

For the decade leading up to the 1920s, female characters were portrayed by men, and later by non-Muslim women, mostly Armenians or Russians. The female half of the first onscreen kiss in Turkish cinema was Madam Kalitea, a non-Muslim...