A pioneer walked to her Lord: Ayse Sasa. She was not only a good scenarist. She was also a film veteran and a pioneer who led the way for the young and bright generations.
Ayse Sasa was an epitome personality who showed us the way how to overcome the trauma Turkey went under. Sasa was a person who felt the trauma in her deepest veins, which had turned into a cultural schizophrenia back then, desiccated the spiritual roots of this country, and eroded its cultural and artistic world.
She was such a deep thinker that she went under the radical metamorphosis of the cultural and artistic life style. At the same time, she was pondering about how to realize the simple but also deep legacy of our spiritual civilization.
Just like every unique thinker, she wrote Turkish in a poetic form. Whether it"s her Turkish movie notion with her milestone book "Yesilçam Diary" or in other narratives, this poetic form of hers is visible in all aspects of her language.
Ayse Sasa"s poetry was such that would make the life take wings.
Sasa felt the agony of idea, being and existence in its innermost sense. She paid the costly price for embracing the truth. Our Lord treated us with mercy, hence Sasa grasped the Islamic idea, art and life firmly and by appreciating it, she infiltrated into its world successfully.
She knew how to guzzle from the river of the truth and never hesitated to share enthusiastically the tastes of what she collected from that river with young and bright generations.
For me Sasa is the one who experienced the ebbs and flows of simplicity and depth in every moment with love and ecstasy. She was a loudly flowing river of the truth that never stopped. She was a dervish who collected fresh fruit from the garden of the truth and constantly offered them to her surrounding with a "nobly childish spirit".
For me, Sasa was someone through her expeditions to the innermost Sufism showed how to embrace the refreshing and awaking spirit roots not only of our cinema but our ideas and art life. She was a revolutionary explorer and a pioneer who made journeys to the undiscovered continents and made insatiable discoveries, which opened the way to others.
Ayse Sasa was a milestone for the movie notion in Turkey. The history of cinema in Turkey can only be understood and written within two folds, both in the sense of movie notion and history of cinema, as before Ayse Sasa and after her.
That is why Ayse Sase is a milestone both in making, writing of the Turkish cinema and the adventure of the Turkish movies idea.
Ayse Sasa is a milestone for being a pioneer author and film veteran who laid the foundation of the cinematic and intellectual aura. She built a movie language essential to Turkey as a gift to the world.
In this country, whether it"s the movie producer or an intellectual pondering about cinema, the influence and contributions of Ayse Sasa is undeniable. She is the master of our generation who produces cinema and contemplate over cinema. At the same, she is the master of the generation who contemplates, writes and talks about the questions of art, life and ideas from a viewpoint of civilization by reading it through cinema. Ayse Sasa has great endeavor and influence on this generation.
Ayse Sasa"s book "Yesilçam Diary" which was compiled from her published articles in Dergah Journal. Yesilçam Diary is a masterpiece which covers the intellectual questions of our worlds of ideas and generally all art fields especially cinema. The book also involves topics such as movie esthetics, movie language; esthetical, cultural, intellectual sources and fundamentals of cinema as a gift to the world.
Ayse Sasa"s work is the first and last work as a guidance book for someone who ponders about cinema. As soon as the reader picks it up, he or she will be glued to it. It is such an absorbing one.
Is it only addressing thinkers and authors of cinema? Of course not. Yesilçam Diary is the reference book for cinema producers, too. Sasa"s is a guidance book, which deals with the intellectual, esthetical problems of Turkish and the global cinema using a concise, impeccable Turkish in an attractive way. It discusses movies and cinema movements from their cinematic, esthetic, perceptional forms.
Ayse Sasa was a thorough sage and dervish.
Her objective was not only thinking and writing. She never hesitated one moment to act with the deep and heavy responsibility of her intellectual transformation process. She was the person who would access to you from every part of the world through the phone line. She would show you a way through the ivory towers by her "voice" or "breath". She would open the way and lead it through. She would guide countless number of people and shake the minds in a medium of chaotic people. She would make them concerned and lose their sleep with her thoughts. She would take it as a task for herself as she was a contemporaneous sage and dervish.
In short, Sasa was a sensitive, enthusiastic person. She was a woman of love, sufferer for the truth. For me, she was the heavenly flower, which would nourish and raise the future time.
I will always feel Sasa"s absence in my heart. Ayse Sasa was an irreplaceable person and a rare flower. We should treat this flower of the truth like the pupil of our eye, grow, take care of it, and present it as a gift to our future generations.
Thus, I will dedicate my work "the Medinan Illuminations" to her which is still being cooked and for the sake of which I had to postpone my theoretical journeys, conceptualizations on movie philosophy, communication philosophy and others, applying an attentive preparation and an enormous special care. I told her about this when she was alive. She was extremely glad to hear that. I am thinking one of the ways to pay my/our debt to her would be that. May Allah show mercy on sister Ayse and revive her with his noble servants. May Allah make her rest in heaven.
