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The Sound of Fatih Akın’s Cinema: Polyphony and the Aesthetics of Heterogeneity in The Edge of Heaven
- German Studies Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 37, Number 2, May 2014
- pp. 337-356
- 10.1353/gsr.2014.0073
- Article
- Additional Information
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Fatih Akın’s film sound (music/dialogue) highlights his aesthetic imagination of a diverse Europe. One means by which this is achieved is through Akın’s collaboration with DJ Shantel. Using examples from Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven, 2007), I argue that Akın’s linguistic and musical soundtrack invites the moviegoer to aesthetically experience a heterogeneous European polyphony. Shantel’s dubbed/remixed music from North, South, and East European regions, as well as the various languages, dialects, and accents of the filmic characters testify to both a filmic normalization of multilingualism and musical heterogeneity, and even to a connection between different (film) histories.