Elif Koyutürk — Filmmaking, Resilience, and a Vanishing Way of Life

**Elif Koyutürk** (0:01)
My first lens that I bought was 23 euros from a bazaar that had fungi in it, you know, mushrooms, because it wasn't in a good condition. I used that lens for seven to eight years. I won all my awards with those photographs and whatever.
I want to tell people that nothing is technical. Technique is really important, yes, but it's your heart that however you want to see it is the most important thing.

**Ed Roberson** (0:28)
This is the Mountain and Prairie Podcast. I'm Ed Roberson.
My guest today is Elif Koyutürk. Elif is a filmmaker, photographer, and all-around artist originally from Istanbul, now based in Bend, Oregon. Elif works across many mediums, photography, poetry, film, and more. But the through line in everything she does is a drive to make people feel a story, not just read the facts of it. She brings a rare kind of power and passion to her work, and it's clear that her connection to land and place isn't just a subject, it's personal. Like so many fascinating people I talked to on this podcast, her path was not a straight line. She grew up between the massive city of Istanbul and her family's farm, raised by journalist parents and a house full of grandmothers, steeped in Anatolian tradition. She taught herself photography using a camera with a moldy second-hand 23-euro lens and won international awards with it, long before she ever touched professional high-dollar gear. From there, she talked her way on to a Red Bull film crew in a hotel lobby, worked in Austria, and eventually landed in Los Angeles with one suitcase and no contacts on what's called an extraordinary ability visa. In this conversation, we get into all of it. Her childhood in Istanbul, her creative process, and her synesthesia, and how she built a career from nothing through sheer resourcefulness and energy.
We also spend a lot of time on her new film, Guardians of Anatolia, which premiered at Telluride Mountainfilm, and follows a female-led nomadic tribe in Turkey's Taurus Mountains, as they fight to hold on to a 9,000-year-old matriarchal way of life against modern water and land pressures. I know you'll enjoy this one, as it hits on so many of the topics I enjoy talking about here on this podcast. Art, conservation, agriculture, creativity, and hard work. But with an international perspective that's now rooted here in the American West. As always, Mountain and Prairie is listener-supported via Patreon, with additional generous support from the Freeflow Institute, The Nature Conservancy in Colorado, and The Well Done Foundation.
And with that, here's my conversation with Elif Koyutürk.
Alright, I was saying before we started recording that we were at Mountain Film together. We were supposed to meet up. And I saw you a few times when I was walking around town. But every time I saw you, you had like a mob of people around you. And I did not want to get in the middle of all that and mess up any opportunities that you might have been finding. And so here we are connecting via the internet. But I'm really excited to chat with you because obviously I'm a fan of your work. But even more importantly, I'm a fan of how you do things. And you just seem to bring such power to everything you do and such passion. And so I got a lot to learn from you. So thank you very much for taking the time.
Could we just start out? I mean, we could talk about your childhood for an hour and a half, two hours straight. But I'd love to get an overview and have the listeners understand where you grew up, how you grew up, and just set the stage as to you as a small child. Can you talk about that a bit?

**Elif Koyutürk** (3:52)
Thank you so much for all the things.
I grew up in Istanbul. It's like 23 million people lives in that city. It's a fusion of history and cultures and civilizations that lived in there.
I was growing up in such a mosaic of humans and characters and stories. And I grew up a little bit in the city and a little bit in our farm that we owned with my family. So I was very close to the soil, but also very close to the city life. And I have a really big family. It's like 17 people with the big family.
We are big cooks. So every week, three times a week, we'll all come together. It's like Christmas, and we'll cook together. And there has been so much stories that have been shared in that tables about mostly about politics and the farm, and as well as like, you know, our future. And I come from mom and dad being a journalist. I grew up with so many cameras and kind of like stories around me. So it's kind of urged me to I want to do this too. I want to tell stories of people. And I am a big grandma lover. Like I grew up with my grandmas and my mom. Like we are very much a matriarch. And just having to listen to their stories and learning our ornaments and adornments of Turkic cultures, of Anatolia, has been really had a big like impression as Elif. That was little child Elif. It was very hyperactive, had three heart surgeries. It was also a very sick child. But at the same time, you know, I love dogs. And we turned our farm into a dog rescue with 72 dogs at the end.