Kemal Sevimli

Directed by Suha Arın in 1979, Tahtacı Fatma is one of the earliest documentaries on the ethnic Tahtacı community. In an interview conducted in 1999, Suha Arın mentions that he wished to make a follow-up film that includes updated information about their conditions as he had not been in touch since several years. However, Arın passed away in 2004 without realizing his wish. Why was Arın curious again about a community whom he already worked with twenty years earlier? The 40 Years After Fatma observes the changes which Tahtacıs went through, with the company of documentarists who worked with Suha Arın back in 1979, at their native land.

In 1976, Suha Arin was a tutor at the faculty of Social Sciences of Ankara University at the Press and Publishing Department (today's Communication Faculty). Like many of his films, the documentary "Safranbolu: Reflections of Time" was filmed with the help of a group of enthusiastic students. Safranbolu presents some of the few surviving examples of striking traditional Turkish architecture. The beauty of houses as well as the negative impacts of the passage of time are reflected in the documentary "Safranbolu: Reflections of Time" one of the aims of the film was to raise public awareness of the need for protection for culture and nature.

Midas's World, a documentary depicting Phrygian art and culture, is the second installment in the "Traces of Anatolian Civilizations" series, produced by Suha Arın as a cultural service of the Turkish Touring and Automobile Association. The product of a year of intensive work, the documentary reveals that ancient Greek art and culture, known as the cradle of civilization, are actually rooted in earlier civilizations in Anatolia, particularly the Phrygians. For Midas's World, produced by Suha Arın and four students from Ankara University's School of Press and Broadcasting, all relevant sources, including museums displaying Phrygian artifacts and Phrygian settlements, were individually scrutinized.

The fourth film in the "Traces of Anatolian Civilizations" series, "The Unquenchable Fire of Lycia" consists of two 30-minute episodes. The documentary reflects the Lycian Civilization, another stop in the Anatolian people's civilizational evolution. Indeed, the Lycian Civilization is a "fire" that finds its historical continuity in the Anatolian people's resistance to independence. In a sense, it is a magnificent and unquenchable "fire." During the filming of the film, the Lycian region, located between Antalya and Fethiye, was meticulously scanned step by step in two separate seasons, consulting with expert scientists.