Orhan Pamuk

"One must keep hold of the creative and irresponsible child within oneself" he repeated in the numerous interviews he had been giving for several months, after the recognition conferred by the Nobel Academy with the award of the Prize for Literature. Orhan Pamuk has cultivated this silent inner child in order to invent an imaginary world of astounding richness, shared by readers all over the globe.

Over the course of his novels, the Turkish author, originally from Istanbul, has painted images of his city and of his country. He has thus become a formidable storyteller of the city of the Bosphorus. His writing, extremely visual, is often structured in the manner of film sequences. We move from one character to another just as a camera would do, following different stories told in parallel. Orhan Pamuk, the lonely boy for whom "daydreaming is an eccentricity particular to himself", gives life, in a nostalgic way, to scenes of his town, inheritor of the collapsed empire. In his youth, Orhan wanted to become a painter. His family saw in him a genius. But in the end he preferred to evoke colours through words, through pages. Pamuk works in the same way as a miniaturist painter. "The miniature does not show what the eyes see, but what the soul sees", he says mysteriously. For the author of The New Life, a writer must unveil what nobody can comprehend. From this perspective, words are to literature what colours are to painting. This approach, so detailed and meticulous, throws light on the fates of his protagonists depending on the mood of the writer, sometimes dark and melancholic, sometimes light and jovial.

As cinematographic as it is, the Nobel Prize-winning work has strangely not yet been adapted for the big screen. In 1991 Pamuk had written a script for the director Ömer Kavur, which resulted in the film The Secret Face, his only experience in cinema so far. The situation could soon change. Leading figure of Turkish cinema Nuri Bilge Ceylan (who was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2003 with Uzak), who until now has tended to control the creative process of his films from the writing right up until the editing, has declared his close interest in Pamuk’s work. It is rumoured that the director of Climates could adapt Snow… Thus, thanks to his sharp eye and the painter hidden within him, this personality and ardent cinéphile has been invited to judge the 22 films in competition this year. It is a tradition of the festival to welcome literary masters in its jury, Nobel Prize-winning or not. André Maurois was twice juror in the 50s. One could equally cite the Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias (another Nobel Prize-winner) in the 70s, the famous Columbian Gabriel García Márquez in 1982, or the American Toni Morisson in 2005.

This year for the 60th edition of the Cannes Festival, who amongst President Stephen Frears, jurors Maggie Cheung, Toni Collette, Maria De Medeiros, Sarah Polley, Marco Bellocchio, Michel Piccoli, and Abderrahmane Sissako, will have taken the trouble - richly rewarding - to discover the universe of their colleague before their trip to Cannes ? Orhan Pamuk, the genius child, the child who writes, accompanies us in this festival. Let’s hope that the prize list will know how to cultivate a bit of irresponsibility like he does !

Azra Deniz Okyay