From Stage to Screen: Intermediality and Gender Performance in Queen Lear

Authors : Cansu Yılmaz

Pages : 130-153

Doi:10.59597/akademikaci.1796110

View : 120 | Download : 245

Publication Date : 2025-10-27

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Intermediality has become one of the most significant concepts in contemporary film and media studies, highlighting the ways cinema negotiates its borders with other art forms. Pelin Esmer’s Queen Lear (2019) exemplifies this negotiation by bringing Shakespeare’s canonical tragedy into dialogue with the lived experiences of five women from the Toros Mountains. At once a documentary, a record of performance, and a cinematic re-imagining, the film becomes a space where theatre and cinema intersect, overlap, and reconfigure one another. This article explores the film as a case of cinematic intermediality, tracing how Esmer’s camera reshapes theatrical performance through framing, montage, and sound, while simultaneously opening new horizons of meaning. Yet Queen Lear is not only about intermedial crossings; it is also about how gender itself is performed, embodied, and contested. Drawing on Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, the article examines how the women’s staging of King Lear produces a double performance: enacting Shakespeare’s characters while voicing their own stories of labor, struggle, and resilience. In this sense, Esmer’s film does not merely adapt Shakespeare but re-visions him from the margins, offering a feminist intervention that destabilizes cultural hierarchies and reframes tragedy through local and collective voices. Ultimately, Queen Lear demonstrates the transformative potential of cinema as both a medium of intermediality and a site of gendered resistance.
Keywords : sinemasal medyalararasılık, toplumsal cinsiyet performansı, Shakespeare uyarlaması, performatif belgesel, film çalışmaları

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