"Yoel Meranda's films are quests for alternate ways of seeing. In 'straitscaping', a quivering panning shot captured during a sunset ferry trip across the Bosphorus complicates our sense of horizon and distance. In 'not be or...', a whiplash montage of Istanbul's urban imagery leaves impressions of windows, street signs and trees, all with an amber hue reminiscent of the sun through closed eyelids. A playful, alien spot of luminescence invites the viewer out onto the streets of Istanbul in 'ascents in february', while 'rauscht' dissects a politician's appearance on television into strangely beautiful grains."
- Kate Lawrie Van de Ven, in the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival catalogue

"The videos of Yoel Meranda (now living in his native Turkey) are dark, fleeting, and obscure. They push at the edges of perception and legibility. He makes works of gnarly abstraction and agitated movement. When he momentarily steps away from this approach and presents a decipherable landscape, it's jolting and tumultuous."
- Josh Mabe about the After Image show at the Chicago Filmmakers

"Yoel Meranda indulges a fascination with color in his extraordinary abstraction océanéant : fields of translucent reds gather upon themselves until they seem to congeal into something with mass, weight, and texture."
- Fred Camper

"Such indulgences have only been carried forward with his recent videos; we are given set-ups that over time are complicated by the introduction of sudden and frantic new rhythms, accelerated enlargements of a recurring flash of digital color, darkening digital blacks, closures of what was until then a full view, sometimes distancing us from the beautiful, trying to earn it."
- Ekrem Serdar

"Two abstract videos by Yoel Meranda play with horizons and perspective and digital grain and the limits of computer color respectively."
- Josh Mabe on "tiempo prudente" and "océanéant"

"a bunch of little cine-poems, cityscapes in digital close-up, with terrific little rhythms and cuts that made you aware of lengths beyond their own. They remain my favorite Istanbul movies."
- Ekrem Serdar on my "Diary 2006" videos

"In Yoel Meranda's bsorb, a turquoise orb and the surrounding orange make for a stunning contrast, but the aggressive colors are also wildly unstable, with fuzzy shapes blurring and dissolving."
- Fred Camper

"(...) carefully edited to suggest a space larger than is shown."
- Fred Camper on 'anıtkabir'

"Moonalphabet by Yoel Meranda is a simple but clever exercise exploring both texture and the figuration of shapes;"
- Bill Mousoulis

"A disorienting rapid montage of images of landscape recreates the feeling of speed."
- Kim Knowles writing about 'highway screening' on the 2011 Edinburgh Film Festival program

"a video artist who makes subtle tiny abstractions, (...)"
- Josh Mabe

"Shortest film at #TIFF10: Yoel Meranda's straightscaping, running a mere 20 seconds (program book rounds up). The future is here!"
- a tweet by Peter Howell

"Turkey’s Yoel Meranda points low-tech cameras out car windows and captures alluring abstractions. His “moon-alphabet” grabs lunar glyphs. Ranging from one to four minutes, these are dense, nuanced glances of passing scenery."
- Bill Stamets writing about the Onion City 2011 screening on Chicago Sun-Times

"Turkish video artist Yoel Meranda presents five masterful short videos that explore the moon, the side of the road, animal life, and architecture through various means of abstraction."
- Josh Mabe on the Onion City 2011 screening

Awards:

- Honorable Mention at the 2011 Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival for
• moonalphabet
• highway keying
• highway screening
• a dream of horses
• anıtkabir

Past Screenings :

2011 SPONECK!! Küçük Sinemalar Deneysel Sinema Gösterimi (İstanbul)
• the gates of hell
• antalya dolmuşu
• HIGHWAY KEYING
• try an' duck
• scontro
• tarsus st. paul kilisesi

2011 Onion City Film & Video Festival (Chicago)
• moonalphabet
• highway keying
• highway screening
• a dream of horses
• anıtkabir

2011 Edinburgh International Film Festival - Experimental
• highway screening

2011 Ankara International Film Festival - National Short Film Competition - Experimental
• highway screening

2011 !f Istanbul & Ankara - Special Screenings - For Your Own Good
• saldım çayıra...

2011 Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo) - Küçük Sinemalar! Experimental Cinema from Turkey
• océanéant
• straitscaping
• electric lights near büyükada
• moonalphabet

2010 Thessaloniki International Film Festival - Last Year's Resolutions
• moonalphabet

2010 Chicago Filmmakers - After Image
• otoku
• monogatari
• ÎLE DE RÉ
• whirling
• inscrivere
• videotext
• turquoise
• the gates of hell
• göcek'te bir örümcek
• downwards
• liquid
• ascents in february
• Aber die Horen...
• rauscht
• Tuzla'da Yaz Fırtınası
• strings
• straitscaping
• bozburun contrasts

2010 Toronto International Film Festival - City to City: Istanbul
• not be or...
• ascents in february
• rauscht
• straitscaping

2010 White Box Gallery (New York) - Stirrings Still
• Television

2010 Galatasaray University Culture & Art Center (Istanbul) - Bizim Gözümüzden
• tiempo prudente
• hmmm…
• intrinsic
• Television
• fraqnc
• louis XIV
• Aber die Horen…
• Alice
• None They Say Have I
• rainbow-wall
• En la playa de Barcelona
• 3:30
• story board
• rauscht
• emily & charlotte
• océanéant
• il mio viaggio in italia

2010 Onion City Film & Video Festival (Chicago)
• india
• inscrivere
• firewaters
• bsorb

2009 Pera Museum (Istanbul) - Biçimsizler / The Shapeless
• tiempo prudente
• océanéant
• fraqnc
• story board
• otoku
• monogatari
• ÎLE DE RÉ
• forever and a day
• whirling

2009 Abstracta International Exhibition (Rome)
• océanéant

2009 Onion City Film & Video Festival (Chicago)
• tiempo prudente
• océanéant

2008 !f Istanbul Film Festival
• düzgören çıkmazı
• tompkins square park

2007 Lucca Film Festival
• mouthful
• untitled
• untitled 2
• digital ways of doing
• color correction
• I_MIT
• michael's nose

you can see some of my earlier videos here:
youtube.com/yoelmeranda

you can find more information about my videos here:
waysofseeing.org/videos.html