Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, will be commemorated on Nov. 10 with a concert featuring 200 artists in İzmir on the 71st anniversary of his death.

The concert, which took three months to prepare, will feature such internationally renowned Turkish artists as Sertab Erener, Fahir Atakoğlu and İdil Biret. The event will begin at 9 p.m. at Halkapınar Sports Hall.

This curiosity about those who are different feeds the arts and culture. Artists, playwrights and novelists all explore the question of how different we are from each other.

In Shakespeare’s “Othello,” the Moor of Venice is such a deep mystery because he is black. But the passions of life that he experiences are common to all mankind. He is different, but oh so the same. From the time of Shakespeare, up to the age of television and international travel, views about lands afar were shaped by the arts. Canaletto’s paintings brought Venice alive for generations of Europeans who had never traveled there.

With the age of Victorian exploration, the museums in London became full of ethnographic exhibits that would fascinate the public who had not seen such extraordinary objects as an American Indian totem pole, an Eskimo anorak, an African witch doctor mask or an Arabian scimitar. These objects, everyday to the people who had made them, would arouse awe and wonder, and this, in turn, fueled imaginative stories about the world outside of Europe.

Only a very few were rich enough to travel to these exotic lands, and the stories they brought back would make them very popular on the speaking circuit. The temptation to exaggerate the difficulties they had faced in their travels, or the customs they had seen, must have been great, for no one would be invited to a dinner party to tell a bland and simple tale. So, the 19th century European view of the world beyond its borders became one of savage cannibals and heathen tribes, all of whom were a danger to the European traveler.

Those who are friends and allies are more easily understood. We take time to learn how they think and act, and easily forgive their foibles. But it is human nature to do the opposite with those whom we perceive as a threat. The Ottoman Empire, although a useful ally of Britain against Russia at the time of the Crimean War, was a rival to British interests in the Middle East. This rivalry fed misunderstanding and mistrust, much of which can be seen in the portrayal of Turks and the lands of the Ottoman Empire in the arts and culture of the 18th and 19th centuries.

These stereotypes hung on into the 20th century, too. For example, in Lawrence of Arabia’s memoirs, the depiction of his enemy is most unflattering. Very few visitors to Turkey today have actually watched the film “Midnight Express,” but we have all heard about the scenes depicting cruelty. All these images have seeped into the public psyche. When I first visited Turkey in the 1980s, an English lady I knew who was in her 90s was amazed. “My father fought against the Turks at the end of the last century,” she said. “He always said he would rather be killed than captured by a Turk, and now here you are going there… times are changing.”

It is just this very issue of perception and reality that makes Andrew Wheatcroft’s book a vital addition to the study of the Ottomans. The first six chapters are a fairly standard, clear and informative overview of Ottoman history and life, from the fall of Constantinople through to the end of World War I.

But in the course of his research, Wheatcroft discovered that the image of the Ottomans that we have in the West was skewed. The fall of Constantinople was termed “the darkest day in the history of the world,” and from then on, Europeans regarded the Turks with a mixture of horror and fascination. “Only a few writers did not make the Turks out to be subhuman,” according to Wheatcroft.

As he discovered that his own view of the Ottomans, shaped by the culture he had been raised in, did not stand up against the evidence, Wheatcroft addresses head on his prejudices. In the final two chapters, he calmly and succinctly, clearly and incisively, challenges the twin stereotypes of the Lustful Turk and the Terrible Turk.

Much of this misunderstanding came from ignorance. The harem was misunderstood by Western travelers because, as men, they were not admitted! Much of the misunderstanding also came from willful distortion to make a rival into an enemy. The Turks were seen so much as the antithesis of all Western values that the phrase “turning Turk” was coined to mean renouncing the social codes of the West.

The city of Stamboul became irresistible to travelers from 1800 onwards. They expected to find the city of their imagination: exotic, Oriental, full of mysterious veiled women. Artists and engravers had, after all, discovered what sold best! “European visitors, inflamed with Romantic notions, came expecting to discover the imaginary Orient” — and were disappointed.

But the Ottomans were not only misunderstood by the West. To their eastern neighbors, they were an alien and occupying force.

Wheatcroft recognizes that just as Europeans disdained the Turks, educated Ottomans repaid the compliment, accusing Westerners of ignorance and insensitivity. It was too easy for Western men to imagine scarlet lusts and violent passions of the hidden harem. But many Ottoman officials took offense at the way Christian men and women mixed together at parties. One visitor to London wrote, “We returned to our lodgings and prayed to God to save us from the wretched state of these infidels.”

As Westerners worked with Turks on government projects during the Tanzimat era, an Ottoman and a Western European would look at the same event and see things differently. Wheatcroft concludes, as the Ottoman Empire and the West came closer together in economic and political terms in the 19th century, the depth of understanding broadened.

A clear contrast is seen between the attitudes of two great British prime ministers: Gladstone and Disraeli. Disraeli was in the camp of “enthusiasts who find fulfillment in contact.” He described even the meanest merchant as looking like a sultan. Gladstone was one who “abominated every aspect of the alien world.” He described the Turk as an abomination.

In recognizing that contact did little to modify the stereotypes so deeply rooted in the West, Wheatcroft raises the question of how much power the images of art and literature create. The Ottomans are, he notes, the focus of fear and hatred in literature and portraits with remarkable consistency. Even though he comes from a bygone era, the Byronic mix of lust and cruelty continues to color European attitudes.

That contemporary Europeans rated the Ottomans as far as they did or did not measure up to Western standards is the main premise of “Dissolving Images.” Following peace with Russia, the Ottomans ceased to be feared for their warlike virtues, and this was replaced by envy and despising. Newly reformed Western Europe expected the same, at a quicker pace, in Turkey.

These were Wheatcroft’s conclusions in 1993. But some 15 years later, they are just as relevant for a European Union and Republic of Turkey trying to draw closer together. Everyone involved, on both sides, in Turkey’s EU ascension talks needs to read the last two chapters of “Dissolving Images” honestly and question in their heart whether they are viewing reality through Orientalist tinted lenses.

Thirteen may be unlucky for some, but not for the National Theatre of Wales’s artistic director, John McGrath, who has just announced a baker’s dozen of productions to mark NTW’s inaugural year-long season. It’s an eclectic list, ranging from the first production for more than 50 years of The Devil Inside Him, a “lost” John Osborne play set in a Cardiff boarding house, written just before Look Back in Anger – to a new show, Mundo Paralelo, from the brilliant Welsh-based No Fit State circus. The 13th show of the season, which will take place in Port Talbot in April 2011, is to be Passion, a contemporary version of the old community plays that used to be performed amid the steel town’s smoking towers. Actor Michael Sheen, who grew up there, is creative director of the project and will also star in it.

Funded by a £3m grant, the NTW’s first season kicks off with A Good Night Out in the Valleys, which will be performed in the old mining institutes – the social and educational centres that sprung up in the late 19th century and were kept running, a penny at a time, by subscription from miners. In their heyday, some even had their own opera companies. “The valleys were the obvious place for us to start,” says McGrath. “It’s all about building a sense of ownership in these communities, and putting the people who live there at the heart of it. We have to listen hard to them. When they see the show, I hope that they will recognise their own stories, hear their own language.”

McGrath doesn’t mean Welsh – Wales already has a national Welsh-language theatre company, the splendid Theatr Genedlaethol. And though he was born in Mold, north Wales, just across the border from England, McGrath grew up in Liverpool. He’s doing a crash course in the language (he jokes that he’s “fluent between 8 and 10am every morning”), but, more importantly for the NTW, he comes with a reputation for pioneering work at Manchester’s Contact Theatre, where he built a young and diverse audience through participatory initiatives.

The challenge for McGrath is to build an audience for the NTW in a country that has a long tradition of amateur performance, but one of the lowest attendance rates at professional theatre in the UK. McGrath thinks the answer is to make theatre in, and with, those communities. One such is The Soul Exchange, which will premiere in January 2011 at the old Butetown Coal Exchange in what used to be Tiger Bay, south of Cardiff – the place where the UK’s first million-pound cheque was signed, but which remains an impoverished area, home to one of the most ethnically diverse communities in Europe.

Another part of the NTW programme will be a work focusing on Bridgend, the small town in south Wales that became the subject of intense media scrutiny after a spate of suicides by young people. Instead of commissioning a traditional play and staging it in, say, Cardiff, McGrath has commissioned playwright Gary Owen, a local boy, to return home to live with his mother and talk to young people; the piece that will result, Love Steals From Loneliness, will be performed in Bridgend itself. McGrath sees his job as much more than simply producing plays: NTW will also be aiming to spark a debate about the issues. Everyone will be encouraged to have their say.

Already, they are. If the Royal National Theatre is a listed building, and the National Theatre of Scotland “a theatre without walls”, then the new NTW sees itself as a community. NTW operates out of an anonymous-looking shopfront on a parade in Cardiff and has a staff of just nine; crucially, it maintains a thriving website, which is a beacon for debate about theatre in Wales and beyond. The programme reflects conversations that have been taking place not just inside the theatre world, but in cyberspace too.

“We’re aiming to make people partners,” says McGrath. “The National Theatre of Scotland has been a very useful model – it shows that being a national theatre is not just about giving grants to people. But Wales is a different place, not least because there are far fewer producing theatres and more of an arts-centre tradition. So we’ve got to form relationships.”

When McGrath put out a call requesting possible locations for performances, he was inundated with ideas. Many have been followed up. There will be outdoor theatre adventures made in collaboration with “pervasive gaming” experts Hide and Seek and played out on the beaches of North Wales. April 2010 will see a collaboration between Volcano Theatre and Welsh National Opera called Shelf Life, staged amid the book stacks of the old Swansea library, while performance artist Marc Rees will be taking over a chapel-turned-pound shop in the seaside town of Barmouth, curating a series of guided tours by Welsh and international performance artists. In the hills of Snowdonia, theatremaker David Harradine will create a project examining Welsh weather inside an aircraft-hangar-size space so vast it contains its own micro-climate. And in 2011, there will be the first-ever UK commission for the remarkable German company, Rimini Protokoll, who work with non-professional actors to create documentary theatre of astonishing intimacy.

It’s not so much a programme as a map – one that charts the psyche of Wales as well as its past and present, but which also looks outwards. One performance even takes place right off the map: Aeschylus’ The Persians, a hymn to the bitterness of defeat in war, which will be staged by Mike Pearson, founder of the legendary Welsh company, Brith Gof, on an army range in the Brecon Beacons normally out-of-bounds to civilians.

It all adds up to a year of work that is both radical but inviting, risk-taking but popular, and which places Welsh communities at its very heart. “We couldn’t do it without them,” says McGrath. “We wouldn’t want to do it without them.”

The Justice Ministry said in a statement that Washington filed its formal extradition request late Thursday. The 76-year-old filmmaker has been in Swiss custody since his arrest Sept. 26 as he arrived in Zurich to attend a film festival.

The request has been forwarded to Zurich authorities, who will hold a hearing on an unspecified date to decide whether Polanski should be sent back to Los Angeles. If extradition is approved, Polanski may appeal the decision to Switzerland’s top criminal court and, theoretically, to the Federal Supreme Court.

That means the director of such film classics as “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown” could remain in a Swiss jail for months more of legal wrangling, even though legal experts say he has little chance of avoiding a return to the United States after 31 years as a fugitive.

The maximum sentence Polanski can receive in California is likely two years, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She said the sentence would come under laws that existed at the time of the crime, but she did not know if he could receive credit for time served in Swiss detention.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office declined comment.

Folco Galli, a spokesman for Switzerland’s Justice Ministry, said the sentence couldn’t be longer because Polanski could only be punished for the crime that is the basis of his extradition.

In Paris, Polanski’s lawyer said the director would fight extradition.

“He will oppose this request and continue to ask to be released until the request is examined,” Herve Temime said.

The U.S. had until late November to file for extradition, but the Swiss were already asking on Oct. 5 that the Americans expedite the process, according to documents obtained by the AP.

In an e-mail exchange obtained by the AP under U.S. public records request, Los Angeles prosecutors noted that the “Swiss were very eager to receive an advance English copy of our papers” and “the sooner that the Swiss knew we had filed formal papers the better.”

There was no mention in correspondence of the intense public scrutiny over Polanski’s arrest in the Alpine country, which tipped off U.S. authorities that he was expected five days before his apprehension at Zurich’s airport.

Swiss officials have defended the move as routine procedure. But several politicians and commentators have argued that Switzerland may have cooperated too energetically, and that recent U.S.-Swiss troubles over wealthy American tax cheats and Swiss banks may have provided motivation for the arrest.

Polanski, who won a 2003 directing Oscar in absentia for “The Pianist,” was accused of raping the 13-year-old girl after plying her with champagne and a Quaalude pill during a modeling shoot in 1977. He was initially indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molesting and sodomy.

Polanski pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. In exchange, the judge agreed to drop the remaining charges and sentence him to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. Polanski was released after 42 days by an evaluator but the judge said he was going to send him back to serve the remainder of the 90 days. Polanski then fled the country on Feb. 1, 1978, the day he was to be sentenced.

Polanski claims the judge and prosecutors acted improperly, and his lawyers in California are urging a state court to quickly hear his appeal. In court filings Friday, the lawyers said key witnesses in the case are now elderly and have yet to testify under oath.

A French native who moved to Poland as a child, Polanski has lived in France since fleeing the United States. France does not extradite its citizens.

Polanski has been fighting since his arrest to be released from jail. He suffered a serious setback earlier this week when the Swiss Criminal Court rejected his appeal because of the high risk he would flee justice again. It turned down a bail payment of his Alpine chalet in Gstaad, house arrest and electronic monitoring as conditions for his release.

The loss appeared to prompt some rethinking of his defense, when one of Polanski’s lawyers said Wednesday that it was possible that the director might voluntarily return to face justice in the United States.

But that suggestion was quickly rejected by another attorney representing Polanski.

Associated Press Writers Thomas Watkins and Anthony McCartney in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Film aficionados will be alternating between nodding their heads in approval and shaking them in dismay at some of the anecdotes and analyses on offer. Memorable moments include one wag’s description of the session time screens at multiplex cinemas – “the airline indicator board,” as he sardonically puts it – and the weary words of Kenny director Clayton Jacobson, who explains that even though his film was cheaply made and was a huge player at the box office (generating more than $5 million) the experience nonetheless left him $250,000 in debt. That’s as good a summary as any of the perilous playing field local filmmakers inhabit.

Into the Shadows offers no clear-cut solutions, of course, but Scarano provides a good whack of optimism, seeing hope for the future partly by reflecting on stalwarts of the past who fought tooth and nail for venues to screen their films. Crucially, Scarano keeps a brisk pace and if in doubt simply moves on to the next interviewee. Into the Shadows is probably only for film appreciators, but for those interested in the business side of cinema-going in Australia it deserves to be considered required viewing.