Turkey, often advertised as “where East meets West,” is a land of stark contrasts: a secular Muslim country, a European Union aspirant with a landmass largely in Asia. The sixth annual New York Turkish Film Festival, onscreen for 11 days at the Anthology Film Archives, provides fascinating insight into a culture straddling contradictory impulses.

Look no further than the opening and closing nights. The festival kicks off tomorrow with “Vizontele Tuuba,” a popular sequel that played to packed houses across Turkey last year. It ends with 1983’s “A Season in Hakkari” (Oct 13), part of a three film tribute to veteran director Erden Kiral. Both films feature big-city protagonists adrift in the country’s remote Southeast during the political turmoil of the early 1980s. But temperamentally they could not be more different.

“Vizontele” is a boisterous, flashy (some might say shrill) comedy. “Hakkari” is a subdued, meditative drama, which was deemed too politically sensitive to actually screen in Turkey until 1987. “It’s a tough balance,” explains Mevlut Akkaya, the fest’s director. “Our audience, most of which is Turkish, wants to see the big hits. But we try to represent as much of the country’s film culture as possible.”

During the 1970s, the Turkish film industry had one of the highest outputs in the world, producing 299 features in 1972 alone, mostly cheap melodramas and action retreads. (Z- grade knockoffs of “Star Trek” and “The Exorcist” have recently gained notoriety on cult video in the United States.) After the turbulent 1980s, output plummeted: The number of films released in the mid-1990s hovered around a dismal dozen per year.

“The greatest obstacle is Turkey’s inability to develop a healthy industry,” according to Mr. Akkaya.” Struggling screens and a lack of production infrastructure are the big problems. “A handful of films post Hollywood-level box office numbers domestically. The hope is these, along with other films’ achievement at international festivals, will attract more investors and production companies to the country.”

Recently the country’s filmmakers have begun enjoying a revival. The opening film of last year’s New York festival, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Distant” won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2003. One remarkable hybrid at the festival this year is “The Hittites” (Oct. 3), a Turkish-American co-production about the titular ancient Near Eastern kingdom. It places elaborate historical recreations alongside talking-head experts, creating a beguiling cross between straight documentary and old-fashioned Hollywood epic, equal parts informative nonfiction and Orientalist fantasy. East meets West, indeed.