Remake, Remix, Rip-Off: About Copy Culture & Turkish Pop Cinema

Remake, Remix, Rip-Off does for Turkish popular cinema what Machete Maiden's Unleashed! (2010) did for its Philippines equivalent. In other words it celebrates a national cinema that, over a specific time period, produced a mind-bogglingly large number of insane and hilariously ridiculous cheap movies that served an audience hungry for more. The period most specifically featured covers the mid 60's to the mid 80's, which in all honesty remains the golden age of the B-movie generally around the world. In Turkey this meant lots of films of many types. Unlike a lot of other nations, these films were almost exclusively meant to serve the domestic market only and unlike most exploitation films from other parts of the world were, for the most part, mostly family-oriented films. Like you might expect, the highlights in this one comes in the form of a plethora of clips from the movies themselves. Words aren't really adequate in describing these but suffice to say, they are played straight yet are often exceptionally ridiculous and very often laugh-out-loud funny.

The name of this film comes from the fact that Turkey is a country that does not recognise international copyright laws and this consequently led to film-makers producing movies in a, shall we say, 'unique' manner. I've often heard people accuse the Italian genre film industry of ripping off American movies, well that is nothing compared to what the Turks were getting up to! They were at liberty to not only replicate plots and characters but even to edit out whole sequences from some Hollywood films and simply splice them into their products. Soundtracks were dealt with in a similar manner. There were Turkish versions of, amongst others, Star Wars, Superman, The Wizard of Oz, Rambo, Rocky, Star Trek and E.T. Of course, the results seem so hopelessly clunky nowadays as to make them incredibly lovable. This has gone some way to making some of these films cult items in the west.

We learn a lot about the Turkish industry itself. It churned out hundreds of films, yet the money was very tight indeed. This led to them cutting all manner of corners. Seemingly there were only three script-writers who wrote all of these films, the special effects were of the 'special' variety and there was no money wasted on health and safety, meaning the actors seemed to do all their own stunts which were often draw-droppingly dangerous. Overall, this is a cinema entirely without pretensions, everything was made with public consumption in mind and the results were utterly populist fare. Naturally, this makes them all the more fun to look back on. This is a worthy addition to the group of documentaries that focuses on the peculiar pockets of cinematic output we find in specific corners of the world. For psychotronic film fans it's a must.

Throughout movie history there have been a lot of people stealing stuff from things that were successful, so what makes Turkish cinema (at a certain point of time) so much different than those other cases? Well you have to watch the documentary to fully get it, but let me tell you that they did insane things.

And this documentary delves into the whole thing. There is obviously much more background that could not be in the movie, even more outrageous stuff that would make you shake your head. Actually the director noted at a screening that he almost didn't get permission to have some of the footage in his movie, because the movie it represented had copyright infringement and other legal stuff. It sounds there is a whole different new story there. Anyway this is entertaining stuff if you like cinema and like to take a look behind the scenes ... of weird stuff

From the 1950s through to the 1990s, Turkey had no copyright laws, and Turkish cinema had no money to make the big budget films so popular in the West. They *did* have access to those Western movies, though, and so an independent movie industry was born, one which stole story- lines wholesale (from "Dillinger" to "Star Wars," from "Rambo" to "E.T.", to name but a few) and sometimes re-created them scene-for-scene with *very* low production values, or sometimes just inserted scenes direct from the original into their Turkish version remakes. This documentary finds and films various directors, producers, actors and screenwriters (one of whom points out that at one point, there were literally 3 screenwriters to churn out some 300 movies a year!), and shows us the history of this pop- culture phenomenon. While much of it is funny to see, there is also a serious side to the doc - after the military coup in 1980, there was a crackdown on the Turkish film industry; no, the right-wing extremists didn't care about copyright laws in the West, they didn't even care that the film-makers starting inserting porn scenes in otherwise "straight" movies, but they *did* insist that there be no criticism of the political regime, the ideology of the rulers, or the police. This censorship led to serious repercussions, the effects of which are still being felt today.

A really interesting documentary, about a huge film industry that the West has never heard of. If it comes your way, check it out - you will be dazzled by the ingenuity with which these filmmakers struggled to create their movies, you will laugh at some of the antics involved, and you will cry at the acts of political repression that ended an era.

Great documentary by Cem KAYA!

In the 1970s, the Turkish film industry was at times the third largest in the world. The production took place on YESILCAM Street in Istanbul, which also gave this Turkish cinema miracle its name. With little money but a lot of commitment, Hollywood and Cinecitta films were mercilessly processed and remade. There was no copyright in Turkey at the time, so many famous film scores were used in these films.

The German director Cem KAYA has managed to create an entertaining look back at this era, which also spilled over into Germany. Interview recordings with the Turkish super star Cüneyt ARKIN (1937-2022), who played the unbeatable hero in numerous YESILCAM films, are particularly beautiful. Particularly recommendable is his appearance in TWO DEVIL GUYS ON THE WAY TO ISTANBUL, a great slapstick comedy that doesn't need to hide behind the successful Italian films by Bud SPENCER and Terence HILL.

This German made documentary is about the classic Yesilcham cinema in Turkey whose heyday was from 1960 - 1990. Yesilcham started out with a limited budget with rudimentary technical equipment to compete with Hollywood cinema where only the Westernized elites could afford a ticket and to have a national cinema to call its own.

Despite the crude productions, crass effects and copying of Hollywood films as central in this documentary, Yesilcham did produce some good, organic films in its own right in collaboration with musical artists such as Orhan Genchebay and talented actors Tarik Akan, Kemal Sunal, Hale Soygazi, Filiz Akin and many others but this does not get enough attention in this documentary - for a budgeted film industry that is quite an achievement.

However with hindsight they could off been better thought out and written with common sense, non pretentious with copyright laws and good basic training similar to Greek Cinema despite this the films will always be classics and stand the test of time.

The demise of Yesilcham started slowly in the 1980s and by the dawn of the 1990s due to the privatisation of television and with this the focus to making television series not films Yesilcham extinguished and the actors had to find new careers, however it marks a great era in cinema.