Remakesploitation Fest 2022: Yeşilçam Remakes of Hollywood Hit Films Come to London!

From Star Wars to Some Like It Hot, Remakesploitation Film Club proudly presents a weekend film festival supported by Yunus Emre Institute London, King’s College London, Turkish Airlines, and the Cinema Museum, devoted to the weird and wonderful world of Turkish remakes, digitally restored with all-new English subtitles!   

 

Did you know that a Turkish remake of The Exorcist closely recreated the William Friedkin original albeit with the Catholicism replaced with Islam? Or that a Turkish reworking of Star Trek was filmed in the ancient ruins of Ephesus? For many years, these unforgettable films only circulated in low-resolution bootlegs, but they have recently been lovingly digitally restored to be presented on the big screen for Remakesploitation Fest taking place on April 9th and 10th 2022 at the Cinema Museum! Come along and grab this rare opportunity to see these truly fascinating films on the big screen.  

Alongside watching these fantastic Turkish films, the evening will include listening to Turkish psychedelic rock music, and we’ll even be providing free Turkish snacks for all ticket-holders! All proceeds from ticket sales go to the ‘Save the Cinema Museum’ campaign to help preserve the wonderful venue for the future.  

During the ‘60s and ‘70s Turkey became one of the biggest producers of film. Named Yeşilçam after a street in Beyoğlu formerly populated by film companies, the Turkish film industry produced movies in their thousands up until the early ‘80s. Before long, this prolific industry had a bright idea – remaking Hollywood blockbusters!    

While the film remakes were being produced across the world, this phenomenon particularly flourished in Turkey with remakes of everything from Star Wars and E.T. through to Death Wish and Some Like it Hot. Often dismissed as derivative, these films are now being recognised for the value they have for investigating processes of cultural globalisation, the representation of Turkish identity on screen as well as their sheer creativity!     

What they lacked in their financial and structural means, they made up for with their relative ingenuity! Without proper equipment, a tight budget and only a handful of directors and screenwriters, these film makers remade movies with the same scenes, same soundtracks and even occasionally ‘borrowing’ whole segments of special effects.    

These remakes did however have an unmistakable swing of Turkish with plots and characters altered to satisfy the cultural milieu of the Turkish film-hungry public. Invoking oxymoronic descriptions of unique familiarity and new nostalgia, these films have been long only accessible through bootlegged copies passed from hand to hand. They have been carefully restored with new English subtitles for this unique film festival where many of these films are screened in the UK for the first time! Audiences within Turkey and around the world can fully appreciate this fascinating period within Turkish film history.    

Unlikely to be release on Blu-ray, DVD or VOD, Remakesploitation Fest is your unmissable opportunity to indulge in nostalgia from a thoroughly Turkish lens. The festival will also be selling the posters of some of these Turkish remakes by legendary designer Graham Humphreys’, who created famous films posters for Hollywood, including The Nightmare on Elm Street.   

 

 

 

 

 

Special guests that will be in attendance include Cem Kaya, director of the Remake, Remix, Rip-Off documentary, Ed Glaser, author of ‘How the World Remade Hollywood’, Ahmet Gürata, author of ‘Imitation of Life: Cross-Cultural Reception and Remakes in Turkish Cinema’, Nezih Erdoğan, professor Film Studies & history at Istanbul Istinye University and Tuğçe Bıçakçı Syed, lecturer researching ‘Turkish Gothic’ and image of the Turk identity at Namık Kemal University!   

 

The two-day festival taking place at the Cinema Museum between the 9th and 10th April 2022, will feature:    

Saturday 9 April, 17.00: Remake, Remix, Rip-Off: About Copy Culture & Turkish Pop Cinema (2015), 1hr 36m   

Saturday 9 April, 19.15: Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda AKA Turkish Star Trek (1973), 1hr 11m   

Saturday 9 April, 21.00: Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam AKA Turkish Star Wars (1982), 1hr 38m  

Sunday 10 April, 16.00: Fıstık Gibi AKA Turkish Some Like It Hot (1970), 1hr 15m   

Sunday 10 April, 18.00: Cellat AKA Turkish Death Wish (1975), 1hr 20m     

Sunday 10 April, 20.00: Şeytan AKA Turkish Exorcist (1974), 1hr 40m  

Tickets prices range between £8.00 – £30.00 and are available to be purchased through Billetto:  

https://billetto.co.uk/e/remakesploitation-fest-2022-tickets-616230 

Event: Remakesploitation Fest
Date: April 09 2022 – April 10 2022
Venue: Cinema Museum, 2 Dugard Way, SE11 4TH London
Admission: £8.00 – £30.00  

For more information on the event and to sign up, please visit Yunus Emre Institute London Website: https://yeelondon.org.uk/. For more information, please email londra@yee.org.tr.