Yunus Emre InstituteFrom Star Wars to Some Like It Hot, Remakesploitation Fest brought the weird and wonderful world of Turkish remakes to London, digitally restored with all-new English subtitles!
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Yunus Emre Institute London was delighted to take part in organising the first-ever Remakesploitation Fest – a two-day film festival that delved into the fascinating and under-appreciated world of Turkish film remakes. Having taken place on April 9th and 10th 2022 at the Cinema Museum, this festival saw the screening of 6 films, some of which were screened in the UK for the first time. Digitally restored and given all-new subtitles, the films were introduced by film experts and directors. Each screening was followed by a panel discussion and Q&A session with film experts and directors flown in from across the world especially for this event.
The events came to an end the Monday following the festival with an academic symposium at King’s College London that included the invited guests who took part in the festival on the Turkish Film Remake.
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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 digitally restored to be presented on the big screen for Remakesploitation Fest which took place on April 9th and 10th 2022 at the Cinema Museum!
This new festival was organised by Iain Robert Smith, founder of the Remakesploitation Film Club, in collaboration with Yunus Emre Institute London, King’s College London, Turkish Airlines and the Cinema Museum. It was a rare opportunity to see these truly fascinating films with all-new English subtitles.
Unlikely to be release on Blu-ray, DVD or VOD, Remakesploitation Fest was the incredible opportunity to indulge in nostalgia from a thoroughly Turkish lens. The festival also sold 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.
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Many of the films screened over the evening were run the UK for the first time or were the first ever to be played with English subtitles for a wider audience to enjoy. The evening included screenings of Remake, Remix, Rip-Off: About Copy Culture & Turkish Pop Cinema (2015); Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda, AKA Turkish Star Trek (1973); Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, AKA Turkish Star Wars (1982); Fıstık Gibi AKA Turkish Some Like It Hot (1970); Cellat AKA Turkish Death Wish (1975); Şeytan AKA Turkish Exorcist (1974).
Between screening, fascinating panel discussions on the films presented, the wider socio-cultural influences and their impacts were discussed by film experts and directors. Special guests that were 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!
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The 60s & 70s saw Turkey become one of the biggest producers of film and Yeşilçam, a metonym for the Turkish film industry, produced movies in their thousands up until the early 80s. Soon enough, this prolific industry had a bright idea – remaking Hollywood blockbusters!
As the documentary Remake, Remix, Rip-Off, the first screening of the festival, highlighted, while the film remakes were being produced across the world, this phenomenon particularly flourished in Turkey. There were 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, limited amounts of film, a tight budget and only a handful of directors and screenwriters, these filmmakers remade movies Hollywood’s iconic movies with their own original spin. Throughout the two-day festival, the handprints of directors could be seen on the films – sometimes literally with scratch marks made on the film of Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda (Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek) AKA Turkish Star Trek to recreate characters getting beamed!
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While ‘borrowing’ scenes, soundtracks and even occasionally whole segments of special effects, these movies were unquestionably their own creative mater pieces. Including and altering jokes, scenes, characters and contexts understood by their Turkish audiences, these ‘Turkified’ films are fascinating lenses into the social and political zeitgeist of the decades they were created in.
Take the remake Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves the World) AKA Turkish Star Wars directed by Çetin İnanç in 1982. The film may have taken its storyline, music and footage from the Hollywood blockbuster, but combines the ‘original’s’ science fiction themes with martial arts fantasy action as well as tangents into Islamic mystism and Christian iconography. This new film resembles more an intercultural adaption than a remake.
Remakesploitation Fest invited the auidence to reframe the way we approach these fabulous Turkish ‘remakes’. Remembering the effort behind the scenes, the context these films were produced in, their creative reimaging of popular films and their impacts on the audience who devoured these movies in their thousands, we break out of the good film – bad film binary and appreciate these nostalgic films for themselves.
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The evening also included listening to Turkish psychedelic rock music and free Turkish snacks! All proceeds from ticket sales went to the ‘Save the Cinema Museum’ campaign to help preserve the wonderful venue for the future.
The festival was followed by a fascinating academic symposium at King’s College London which aimed to continue the central theme of the festival – ‘Reframing the Turkish Film Remake’. Including academics Kaya Özkaracalar from Bahçeşehir University and Seda Öz from the University of Delaware alongside the guests from the festival, the full-day event lead to interesting discussions on the changing understanding of Turkish film remakes in its day and in the present.