Remake, Remix, Rip-Off

Turkey has one of the most productive film industries in the world, with an annual production of 250 to 350 films a year. The popular films made in this ‘Yesilçam period’ elevated copying and mixing well-known genre conventions almost to an art form. In addition, partly because of the lack of laws on copyright, many remakes of Hollywood classics emerged. From Rocky to The Exorcist and from The Wizard of Oz to Star Wars: all acquired an often bizarre Turkish version that was literally and metaphorically translated to meet local needs.
Cem Kaya investigates this Turkish copy culture and shows how inventively local studios tackled foreign film material; the minimum of means was used to still the continuous film appetites of Turkish audiences. In addition, he looks at the relationship between this film industry and historic and topical Turkish subjects such as internationalisation, censorship and the advent of television.