In 2021-22, Dr Iain Robert Smith was granted a £7500 “Major Research Grant (Impact and Knowledge Exchange Fund)” for his project “Restoring, Preserving and Exhibiting the Neglected Popular Cinema of Turkey.”
One of the main goals with the project was to deepen understanding of the global impact of Hollywood cinema, especially in relation to Turkey of the 1970s-80s, through a weekend film festival of Turkish film remakes at The Cinema Museum, London.
The festival featured six films including the Turkish remakes of Star Wars, The Exorcist, Some Like it Hot, Death Wish and Star Trek, alongside the documentary Remake, Remix Rip-off. These remakes were all screened from new digital restorations and featured all-new English subtitles so that audiences in the UK could appreciate these films on the big screen.
Our special guests speakers were: Cem Kaya (Director of Remake, Remix, Rip-off), Pete Tombs (Author of Mondo Macabro), Ed Glaser (Author of How the World Remade Hollywood), Rob Hill (Author of The Bad Movie Bible), Ahmet Gürata (Author of Imitation of Life: Cross Cultural Reception and Remakes in Turkish Cinema), Nezih Erdoğan (Author of The First Years of Cinema in Istanbul), Savaş Arslan (Author of Cinema in Turkey), and Tuğçe Bıçakçı Syed (Author of Theorising Turkish Gothic).
Dr Smith said that, “In my book The Hollywood Meme: Transnational Adaptations in World Cinema, I analysed the ways in which Hollywood films were adapted and reworked in industries all around the world. The Turkish Yeşilçam industry produced some of the most fascinating examples – from Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda AKA The Turkish Star Trek in which comedian Sadri Alışık pokes fun at the world of Kirk and Spock, through to Şeytan AKA The Turkish Exorcist, which adapts the story to grapple with Turkey’s specific relationship with religion and secularism. I first watched these films on unsubtitled VHS tapes back in the late 1990s so to see them restored in HD with accurate English subtitles has been a dream come true. These films have so much to tell us about processes of cultural globalisation and I am glad to have played a part in helping bring them back to the big screen.”
The Yunus Emre Institute, who collaborated with Dr Smith on this project, said, “Over the last six years, the Yunus Emre Institute have worked with Dr. Iain Robert Smith and King’s College London to raise awareness of this significant period in Turkish popular cinema. We are delighted to be working with him again to bring these classic Turkish films to audiences in the UK.”
Dr Smith is currently working on a further funding bid in order to digitally restore and exhibit more examples of this significant phenomenon within global popular cinema.
More here:
http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/2022/remakesploitation-fest-2022-saturday-9-april/
http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/2022/remakesploitation-fest-2022-sunday-10-april/