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

We've all seen them; those hilarious Turkish rip-offs. "Star Wars", "Spiderman", "The Exorcist", "Tarzan", "Dracula", "First Blood" and even "The Wizard of Oz". I imagine that since the days of the internet arriving in every person's home, you've gone through a number of these for a cheap laugh and recommended them to a friend just to see their reaction when they see the Turkish version of "Spiderman" in "3 dev adam", who appears as a brutal villain. There is no shame in this - the movies are ridiculous by any standard. It's hard to imagine that these movies were ones huge in their home country, and brought an audience unlike anything else. "Remake, Remix, Rip-Off: About Copy Culture & Turkish Pop Cinema", which screened at Fantasia International Film Festival 2015, shows a glimpse of this long gone era.

In Turk in the '60s and '70s, filmmakers didn't have the time or money to get scripts written so they decided to just take from every source of inspiration they could, mainly big American movies or Turkish novels. As the copyright laws were nonexistent they could borrow freely from any source imaginable, even going as far as taking complete soundtracks or even scenes from big movies like "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark". This was how the industry was in Turkey. People involved in the business had to go to extreme measures to create them on the cheap and fast. Sometimes that would mean doing dangerous things in front of the camera with no security at all.

Besides all the outrageous and bizarre things that were done to create these movies, "Remake, Remix, Rip-Off: About Copy Culture & Turkish Pop Cinema" brings out the sincere side of it all. It shows how people with no real knowledge in film cameras, effects, and equipment could put together their own camera dollies, make best use of editing, and sometimes come out with complete movies in just days - and still have an audience. This is unheard of in Hollywood. It is hard not to admire the work that was put into these productions, no matter how stupid or silly the outcome might have been.

The documentary takes a quick look at how the film business in Turkey changed in the '80s due to political decisions to censor the most absurd things - small things like cops running. Not to mention the state of the business today, which is miles away from the weird, eccentric times of the '60s/'70s - yet most people involved in this documentary look back with fondness.

Watching this documentary is just great for any fan of film. It can't possibly show us exactly how things went down back then, but it goes into the real heart and soul of creating movies simply for the money, if that indeed has heart and soul (this film proves it does). A must watch for the curious!

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

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.

Remake, Remix, Rip-Off is a German-Turkish co-production about the heyday of "Yesilcam" - the Turkish equivalent to Hollywood. Yesilcam was the name of a street in Istanbul, in which most film productions during the 1960-80s were made, sometimes several hundred each year. The documentary filmmaker Cem Kaya traced down dozens of people associated with Yeslca during its most vibrant years. In this documentary, the rise and fall of Yesilcam is depicted: the erratic years of unauthorized remakes during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the political and social struggles, casting a shadow over Turkish cinema in later years. The documentary closes with a topical perspective on the contemporary Turkish production of movies and TV shows, highlighting the hostile workplace environment, that has already cost lives, due to exhaustion on set and flawed planning. Remake, Remix, Rip-Off might not be perfectly structured and lacks a clear message, but the unique premise and its way to celebrate the imaginativeness of Turkish cinema is stunning.

Overall 7/10 Full review on movie-discourse.blogspot.de

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.