Film Screening:

Remake, Remix, Rip-Off (Cem Kaya, 2014, 96 min, Turkey/Germany, in Turkish and German w/ English Subtitles, Color, Blu-Ray)

-- Introduced by Didem Havlioglu (AMES); Q&A to follow!

Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the biggest producers of film in the world. TV only slowly became a commodity in Turkish living rooms since the mid-70s, so cinema together with radio was the only mass media everyone could afford. Big open air cinemas all over the country showed several movies in a row and going to the cinema with the family had always something of a picnic. With the help of basically non-existing copyright law, filmmakers started producing remakes of European, American, and Indian movies. But they did not simply remake the movies scene by scene, they were using the movies' soundtracks or even special effects scenes, even though there wasn't a lack of budget to recreate them. In doing so, those filmmakers became the forefathers of today's patchworking and sampling.

They adapted plots and characters to the taste of the Turkish audience. What they lacked in equipment and budget they compensated through excessive use of manpower both behind and in front of the camera.

In a period of time globally and locally defined by Cold War, student protests, uprisings and censorship, some Yesilçam directors tried to close the gap between commercial productions and their own visions as artists.

"Cem Kaya's film is a long overdue celebration of a very unique form of filmmaking."-IGN.com

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Duke University Middle East Studies Center (DUMESC), AMES Presents, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), and Duke University Libraries.