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

From the 1950s through to the 1990s, Turkey had no copyright laws, and Turkish cinema had no money to make the big budget films so popular in the West. They *did* have access to those Western movies, though, and so an independent movie industry was born, one which stole story- lines wholesale (from "Dillinger" to "Star Wars," from "Rambo" to "E.T.", to name but a few) and sometimes re-created them scene-for-scene with *very* low production values, or sometimes just inserted scenes direct from the original into their Turkish version remakes. This documentary finds and films various directors, producers, actors and screenwriters (one of whom points out that at one point, there were literally 3 screenwriters to churn out some 300 movies a year!), and shows us the history of this pop- culture phenomenon. While much of it is funny to see, there is also a serious side to the doc - after the military coup in 1980, there was a crackdown on the Turkish film industry; no, the right-wing extremists didn't care about copyright laws in the West, they didn't even care that the film-makers starting inserting porn scenes in otherwise "straight" movies, but they *did* insist that there be no criticism of the political regime, the ideology of the rulers, or the police. This censorship led to serious repercussions, the effects of which are still being felt today.

A really interesting documentary, about a huge film industry that the West has never heard of. If it comes your way, check it out - you will be dazzled by the ingenuity with which these filmmakers struggled to create their movies, you will laugh at some of the antics involved, and you will cry at the acts of political repression that ended an era.