who was Çetin Inanç? A Turkish filmmaker. One night in 1982, he entered a movie theater to steal the reel of the famous movie “Star Wars”. At home, with a pair of scissors he cuts certain sequences, chase scenes, spaceships, etc. Then he returns the reel. Thus begins the story of Turkey’s eccentric “Star Wars”.
A milestone of cinema… bad
“It’s possibly the crappiest commercial film of all time,” says Carlos Palencia. He is the director of CutreConthe Madrid’s festival of trashy cinema. There they will screen this rare B-movie gem. They got a remastered version from the original footage. “You will see Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam (the title they gave it) as released in Turkey in 1982.”
In the 1970s and 1980s cinema was a party in Turkey. Families went to the theaters almost as a social event, a place where people talked, shouted and sang. Turkish directors knew this. So they exaggerated emotions, they went for comic violence, excessive drama. Quality was not important.
The documentary Remake, remix, rip-of tells part of the history of Turkish cinema. He says they made about 300 a year. Çetin was a good example: he shot films in ten days, non-stop. Three scriptwriters wrote hundreds of films. A handful of actors shot at a frenetic pace, sometimes several films at a time. Sequences from American films were pasted together for showmanship. The script was caricatured. The soundtrack of the original was added to the grotesque result.
The passion of cinema
In the Star Warsthere are tunes from Flash Gordon or Indiana Jones. Çetin justified the fact by his lack of money. Regarding his theft of part of the original footage from Star Wars also has a good excuse: “Do you think the Americans were going to give it to us voluntarily?”.
Turkey’s eccentric “Star Wars” is one of the baddest movies in the history of cinema. But it also has a homespun and genuinely original point. There’s something tender about it: a bunch of people with no money, no time and no talent trying to emulate a great epic of modern cinema. A director who wants to get a film off the ground and entertain people. It can be said that he succeeded.
