Matchbox Cineclub Remake, Remix, Rip-Off

Matchbox Cineclub’s monthly residency continues with the thoughtful and hilarious documentary REMAKE, REMIX, RIP-OFF (Cem Kaya, 2014), telling the bizarre history of Turkish exploitation cinema.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Turkish filmmakers were taking advantage of lax copyright laws in order to remake hundreds of popular Hollywood films. Directors such as Metin Erksan and Çetin İnanç were producing low budget Turkish remakes of The Exorcist, E.T., Rambo, Superman, and even Star Wars. Cem Kaya’s documentary charts this little known period of film history with some truly incredible interviews and clips, highlighting the passion and dynamism that went into producing these remakes, and giving a genuine insight into this overlooked era of exploitation film production.

Before the screening there, will be a lively introduction to remakesploitation from Dr Iain Robert Smith (King’s College London), author of the new book The Hollywood Meme: Transnational Adaptations in World Cinema. Iain will discuss these Turkish remakes alongside other examples of remakesploitation, such as the 1966 Filipino film James Batman in which James Bond and Batman team up to fight crime, and the 2008 Bollywood film Ghajini in which Memento is remade in chronological order.