Remake, Remix, Rip-Off

Seven years in the making, Cem Kaya's vibrant documentary offers an entertaining essay on Turkish popular cinema through the years and the role of "copy culture" in Yesilcam, the Turkish film industry. Through abundant film excerpts and interviews with actors and filmmakers, this documentary revisits the wild heyday of Turkish cinema in the fifties and sixties, back when Yesilcam was producing hundreds of titles annually. Many of these films were blatantly lifted from Hollywood hits and churned out quickly in hackneyed, low-tech fashion. Kaya watched thousands of them, and the hilarious clips he's compiled are a big highlight of the documentary.