Istanbul's Home for Cinema-Lovers
Inspired by an influential cinephile movement in Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s, the Sinematek Cinema House in Kadıköy is more than just a movie theater.
In the 1982 film A Season in Hakkâri (Hakkâri'de Bir Mevsim), director Erden Kıral vividly portrays the harsh conditions in a remote Kurdish village in far eastern Turkey through the gaze of a naively idealistic urban schoolteacher. Through the course of a winter exiled to the snowbound village, his eyes are opened to the poverty that exists within his country, and to the institutional neglect that abandons people to such a “fate.”
Despite winning the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 1983 Berlin International Film Festival, this beautifully shot and moving film was banned for five years in Turkey and subsequently became the subject of neglect itself.
“I studied film but had never seen Hakkâri'de Bir Mevsim because the available copies were in such bad condition,” says Uğur Bayazıt, the film program coordinator at the Sinematek Cinema House in Istanbul’s Kadıköy district, which recently restored (and subtitled) the film to make it accessible to new audiences.
Established in 2018 as a branch of the Kadıköy Municipality and inspired by a short-lived but influential cinephile movement in Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s, Sinematek is more than just a movie theater. It was set up by Jak Şalom, a member of that original Turkish Cinematheque Association, which brought French New Wave, Italian neorealism, and other important examples of world cinema to Turkey for the first time during a period dominated by the more commercial Yeşilcam film industry.
“Writers, critics, and poets who were madly in love with cinema came together to create this cinematheque as a habitat for film lovers,” says Bayazıt.
He and the rest of the small Sinematek team, which includes acclaimed director Emin Alper as artistic director, remain animated by that spirit as they put together three main screening programs a year (plus a season of open-air screenings at the Kalamış Summer Festival), build a film library and archive, and offer support to independent filmmakers, all on a limited budget.
The screening programs in Sinematek’s 158-person cinema hall, which opened to the public in 2022, typically feature a mix of classic world cinema, often in collaboration with foreign diplomatic missions or cultural institutes in Istanbul; “Silent Thursdays,” when silent films are screened with live musical accompaniment; contemporary independent Turkish films in partnership with FilmKoop; and a restoration of a movie from Turkish film history.
The current program, which began 14 February and runs through 28 March, includes a selection of the films of German-French actress Romy Schneider (in their original languages with Turkish subtitles); a special “in memoriam” series devoted to the late American filmmaker David Lynch; the silent horror films Nosferatu and Vampyr; and Sinematek’s second restoration project, Aysel, the Girl from the Marsh Croft (Aysel Bataklı Damın Kızı), a 1935 drama by director Muhsin Ertuğrul (with English subtitles).
“We try to be exclusive with what we screen to attract a bigger audience and offer an alternative to other movie theaters,” Bayazıt says.
In addition to its screening programs, Sinematek maintains a 2,600-volume library of books on various film-related topics, including titles in Turkish, English, and French, that is open to the public to peruse with a cozy attic reading room. In the building’s basement, archivist Ayşecan Ay works bundled up in a sweater, scarf, and fingerless gloves. The room’s chilly temperatures are necessary, she says, to protect the donated screenplays, posters, lobby cards, photographs, film stills, and other printed materials related to cinema that she is carefully digitizing, cataloguing, and archiving.
The two Sinematek buildings in Kadıköy also include event rooms that host various film-related workshops and can be reserved for use at no charge by new filmmakers who need a place to hold production meetings. An annual Sinematek Days “sector gathering” in June offers a chance for up-and-coming filmmakers to connect with potential buyers.
It’s all part of Sinematek’s stated mission to “preserve cinema heritage and spread film culture” while “enabling the audience to establish a more conscious and deeper connection with the art of cinema.”
Sinematek Cinema House is located at Hasırcı Sokak No.16 in Kadıköy’s Osmanağa neighborhood. Films typically screen Tuesday through Friday at 8pm and Saturday and Sunday at 2pm and 6:30pm; tickets cost 90 TL and can be purchased on Mobilet. The library is open to the public daily from 10am to 6pm.
So cool didn't meet yet
Thank you for this information. I had no idea this existed.