‘Lost’ Turkish film go back before audiences

ISTANBUL - Anadolu Agency

Kunt Tulgar says he found the film at a basement and restored it. AA photo

A film titled “Sihirbazlar Kralı Mandrake Kiling’in Peşinde,” which was one of 10,000 lost films in Turkish cinema before being re-found and restored, was screened at the Fantasturka Turkish Films Festival over the weekend.

Producer, director, screenwriter and actor Kunt Tulgar said it was tantamount to a “miracle” for the film to be reshown. He said he had discovered a copy of the film, which was shot in 1967 before being lost, last year in Ankara.

“We found it in the basement of the house of a person, whose family was involved with cinema many years ago. The film was impossible to watch. But we put in great efforts to clean it and got it ready for the screen,” he said.

Tulgar said Turkish cinema had produced a number of black-and-white films but that there no remaining copies because of expensive film strips, meaning that many directors did not even retain copies of their own films.

“Nearly 10,000 films were lost in Turkish cinema. Most of them were damaged in a fire that occurred in a film depot in Sütlüce in 1959. The rest were sold by the kilogram in order to obtain the silver that exists in black-and-white films.”