Sinematek Association's legacy lives on

50 years on, cinema lovers gather to pay homage to Sinematek, which screened classics and rare films and inculcated a love of cinema in citizens around Turkey This week marks the 50th anniversary of one of Turkey?s most important and influential cinema initiatives, the Sinematek Association, the Turkish Cinémathèque Association. 

Pioneered by the late writer and screenwriter Onat Kutlar, Sinematek was founded in 1965 by a group of cinephiles. The association left its mark on the history of Turkish cinema, serving as a tool in popularizing the appreciation and love of cinema until its demise with the military coup of 1980. 

Like cinémathèques around the world, the mission of Sinematek was ?to research films, as well as film posters, screenplays, documents, photography and books on cinema from Turkey and across the world, collect, archive, preserve and restore them when possible, and make these available.? While, unlike its counterparts across Europe, the association could not succeed much in collecting and preserving, it worked as a glorious cinema club, bringing cinema to the curious masses in as many as 20 cities, with nearly 6,000 members in its heyday. 

The cinema clubs popping up across Turkey, thanks to Sinematek, screened classics and rare films with subtitles or simultaneous translations, organized panels, conferences and retrospectives from Luchino Visconti films to the golden age of American comedy. Sinematek also brought guests from around the world, like Henri Langlois, the director of the Cinémathèque Française, who introduced films under ?75 Years of French Cinema? in 1972.

The activities and film days of Sinematek and its clubs resembled very much the film festivals of today. In fact, after Sinematek...