#turvak

Of all the images that cross our mind when we think of Istanbul, one that features Charles Bronson holding a gun is the least likely to appear. However, for some, it might be the first. Especially if they are big fans of the 70s movie You Can’t Win ‘Em All, an adventure movie featuring Tony Curtis and Charles Bronson that takes place in 1920s Turkey. This movie’s poster is the first to welcome you into the exhibitioncalled “İçinden Türkiye Geçen Yabancı Filmler” (Foreign Films About Turkey) that TÜRVAK, Istanbul’s Türker İnanoğlu Foundation Cinema-Theater Museum, is displaying in its Exhibition Hall until Friday, 28 February.

Indeed, if you can find your way through the labyrinth that constitutes the museum, particularly confusing for those not knowledgeable about Turkey’s cinema and theater, you might find some familiar faces in this exhibition. For those interested in Hollywood movies or Anglo-Saxon cinema in general, you will find references to Errol Flynn, staring in Istanbul (1957), described in Hollywood oldies’ terms as the place ‘where the passions of the East meet the sins of the West’, to Orson Welles and his film Journey into Fear (1943) and to Elia Kazan, who directed, produced and wrote America, America (1963), also set in Turkey. And of course, posters of the many troubles that led James Bond into Turkish lands on multiple occasions.