Nejat Saydam

Nejat Saydam — Biography

Nejat Saydam (15 September 1929 – 25 October 2000) was a Turkish film director and screenwriter, and one of the most prolific figures of the Yeşilçam studio era. Born in Istanbul, he came to cinema from the stage: he acted in the theatre from 1946 and moved behind the camera as an assistant about four years later, directing his own features from 1957 onwards.

Across a career of some four decades he wrote scripts for well over a hundred productions and worked for long stretches as a house director for Acar Film. His filmography moves between melodrama, comedy and literary adaptation, and includes Aşkın Gözyaşları (1959), Küçük Hanım Avrupa'da (1962), Acemi Çapkın (1964), Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu (1967), Aşk Mabudesi (1969), Herkesin Sevgilisi (1970) and Aşk Hikayesi (1971). He is most closely associated with the popular "Küçük Hanımefendi" comedies.

Saydam kept writing into the 1990s, with late credits such as Beni Bende Bitirdiler (1989) and İkimiz de Sevmiştik (1994). He died in October 2000 in Istanbul, the city where he was born.