Nejat Saydam

Nejat Saydam — Biography

Nejat Saydam was one of the most prolific directors of Yeşilçam, signing more than a hundred and twenty films over a career of four decades and writing eighty-five screenplays. He is best remembered for the Küçük Hanımefendi series, which opened the vein of "salon comedy" in Turkish cinema.

He came to film from the stage: in 1946 he was acting in the theatre, and four years later began working on a film set as an actor and assistant. He turned to directing in 1957 and became one of Acar Film's regular directors. In 1959 he drew attention with the War of Independence film Kalpaklılar and also made Aşkın Gözyaşları that year. The mid-1960s brought Küçük Hanım Avrupa'da, Acemi Çapkın and Buzlar Çözülmeden, and literary adaptations such as Sarmaşık Gülleri and Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu date from the same years. In the 1970s he leaned towards melodrama and romance with Aşk Hikayesi, Herkesin Sevgilisi and Dinmeyen Sızı. For Dinmeyen Sızı he won best director at the 1973 Golden Orange festival, and in 1997 the same festival gave him its lifetime honour award.

He kept working into the 1990s, with Beni Bende Bitirdiler and İkimiz de Sevmiştik among his late work. As an actor he appeared in two films, Hıçkırık among them. He died of heart failure in Istanbul in 2000.