Remzi Jöntürk

Remzi Jöntürk — Biography

Remzi Jöntürk was one of Yeşilçam's most prolific directors: in a little over two decades he directed seventy-two films, wrote many of them himself and produced five. He is remembered above all for the Malkoçoğlu series starring Cüneyt Arkın and for the psychedelic action films of the 1970s.

After military high school he studied journalism and fine arts in Istanbul, entering cinema through set work, decoration and small acting parts, and became Süreyya Duru's assistant. His first film as director, in 1964, was Zımba Gibi Delikanlı with Yılmaz Güney. In the mid-1960s he made Göklerdeki Sevgili (1966), then turned to the Malkoçoğlu films: Malkoçoğlu, Malkoçoğlu Krallara Karşı, Malkoçoğlu Kara Korsan and Malkoçoğlu Akıncılar Geliyor; Arkın led these films. In 1971 he founded the company Polat Film. In the second half of the 1970s the "Adam" trilogy with Arkın, including Yarınsız Adam (1976) and Yıkılmayan Adam (1977), became among the best-known examples of genre cinema; his films also include Göç (1974), Pir Sultan Abdal (1973) and Öğretmen Kemal (1981). Between 1971 and 1985 he also appeared as an actor in five films.

In September 1987 he died in a traffic accident while returning from the shoot of Afrodit.