Vedat Örfi Bengü

Vedat Örfi Bengü — Biography

Vedat Örfi Bengü was a many-sided artist regarded as a founder of the Oriental melodrama school in Turkish and Egyptian cinema: director, actor, screenwriter and producer, but also playwright and popular novelist. He is linked with Leyla, considered the first feature-length film shot in Egypt with Egyptian capital, and for that reason some sources call him the Turk who founded Egyptian cinema. He was the father of the writer and publisher Memet Fuat.

He began by writing plays and edited film magazines; his 1920 work Karanlıklar Padişahı is described as the first original Sherlock Holmes story written in Turkish. In the mid-1920s he acted in films in Paris, and from 1926 he worked in Egypt. A planned film about the life of the Prophet Muhammad caused a controversy there and was never made; he then found success with films such as Çöl Güzeli. In the early 1930s he returned to Istanbul, worked in the People's Houses, founded a theatre troupe, and in the 1940s wrote detective novels and set up his own publishing house, Bengü Yayınları.

He came back to cinema in 1947 and made some thirty-one films before his death. In this last period he directed, wrote or acted in titles such as Akıncılar, Allah Kerim, Bir Fırtına Gecesi, Çıldıran Baba, Ateşten Gömlek, Cem Sultan and İstanbul'un Fethi. In 1950 he founded Ülkü Film and began producing as well. He died in Istanbul on 25 May 1953.