Faruk Kenç

Cinema director, producer (B. 31st January 1910, Istanbul – D. 11th May 2000, Istanbul). His father was one of the old adjutants of Abdülhamit II and his mother was Hasene (Killigil) Hanım. He was the nephew of Enver Pasha who brought the first film camera to Turkey and who initiated the starting of the film industry. After completing his high school education in Istanbul, he started to work in Ha-Ka Film owned by Halil Kamil Bey. He visited Anatolia together with the Soviet directors Sergey Yutkeviç and L. O. Arnstam who came to Turkey (1933) to shoot a documentary film in this period. He worked as the assistant of the director Esfir Şup and cameraman Martof in the shooting of the movie named Türk İnkılâbında Terakki Hamleleri in 1934. He went to Germany in 1934 to receive cinema education and he finished the Bavaria Public Photography School in Munich. He returned to the homeland in 1938 and he started again to work in the Ha-Ka film studio. After shooting the military movie Doğu Manevraları, he took part in the shooting of the documentary Atatürk'ün Cenaze Töreni.

In 1939, he directed his first full-length film Taş Parçası that was adapted from a play of Reşat Nuri Gültekin that was previously staged in the Şehir Tiyatroları (T.N. City Theaters). After making this movie that was one of the products of the period of theater players in the Turkish cinema with respect to the décor, actor and expression, he turned towards the detective movies and created Yılmaz Ali (1940). This movie, carrying elementary motives and type castings from the foreign cinema products, took attention with the usage of locations having different structures and with its dynamic images. After making Kıvırcık Paşa again with theater players, he became the initiator of serial films in the Turkish cinema with Çakırcalı Mehmet Efe. He shot his first three movies in a talking way; however, he shot Dertli Pınar as a silent movie to be post synchronized afterwards for the first time in Turkey and he paved the way for transforming this method into a tradition used in our cinema until these days (1943). The film making industry gained speed with this innovation made in the sound recording techniques.

Faruk Kenç, who was one of the first and leading directors of a new period in the Turkish cinema called “the period of transition” between the period of “theater players” and the period of “cinema actors”, started through İstanbul Film founded by him in 1944 to make productions in addition to directing movies. He organized a competition of artists through the magazine of Yıldız in order to find actors to his company and to train film actors apart from theater players for the first time. By this way, he brought actors and actresses such as Belgin Doruk and Ayhan Işık to the Turkish cinema. In the years of 1946-47, he founded the Yerli Film Yapanlar Society together with some of his friends and he organized competitions and festivals with the title of the head of society. He enabled tax reductions for Turkish films. Faruk Kenç, who turned towards the village environment between the years of 1944-48, directed the films Hasret, Günahsızlar, and Karanlık Yollar. He benefited from the commercial success of these movies, which used the village only as a location, and chose the same location in his historical movies (Türkân Sultan and Köroğlu 1953). His following works were mostly movies that didn’t pass the limit of essays and that were made for commercial purposes, for example Kaybolan Gençlik (1955) that described people going to the bad, Çölde Bir İstanbul Kızı (1957) that carried the effects of the foreign cinema and Ölmeyen Aşk (1959) that was a musical melodrama. After that, he moved from the directorship of full-length films to the production of short-length films. He made educational and instructional short-length films such as Sanayi'de Eğitim, Ne İçin Eğitim?, Güler Yüz Tatlı Söz, and Sümerbank Mağazasında Bir Gün. He conducted the presidency of Film-San Association.

WORKS:

Taş Parçası (1939), Yılmaz Ali (1940), Kıvırcık Paşa (1940), Dertli Pınar (1943), Hasret (1944), Günahsızlar (1946), Karanlık Yollar (1946), Tuzak (1948), Üvey Baba (1949), Çakırcalı Mehmet Efe (1950), Parmaksız Salih (1950), Hürriyet Şarkısı (1951), Kendini Kurtaran Şehir (1951), Çakırcalı Mehmet Efe Nasıl Vurul­du (1952), Çakırcalı Mehmet Efe’nin De­finesi (1952), Kanlı Çiftlik (1952), Türkân Sultan ve Köroğlu (1953), Nasreddin Hoca ve Timurlenk (1954), Hayatımı Mahveden Kadın (1955), Kay­bolan Gençlik (1955), Çölde Bir Istanbul Kızı (1957), Annemi Arıyorum (1959), Felâket Yolu (1959), Ölmeyen Aşk (1959), Peçeli Efe (1959), Boş ver Doktor (1962), Çöl Kanunu (1964).