Tuesday 7 September 2010

1944 MAGAZINE CLIP REGARDING TURKISH RELEASE OF BAMBI


Above scan from the no. 70 (dated April 29th, 1944) of Turkish children's weekly Çocuk Haftası [Children's Week], which had been serializing an illustrated text story of Bambi, is of a notice, perhaps an 'advertorial'!, urging its readers not to miss the movie itself which had opened in Istanbul's Sümer cinema. The one-and-a-half year delay for the Turkish release of Bambi (which had premiered in the US in August 1942) is quite normal given the wartime conditions.
The Sümer cinema, which had opened in 1930 as Artistik, would be renamed in the later decades as Rüya and then function as a venue for mostly B-movies. Further later, it would become an adults-only theater (*). A long way from Bambi!..

(*) On Dec. 27th, 2008, Rüya was raided by Turkish police's vice squad for being a site of gay prostitution. Next month, it was renamed as Yeni [New] Rüya and converted back into mainstream programming, eventually even hosting the Istanbul Film Festival. However, it closed its curtains for good on May 7th, 2010.

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