Ghostly Borrowings: Transnational Horror Remakes in Egypt, Iran and Turkey

Date

2024-1

Author

Ekmekçi, Naz

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This thesis examines horror film remakes in the three most fertile film industries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region—Egypt, Iran, and Turkey—to address transnational filmmaking practices. The analysis engages in case studies of three horror film remakes to demonstrate the strategies of Egyptian, Iranian, and Turkish popular and genre cinemas to recontextualize cultural products to mediate their own cultures’ desires, hopes, anxieties, and fears. While theorising the cultural phenomenon of genre filmmaking in the MENA region, especially horror, that is underrepresented in contemporary scholarship, this thesis also reveals the transtextual multiplicities. It is argued that transnational influences operate at multiple levels in line with sociocultural, political, or ideological factors (due to their constant displacement, change, and transformation). This thesis also reveals how horror film remakes have contributed to the evolution and generic shifts of the horror genre in Egypt, Iran, and Turkey. Horror films are profitable and appeal to a guaranteed audience. They are produced for commercial reasons, yet they also take a crucial part in representing the fearful, especially in relation to the heightened extreme conservative policies in the region over the last two decades. Therefore, this thesis goes beyond the understanding of horror film remakes as “derivative copies” and focuses on the remaking processes within the transnational filmmaking practices. It examines Egyptian, Iranian, and Turkish horror film remakes in their own right and situates them within their peculiar histories of horror cinema, as well as their broader sociocultural, economic, political, and ideological contexts.

Subject Keywords

horror cinema, film remake, transnational cinema, transtextuality

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/108257

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis