Çetin İnanç

Çetin İnanç — Biography

Çetin İnanç was born in Ankara on 12 September 1941 to a transport worker and a homemaker, and is a cousin of actor Orhan Günşiray. He studied law after finishing Kabataş Boys High School but left his studies once he broke into cinema in 1961, joining a production directed by Atıf Yılmaz as an assistant.

He moved into directing his own films in 1967, first making his name with adventure titles such as the Kilink series and then with the wave of erotic films that swept Turkish cinema in the mid-1970s, before turning to low-budget action pictures. He reinforced his "jet director" nickname by recounting in one interview how he squeezed some films into about ten days of shooting while producers pushed for as few as six.

His 1982 science-fiction film Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, pieced together with footage lifted from foreign productions, achieved cult status abroad as the "Turkish Star Wars" and reached theaters in Spain and the U.S. decades later. Having worked as director, screenwriter and producer on more than a hundred films and series, İnanç's prolific and unconventional style has led some sources to call him "Turkey's Ed Wood."