# Yeşilçam Film Poster (Turkish Hand-Painted Afiş)

> Painted publicity of Turkish popular cinema by workshop artists such as Mehmet Bal, Kemal Borteçin and İbrahim Enez. Working from set photographs and plot briefings, painters sketched for approval, then painted gouache on paper for posters; facade lanterns used earth pigment and glue. Latin-script titles are hand-lettered in saturated colour. Painters were mostly anonymous, posters unsigned, originals often lost; the industry declined after the 1980 coup, ending 1988.

- Period: 1950–1988
- Where: Middle East & North Africa
- Origin: Istanbul, Turkey. The Yeşilçam industry is named for Yeşilçam Street in Beyoğlu, home to its studios and producers; poster painters worked in Beyoğlu and nearby print shops and painted both printed afişler and large cloth cinema lanterns (fener)
- Branch: Pictorial & machine age
- Also known as: Yeşilçam afişi, Turkish film poster, Beyoğlu cinema painting, Sinema feneri
- Page: https://stylogeny.com/styles/yesilcam-film-poster/

## How it works

- Paint the lead actors' portraits large, working from set photographs and plot briefings and sketching for approval, so that the star's face is the main selling point.
- Stack the heads and a smaller action or melodrama scene in one crowded, full-bleed composition.
- Hand-letter the Turkish title in heavy Latin display capitals with a dark outline or hard shadow, so it can be read across a street.
- Use saturated, many-hued colour that holds in print and on rain-exposed cloth.
- Adapt the mood to the genre: romance, comedy, crime or action, and show the cast names in the lettering below the title.
- Make the artwork once by hand and let the print shop reproduce it, so the poster is both an original painting and a mass-produced sheet.

## Its design choices

Defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

### Layout & composition
- [Collage & layering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/collage-and-layering/) (defining)
- [Full bleed](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-bleed/) (characteristic)
- [Diagonal axis](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/diagonal-axis/) (occasional)

### Space & hierarchy
- [Horror vacui](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/horror-vacui/) (characteristic)
- [Extreme scale contrast](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/extreme-scale-contrast/) (characteristic)
- [Layered information](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/layered-information/) (characteristic)

### Typography
- [Hand-lettering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hand-lettering/) (defining)
- [All caps](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/all-caps/) (characteristic)
- [Type as image](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/type-as-image/) (characteristic)

### Colour
- [Full polychrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-polychrome/) (defining)

### Form & shape
- [Naturalistic depiction](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/naturalistic-depiction/) (defining)
- [Distortion & exaggeration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/distortion-and-exaggeration/) (occasional)

### Surface & texture
- [Painterly brushwork](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/painterly-brushwork/) (characteristic)
- [Hard offset shadow](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hard-offset-shadow/) (characteristic)

### Ornament
- [Restrained accents](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/restrained-accents/) (occasional)

### Imagery
- [Painterly illustration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/painterly-illustration/) (defining)

### Medium & production
- [Hand-painted](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hand-painted/) (defining)
- [Offset printing](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/offset-printing/) (characteristic)
- [Architecture & signage](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/architecture-and-signage/) (characteristic)
- [Lithography](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/lithography/) (occasional)

### Tone & intent
- [Romantic & sensual](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/romantic-and-sensual/) (characteristic)
- [Playful & witty](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/playful-and-witty/) (occasional)

Avoids: Modular grid, Generous white space, Typography only, Non-representational, Grotesque & neo-grotesque, Monochrome, Rational & objective, Brush & pen calligraphy

Palette: #d7263d, #f5c518, #1e63b5, #2e9e5b, #f2e6c9, #1a1a1a

Typefaces: Hand-painted Latin display capitals for Turkish film titles, with diacritics (Ç, Ğ, İ, Ö, Ş, Ü), Outlined and shadowed cast and credit lettering painted by the poster artist, Cinema-lantern sign lettering on large cloth panels

Known for: İbrahim Enez, poster and cinema-lantern painter; moved to Istanbul in 1961, painted posters for about 500 films until 1975, then went into printing; Mehmet Bal, Kemal Borteçin and İbrahim Enez, named as the most prolific poster and lantern painters of the 1960s and 1970s; Mithat Ağakay (began painting posters and lanterns in 1922; his Mimeray became a major poster printer in the 1950s); Münif Fehim, 1960s poster painter (Cennet Fedaisi, O Kadın); Ömer Yıldız, lantern painter taking over the Hüseyin Olur workshop at Rumeli Han in 1987

## Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

- Grew out of: [Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering](https://stylogeny.com/styles/hand-painted-signage.md) (1800–present)
- Alike in its design choices: [Mexican Golden Age Film Poster](https://stylogeny.com/styles/mexican-golden-age-film-poster.md) (1936–1956), 84% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Thai Hand-Painted Film Poster and Billboard](https://stylogeny.com/styles/thai-film-billboard.md) (1953–present), 81% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster](https://stylogeny.com/styles/bollywood-poster.md) (1940–1999), 79% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Italian Painted Film Poster (Rome Studios)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/italian-painted-film-poster.md) (1914–1990), 77% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Egyptian Painted Film Poster](https://stylogeny.com/styles/egyptian-film-poster.md) (1932–1996), 75% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Hong Kong Cinema Poster (Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest era)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/hong-kong-cinema-poster.md) (1958–1995), 66% alike

## Sources

- Wikipedia, 'Yeşilçam' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye%C5%9Fil%C3%A7am), for the industry, its name and end after the 1980 coup (it does not discuss posters)
- Sinematek, 'Sinema fenerleri, afişleri ve emekçileri' (https://sinematek.tv/sinema-fenerleri-afisleri-ve-emekcileri/), on painters, lanterns and printing, also describing a digital library with nearly 4,000 Turkish film posters on its site
- İbrahim Enez, 'En çok Ekrem Bora'yı çizmeyi severdim' (https://www.ibrahimenez.com/en-cok-ekrem-borayi-cizmeyi-severdim/), on the painter's workflow

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From Stylogeny (https://stylogeny.com/), an atlas of graphic-design styles by Van Riel Online Services. How it is made: https://stylogeny.com/about/. Cite as: Stylogeny, “Yeşilçam Film Poster (Turkish Hand-Painted Afiş)”, https://stylogeny.com/styles/yesilcam-film-poster/