Historic Turkish film collections moved to state-of-the-art facilities

ANKARA

The Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry has transferred two major collections central to the country’s cinematic memory into modern archival facilities, ensuring their preservation under international standards.

The move safeguards both the Ottoman-to-Early Republic era nitrate-based film collection and the Cinema-TV Center Collection of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (MSGSÜ) in Istanbul, founded by the late Professor Sami Şekeroğlu.

According to a ministry statement, the MSGSÜ collection, comprising nearly 10,000 films preserved for decades under Şekeroğlu’s leadership, was relocated from the university’s Balmumcu campus due to earthquake risks.

It is now housed in a specially built archive center at the Bomonti campus, equipped with advanced climate-control systems to secure the fragile reels.

Meanwhile, the nitrate-based collection containing invaluable footage from the Ottoman Empire, the War of Independence and the Atatürk era, has been placed in a dedicated facility within the Turkish Armed Forces’ Visual Production and Photo Film Center Command.

Among the holdings are rare films compiled during the celebrations of Atatürk’s centenary as well as seminal works from Turkish cinema history.

The ministry said that the films are preserved both in their original nitrate form and through digitization. Regular inspections are carried out, and selections from the collections are being made available to the public through a dedicated portal on the ministry’s website (filmmirasim.ktb.gov.tr) and the official YouTube channel “Sine Resmi.”