Lemon Films

Lemon Films is the film company Kemal Basmacı, Feridun, and Füsun established to finance productions and give Feridun a base for his work. Conceived partly as a way to help Füsun enter cinema while keeping her apart from the film bars and their social pressures, it became the vehicle for Feridun’s commercially successful Broken Lives. The company’s fortunes therefore track a changing balance between artistic ambition, business support, Kemal’s possessiveness, and the realities of the film industry.

Formation and Purpose

At the beginning of 1977, Kemal concluded that the film venture should be managed from an office rather than from the Pelür Bar, where Füsun was meeting new acquaintances and receiving offers to appear in photoromans and commercials. He believed that she might soon leave Feridun and imagined that they would marry, and he presented the company as a way to make her an actress without requiring her to become involved with people he distrusted. His proposed support was thus both practical and personal: financing a film enterprise also offered him a means of influencing the conditions under which Füsun might work.

The company’s name came from Füsun’s cheerful suggestion that it be named for Lemon, the canary. Its business card showed the bird, and its office stood beside the New Angel Cinema. The name and location gave the new venture a modest, recognizable public identity, while its actual operating capacity depended heavily on Kemal’s financial backing and Feridun’s work as its managing director.

Financing and Working Relationships

Kemal arranged for 1,200 Turkish lira to be deposited monthly in a personal account at the Agricultural Bank’s Beyoğlu branch. Half the sum covered Feridun’s salary as managing director; the remainder went toward rent and production costs. The amount exceeded the salaries Kemal paid his two highest-ranking managers at Satsat, making clear that Lemon Films was not a minor diversion in his budget. When the company’s work required more protection for Füsun, he also directed Satsat to remit additional funds and enlarge its budget.

Kemal cultivated Feridun as a colleague and friend outside the family home. They met at the Lemon Films office to review screenplays, applications to the board of censors, and the search for a male lead. Both were wary of actors whose reputations and behavior they feared could expose Füsun to unwanted attention. Avoiding that risk, Kemal recognized, could cost Feridun opportunities; increased funding was his answer. The arrangement joined genuine professional cooperation to Kemal’s attempt to control Füsun’s access to the industry.

That control was never complete. Füsun and Feridun continued to go out to Beyoğlu, and Kemal’s advice that Feridun keep her at home by taking advantage of his evening visits went largely unheeded. A society column later described a secretive rich bachelor financing an art film while jealous of the married woman he hoped to make a star. Its account turned the company’s private ambition into public gossip, presenting financial sponsorship not simply as cultural patronage but as a means of guarding the woman at the center of the project.

Production and Broken Lives

The company’s early artistic plan met a practical obstacle when Feridun brought Kemal a screenplay that had already passed censorship. It had a suggestive leading role suited to Papatya, not Füsun, and depended on Tahir Tan for its male lead. The story concerned a wealthy man who seduces and abandons a young woman, who later seeks revenge as a singer. Kemal objected to the proposed casting and the subject, but he ultimately agreed to finance the film, partly because he wanted to make Feridun happy despite his own misgivings about the material.

In May 1981, Feridun began shooting Broken Lives, named for the novel by Halit Ziya but set in a very different world: the streets and entertainment venues of 1970s Istanbul. Papatya played a woman who pursues revenge through her singing career. Production began at Peri Cinema, whose auditorium was rearranged to resemble a traditional music hall. The project shows Lemon Films operating in a commercial industry shaped by state censorship: a screenplay considered ready for production could be more valuable than a more original work that could not safely pass through the approval process.

Success and Expansion

Critics treated Broken Lives harshly, but audiences in Istanbul and the provinces made it a box-office hit. Its emotional finale drew strong reactions, and the film was credited with bringing spectators back to cinemas after years of political violence had kept many people from going out at night. The renewed attendance also revived the Pelür Bar as a meeting place for film workers and dealmakers.

Success changed Lemon Films’ standing and Kemal’s place in the industry. He became a prominent producer, sought out by actors and crew members, and the company acquired the reputation of a venture capable of reviving business. Yet that public recognition did not mean the original aim had been fulfilled: the film’s success centered on Papatya, while Füsun herself was increasingly forgotten by the people who had once gathered around the project. Kemal’s renewed attachment to her was sharpened by the contrast between her absence from the industry’s attention and his belief that he had protected her from it.

The hit prompted plans for further investment. Lemon Films agreed to support a record featuring Papatya singing the songs herself, and a sequel to Broken Lives was also discussed after cinemas and distributors demanded one. The proposed sequel would reveal that Papatya’s character had survived and begin in a hospital. These decisions demonstrate that the company’s activity was shaped not only by its founders’ artistic plans but also by audience demand and the commercial momentum of a successful release.

Transfer and Significance

When Füsun and Feridun agreed to separate, Nesibe the seamstress told Kemal that Feridun would be accommodating if he let him have Lemon Films. The separation followed a serious argument after Feridun, having split with Papatya, asked to return to Füsun and was refused. The household’s changed circumstances made the company’s ownership part of the practical negotiations surrounding the end of the marriage.

Kemal and Feridun later settled the transfer of full rights to Lemon Films in Feridun’s name over lunch at the Divan Hotel. The long relationship between them had become strained by jealousy, but the transfer was completed before they turned to discussing Feridun’s next art film, Blue Rain. Lemon Films thus passed from being the instrument of Kemal’s sponsorship and hopes for Füsun to Feridun’s independent possession. Its arc exposes the unstable overlap between patronage and intimacy: the company could fund films, employ collaborators, and capture a market, but it could not make its original personal ambitions come true.