Özen Film

Background
Özen Film was founded in 1941 by Osman Sirman, his father Mehmet Rauf Bey and partners as a joint-stock company to produce and distribute movies, release foreign movies and operate a movie theater. Özen Film normally distributes for the Turkish market movies from 20th Century Studios (with TCS being the studio they most have partnership, releasing their productions in Turkey for almost 30 years), Castle Rock Entertainment and Carolco Pictures, while do distributing domestic movies, specially successful movies, either on a national or international scale, such as Su da Yanar (Water Also Burns),Hazal, Büyük Adam Küçük Aşk (Big Man, Little Love), Kutsal Damacana, Gönderilmemiş Mektuplar, among many others.

1st Logo (1990's)
Nicknames: "Turkish Cinerama I"

Logo: On a black background, the Özen Film logo (a filmstrip with each letter of the name inside each colored cel (à la Cinemara) and behind it, three colored ring, each one, receptively, in yellow, red and blue) slowly zooms in to the center of the screen.

FX/SFX: 2D animation.

Music/Sounds: A western tune that continues into the warning screen. Availability: Can be seen on VHS releases at the time, such as a 1990 VHS release of Brighton Beach Memoirs.

2nd Logo (1997-)


Nicknames: "Turkish Cinerama II", "The Spaceship"

Logo: On a space background, a spaceship appears with pulsing lights on the bottom. When the camera stops in front of the spaceship's entrance, it opens, revealing a filmreel containing each cel of the Özen Film logo descending from it, and the entrance closes off-screen. Then, the cels disattach from the filmreel, as four colored rings disattach from it too and the filmreel flies off-screen. Then, the all fly to the center of the screen, forming a tridimentional version of the full Özen Film logo (now containing an additional green ring).

Variant: A more common short version begins when the filmreel is descending from the spaceship.

FX/SFX: Typical late-90s CGI animation.

Music/Sounds: An ominous space-like string orchestra, with some sound effects coming the spaceship in the first half of the logo.

Music/Sounds Variant: On Sinema bir Mucizedir, it's silent.

Availability: Common. It appears on most of the movies since the 2000's. The full logo appeared on VHS releases and some early movies such as Ağır Roman.

Editor's Note: Despite being very dated to be still used today, the overall aesthetic of the dated animation along with the ominous music and the grainy film quality, adds a rather unique immersion, specially when watching on a theater's large and dark screen.