Monday, November 19, 2007

ONAR'S RIGHT HAND IS DEAD!

It took me a while to find the heart to sit down and write a few lines about the biggest strike both in ONAR's existence and in Turkish Cult Cinema in general.
About a month ago, my good friend and main helper Metin Demirhan, was about to take some important interviews on my behalf, in Istanbul.
Then, sudden silence...
A few days later, I get news from a common friend that Metin was in intensive care with brain bleeding, in a deep coma.
10 days later I hear that he's starting to move his eyes and his fingers and everybody believed it was a miracle and he would wake up.
On November 1, Metin passes away.
Our common friend, and famous journalist Ali Murat Guven, attended the funeral and sent me photos with his coffin etc.
I don't want to look at them and I don't want to accept he is not with us.
I was keeping all his emails bacause there was precious info in all of them and because I just liked them.
I still see his last email, telling me he's about to interview those guys and I'm still waiting for his email, telling me everything is ready.
I remember, 5 months ago, he was ready to get an interview from Yesim Yukselen, a sexy vamp playing in lots of cult movies.
She was not really old.
Suddenly, Metin tells me that the day before the interview she just died.
He was totally shocked. Said she was like a mother to him.
I guess he was feeling cold with the touch of death that took a dear friend.
Maybe cold because he realised death is unpredictable.
Maybe lucky because it wasn't him.
Maybe appreciated life better.
And now?
He's simply dead and buried.
As Ali Murat put it to me :
{ He worked for the art of cinema in all his lifetime. He never saw a 1000 USD together in his long working years in the media. If he had a cup of coffee and a packet of cigarettes, then he was always happy and smiling like a little child. He wanted nothing for himself, he always wanted to live inside the great family of cult film lovers from all over the world.
He was always poor and “no-budget” like the movies which he was interested in and wrote about}

He took all recent interviews for me. There is also a personal interview with him in my TURKISH HORROR DOUBLE BILL DVD.
Luckily, just a month before his tragic demise, he took 2 interviews for me. His last interviews.
One with Yilmaz Atadeniz (Kilink, Casus Kiran etc) and one with Irfan Atasoy (Star in all of Atadeniz's Fantastic films).
I will include them in future releases of course.
He wrote the cult and unrepeatable book TURKISH FANTASTIC CINEMA and he was shooting a cheap gory film since last year, which regretably remained unfinished ( Baltam Gelecek Kellen Gidecek!) (My axe will come, your head will go!).
He also ran some blogs, like http://fantastiksinema.blogspot.com/ and http://www.yilmazatadeniz.blogspot.com/
It is totally macabre to check them out. They feel like some kind of orphans to me. Who will take care of them now?
Ok, I'm absolutely freaked out by this horrible loss and I really feel the whole Onar project kind of useless.
He was my biggest fan and biggest admirer and biggest assistance.
The least I can do from now on is to dedicate all my dvd's to him and call them something like "METIN DEMIRHAN COLLECTION".
He deserves it. He was the one who started all this "trend" and he made so many films known and sought after, through his book.
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