Özet:

The transition to sound cinema profoundly affected the production, exhibition and viewing practices of film all over the world. In Turkey, a country with an emerging domestic film industry, this period was marked by issues regarding the infrastructural challenges and the language barrier related to sound film screening. Audiences faced difficulties while watching films in foreign languages. Low provincial investments in Turkey’s film industry led to a series of difficulties in relation to the sound exhibition infrastructure. The language barrier was a significant concern for cinema entrepreneurs in the provinces. The regions outside the big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir are considered as provinces and it is aimed to reveal the prominent actors, dynamics and results in the process of transition to sound in the geographies outside the center. In this research, primary sources consisting of newspapers, magazines and documents from the Presidential Republican Archives are used in addition to various secondary sources on the subject. In this article, the arrival of sound cinema in Turkey in 1930-1945, the change in film exhibition and viewing practices, and the challenges of this process in provincial cinemas are discussed. The role of the People’s Houses in the dissemination of sound cinema in the provinces is examined through the example of the Zonguldak People’s House.

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