Description

This unusual, charming and crudely printed ephemeral set of 10 pamphlets is an Ottoman adoption of the French macabre text Barrabas. The pamphlets were printed in Izmir in the first years of the 1920s.

The text is based on the silent movie Barrabas (also Barabbas or Barabas), made in 1919 with a premiere in Spain on September 15^th, 1920. Maurice Level, a French author of mostly macabre novels, made an accompanying cinéroman, which was issued between December 1919 and February 1920 in the newspaper Le Journal. In the same year a series of 12 pamphlets in French language with the text by the same author, illustrated with photomontages, was published. The silent movie, which was buried for many decades, was restored in 1998.

Level’s stories have been especially popular in the United States and Japan, as he was almost forgotten in his native country.

We could not find any institutional examples on Worldcat.

References: MİL – ÖZEGE; 1673.