My Dear Friend, Agâh Effendi,

It has been fifty years since we have descended from the Babıâli Hill. You loved cinema a lot; producing so many works could have only been possible with love. Otherwise, who would have written the credits of our cinema, that is to say, the "1914-2008 Turkish Film Guide"... This book has become the inventory of our cinema. The Ministry of Culture, film and labour unions and associations, and film critics have benefited from this work so much... And with the latest English edition of this book, you have written your name to the history of the world. What's more, you have documented the secret history of cinema with dozens of books. Your "Turkish Cinema with Posters" book, your "Dictionary of Turkish Producers and Directors", countless exhibitions... Your tens of thousands of documents and their publications... You rightfully deserve the name "historiographer Agâh". Writing through sixty years of your seventy-seven-year-long life, and spending these years with producing, collecting documents, publishing them to the benefit of universities, institutions... A lifetime could only have been lived as productive.

My Dear Agâh, You have received numerous awards. But to be crowned with the Cinema Honorary Award of the İstanbul Foundation of Culture and Arts, I think, is the most sublime of them all.

Live long, and produce as long, my dear Agâh.
- Necip Sarıcı

Yukarı