Halit Refiğ

Halit Refiğ — Biography

Halit Refiğ was born in İzmir on 5 March 1934 into a family that had migrated from Salonika after the Balkan Wars of 1913; after Şişli Terakki High School he studied engineering at Robert College, taking an unpaid job at a Beyoğlu dubbing studio to get his first foothold in the film business. During military service in Korea in 1954 he shot amateur 8mm footage, in 1956 he began writing unsigned film criticism for the magazine Akis, and in 1957 he became an assistant to director Atıf Yılmaz, working alongside Yılmaz Güney. He made his directing debut with Yasak Aşk in 1960; his 1964 film Gurbet Kuşları won prizes at the Moscow, New Delhi and Sorrento festivals and took the Best Director award at the Golden Orange, marking him as a pioneer of the "National Cinema" movement. His 1975 TRT production Aşk-ı Memnu is considered one of Turkey's earliest television dramas, while his Kemal Tahir adaptation Yorgun Savaşçı was censored and its prints burned on the military government's order in 1983, though a surviving copy was broadcast by TRT in 1993. He taught at Mimar Sinan, Wisconsin and Denison universities, was named honorary professor by Marmara University in 1997, and published more than 300 essays along with several books. He died in Istanbul on 11 October 2009 of bile duct cancer and was buried at Zincirlikuyu Cemetery; in 2024 he was posthumously awarded Turkey's Presidential Grand Award for Culture and Arts.