Credits
	Director & Producer	Nurdan Arca
	Script	Nurdan Arca
	Editor	Melih Fehmi Tatlıcan
	Executive Producer	Mehmet Çam
	Director of Photography	Cafer Gebetaş
	Original Music	Feyzullah Çınar
	Production Date	2009
	Duration	19 min
	Format	DV

Awakening [Uyanış]

Irene Melikoff, who was born in Saint Petersburg in the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution, sought refuge in Paris with her family. She married a Turk she met when she was studying in Sorbonne and came to Turkey. Emeritus Professor Irene Melikoff dedicated her academic life first to Turkology and then to the Alevi, a topic she embarked on to research, in her words, “not to believe but to understand”. Describing her first encounter with the Alevi as “it was an awakening for me”, Mrs. Melikoff has become a guide to whom the Alevi resorted to understand their identity through her many articles and books on the Alevi. The documentary is a movie of a new “awakening” in the 40th anniversary of the death of Irene Melikoff, or Sister Irene as she called herself, who closed her eyes to this world as a doyen of Turkology.

AWARDS

• - 49th Festival of Grape 2009, Cyprus
  Special Jury Award for short documentaries

FESTIVALS

• - 49th Festival of Grape 2009, Cyprus

SCREENINGS

• - Screened at the ceremony for the 40th day of Melikoff’s decease.
  (2009 /Karacaahmet, Istanbul – Turkey)