Fourth Youth Film Festival ends in Baku
The Fourth Azerbaijan Youth Film Festival organized with support of U.S. Embassy, “Desperado” music school and “Azerbaijan Alumni Association” was held at CinemaPlus Azerbaijan cinema theaters on October 1-3.
Being titled “Tell your story” this year’s festival screened the films made by Azerbaijani, American and European filmmakers.
The first day of the festival was held in the cinema CinemaPlus Gәnclik Mall with a buffet and live music of the group Ahmedowsky Trio.
The festival’s director Mike Rayburn, representative of the U.S. Embassy Ferghani Aliyev, director Samir Kerimoglu and special guest Pablo Mohave,told about the festival, aimed at developing cinematography in the country, establishing bridges between the countries, exchanging experience with foreign specialists.
Mike Rayburn, festival’s director said Azerbaijani young filmmakers are very talented and expressed the confidence that in the future they will succeed at international festivals along with American directors.
Filmmaker Pablo Mohave, participant of Cannes Film Festival said that current development of information technologies allows to make high quality film with mobile phone.
Afterwards, short films dedicated to refugees and IDPs were screened.
On the second day of the festival, about 40 short films of young directors and participants from Azerbaijan, as well as Georgian filmmakers were shown at the CinemaPlus Azәrbaycan Cinema.
Tamta Gabrichidze answered questions from the audience and shared his experience. Pablo Mohave made a presentation on the use of virtual reality in documentary films.
The films of the winners were demonstrated on the last day of the festival at the CinemaPlus Gәnclik Mall. All participants of the festival were awarded certificates, and prize-winners received valuable gifts. Deputy Director General of the CinemaPlus Cinema Network and Cinemazadeh Director Jafar Akhundzadeh congratulated the participants of the festival and noted the importance of the project for the Azerbaijani youth.
An exhibition of Azerbaijani artist Vugar Muradov opened in Erarta Museum in Saint Petersburg on October 7.
The museum displays Muradov’s series of paintings based on the motives of the national carpets and carpet-weaving traditions of different schools - Baku, Ganja, Gazakh, Shirvan, Shamakhi, Karabakh, Guba, Ardebil and Tabriz.
The artist carefully studies the ornamentation and patterning to draw out the delineations of conventional figurative compositions that go unnoticed by the unfamiliar eye. He then mentally blanks out the rest of the design and thus has a whole new image. All that remains is to apply his brush and reproduce it on canvas.
Vugar does all the work manually with resort to printing. In his carpet series, artist creates an unexpected synthesis of two conceptual approaches to visual composition, Eastern-Islamic and Far Eastern-Buddhist.
This interesting and productive synthesis brings stylistic unity to the modern art of a diversified East that, being based on entirely different religio-philosophical traditions of Eastern art, has been unimaginable up until now. In other words, we witness a symbolic engagement of “the two Easts”.
The exhibition will last until October 22.
Muradov’s paintings are mainly bought by private collectors and the world’s most famous museums, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the same city’s Museum of Modern Art, the Argentinean company Guevara Films, the Central and Eastern European Art Foundation in Washington, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (Japan).
They embellish the offices of the Baltimore Sun newspaper (USA), Turkey’s Ministry of Defence, the Lambri International company (Holland), the Peace Foundation, the French embassy in Azerbaijan and many private collections around the world.
This year Azerbaijani artist became a member of the UNESCO International Federation of Art.