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Opening of the "Days of Iranian Cinema" On 2 April 2005 the "Days of Iranian Cinema" in St Petersburg officially opened in the Hermitage Theatre. The Color of God, an artistic feature film by the world-renowned Iranian film director Majid Majidi was shown. The festival of Iranian cinema was organized by the Government of St Petersburg, the State Hermitage, and the Cultural Representation attached to the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Russian Federation, with participation by the Hermitage Bridge Studio and the Lenfilm Studio. The opening of the Days of Iranian Cinema in the State Hermitage is an event of major significance. Russia's relations with the Iranian world are reflected in the Hermitage collections in all their diversity. During the summer of 2004, the Hermitage staged an enormously successful exhibition entitled Iran in the Hermitage. The Formation of a Collection, which included more than 300 paintings, sculptures and objects of applied art from Iran dating back to ancient times until the end of the 19th century. Many of the displayed items were presented to the public for the first time. Together with the exhibition, there was an International Conference on the Study of the Culture of Iran in the West, which took place in the State Hermitage in July 2004. As Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky said: "For the Hermitage, Iran is a country close both in spirit and in geographic proximity. Some of the most important Russian and international scholars on Iranian matters have worked in the past and work at present in the Hermitage. The object of their scholarly attention has been the unique collections of Iranian art assembled by the Hermitage. Ancient and medieval Iran had active trade ties with Siberia, the Volga region and the Russian North. Our unique collection of Iranian silver bears witness to and results from these ties. The diplomatic side of Russian-Iranian relations is richly represented in the Hermitage, which is not merely a museum of the history of culture but a monument to Russian statehood. Diplomatic gifts and military trophies explain the appearance in the Hermitage of the amazing Kajara paintings." The film company Neva-Film, which is headed by General Director O.S. Berezin, specially fitted the Hermitage Theatre with movable cinema equipment and Dolby Digital for the screening of the film. A retrospective showing of films by Majid Majidi will run in the Rodina cinema hall from April 2nd to 7th.
People call Majid Majidi the brightest, most philosophical and most "Iranian" of the new Iranian film directors. He was born in Teheran in 1959. Following the fall of the Shah in the Iranian Revolution, he worked in an Islamic propaganda organization, where he started out with documentary and short films and began his path over to cinema. When he was still a 20-year-old youth, Majidi began to work creatively: he appeared on the professional stage in the play Movement of Letters, which was produced in the City Theatre by Davud Daneshvar . In 1979 he was released from the army and played in Let them drive them away, by theatre director Kasem Seyfi. In 1980 he himself staged the play Airplane, and then he went to work for the Center of Islamic Thinking and Art, where he appeared in shows, wrote scripts and directed short films. His first experience staging and directing was in the short film The Explosion (1980), which was filmed using a 16-mm camera. Majidi's first full-length film was Baduk (1991). Prior to this and during the 1980's, he also acted and was filmed in Justification (1981); Another Death (1982); Restraint from Temptation (1985); Two Blind Eyes (1983); Boycott (1985); Military Execution (1986); Searching for a Hero (1989); As Long as the Eye Sees (1989); Swimming in Winter (1991). In the intervals between working in these films and Baduk, he produced a number of short films: Palankin (1984); Day of the Exam (1988); One Day in a Life with Prisoners (1988); The Last Settlement (1993); God is Coming (1995). After the film Baduk, Majidi shot the following full-length movies: Father (1995); Children of Heaven (1996); The Color of God (1998); Rain (2000). Majidi has received many prizes at various Iranian and international film festivals. In 1997 his film Children of Heaven was shown at the 21st Montreal Film Festival and was warmly greeted by viewers. At the same festival two years later Majidi received a prize for his film The Color of God, which was an unprecedented event since no director had formerly won the prize for best film twice. Majidi created his first full-length film Baduk in 1992 and immediately won several national prizes for it. His second full-length film, Father (1996) also won prizes in Iran and at film festivals in San Sebastian and in Turin. His film Children of Heaven, created in 1997, brought Majidi still greater success. It won the main prize at the Montreal Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Foreign Film of the Year. His film The Color of Heaven came next. One of the main themes running through Majidi's work is man's relationship with nature, which reveals the divine principle of the universe. His story line always is built around children, which allows him to express absolute purity in perception, a vision of the world which is still not clouded by adults' sins and problems. Beyond the laconism of his subjects, there is a conscious refusal to
accept the Hollywood laws on building fables and an attempt to affirm
the possibility in principle of making films according to other canons.
There is also the desire to apply purely oriental leisureliness and attention
to sift through the smallest details of his characters and the circumstances
of his personages' lives. |
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