The aim of art is almost divine: To bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.

 

Iranian-Armenian film, ‘Yeva,’ directed by Anahid Abad, was given the Audience Award at the 11th Rome Francophone Film Festival.
The film narrates the story of Yeva, a young woman who, after her husband’s tragic death, escapes her influential in-laws with her daughter, Nareh, and takes refuge in one of the villages of Karabakh, Azerbaijan. Yeva is a complete stranger in this village and is obliged to live her daily life in disguise, ifilmtv.com reported.
‘Yeva’ is a joint production between the National Cinema Center of Armenia and the Iranian Farabi Cinema Foundation in Tehran.
The cast list of the film includes Narine Grigoryan, Shant Hovhannisyan, Marjan Avetisyan.
Notable screenings, awards and mentions of ‘Yeva’ include the Montreal World Film Festival in Canada, the Mill Valley Film Festival in the US, the Asian World Film Festival in the US, Audience Award at the Pomegranate Film Festival in Canada, the Tbilisi International Film Festival in Georgia, the Palm Springs Film Festival in the US, the Rafael Film Center in the US, and the Los Angeles Armenian Film Society in the US.
‘Yeva’ also received three nominations (best feature, best script and best director award) at the 21st Arpa International Film Festival in the United
States.

 

Iran’s well-known female filmmaker Narges Abyar held a virtual masterclass in Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh.
In the masterclass, which was held on Tuesday night, Abyar’s ‘Breath’ was screened and the director answered the audiences’s questions about the film, IRNA reported.
Sareh Nourmousavi, Pantea Panahiha, Mehran Ahmadi, Gelareh Abbasi, Siamak Safari, Shabnam Moqaddami, Jamshid Hashempour, Mohammadreza Shirkhanlou, Saqi Zinati, Ali Khanbabaei, Ehsan Qassemi, Rojan Aravand and Atiyeh Javid are among the cast of the film.
‘Breath’ is the story of four kids who live with their father and grandmother in the 1970s. Their world is full of
beautiful childish dreams that are going to come true.
Abyar was among the members of the jury at the sixth Herat International Women’s Film Festival (HIWFF). She was also selected for the International Jury of Children and Youth Films Competition – Listapadzik at the 25th Minsk International Film Festival, Listapad, Belarus.
Abyar, the director of acclaimed movies such as ‘Track 143,’ ‘Breath,’ and ‘When the Moon Was Full,’ received the HUM Women Leaders Award in the Pakistani city of Karachi in February 2020.
Her 2019 drama, ‘When the Moon Was Full,’ was screened at many international festivals and won awards, including the Grand Prize of the second Carcassonne International Political Film Festival in France and the audience award at the 23rd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia.


 

Dutch police arrested a 58-year-old man on suspicion of stealing paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Frans Hals with an estimated value of £18m during night-time raids on museums in the Netherlands last year.
The unnamed man was arrested at his home in the central town of Baarn over the thefts of Van Gogh’s ‘The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring’ and Hals’s ‘Two Laughing Boys’.
Police said that despite a search of the man’s home, they had not recovered either of the paintings. The Van Gogh is valued at up to £5m while the Hals masterpiece would be expected to fetch £13.4m at auction, the Guardian wrote.
The Van Gogh masterpiece was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam in the early hours of March 30, 2020 during a period in which it had been closed due to coronavirus restrictions.
The theft happened on what would have been the 167th anniversary of the 19th-century painter’s birth, prompting the museum’s director, Jan Rudolph de Lorm, on the day of the crime to tell reporters during a press conference that he had been left “incredibly pissed off”.
The thief had arrived on motorbike before using a sledgehammer to smash through the reinforced glass front door of the museum and fleeing with the 25cm by 57cm oil-on-paper painting tucked under his right arm.
Two months later, the Dutch art detective Arthur Brand received two “proof of life” photos of the Van Gogh alongside a dated front page of the New York Times newspaper.
Brand said at the time that the photographs had been “circulating in mafia circles” and had been handed to him by a source he declined to identify. The photographs obtained by Brand had revealed a new scratch on the bottom of the painting, thought to have been picked up during the raid.
‘Parsonage Garden’ was painted relatively early in Van Gogh’s career, before the prolific artist embarked on his trademark post-impressionist works such as ‘Sunflowers’ and vivid self-portraits.
‘Two Laughing Boys’ by the 17th-century Dutch master Hals was taken in a burglary in August from the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden Museum in Leerdam. Thieves had forced the back door building, setting off an alarm. But by the time officers arrived at 3:30 a.m., there was no sign of the perpetrators.
The painting was previously stolen from the museum in 2011 and 1988. It was recovered after six months and three years, respectively. Hals, who died in 1666, has been described as one of the great portraitists of the Golden Age. One of his most famous paintings is ‘The Laughing Cavalier’.
“Both paintings have not yet resurfaced with this arrest. The search continues unabated,” the police said. “This arrest is an important step in the investigation.”
Brand – known as the Indiana Jones of the art world for finding several lost paintings – hailed the news of the arrest. “Another huge success for Dutch police,” he tweeted. “The plot thickens...”

 

 Arts & Culture Desk  

Seven hundred public libraries were established across Iran over the past seven years, said the secretary-general of Iran Public Libraries Foundation (IPLF).
Alireza Mokhtarpour added that a number of libraries which were damaged by natural disasters, or were worn out, will be reconstructed soon, IRNA wrote.
He made the remarks during an opening ceremony of a library in Andisheh Shirvan Central Library in North Khorasan Province.
The libraries are of high significance in promoting the culture of book reading, he stated.
Measures have been taken to send books to members by courier in accordance with the health protocols of the coronavirus conditions in the yellow and orange zones, Mokhtarpour added.
A provincial official, Ali Beigzadeh, said that the development of any country depends on the development of its libraries, and the construction of these centers is a kind of cultural investment.
He added, “Currently, there are 72 libraries, with 840,000 book titles, and 50,000 members in North Khorasan, which shows the people’s enthusiasm for books.”


 

Iranian documentary, ‘Holy Bread,’ directed by the late Rahim Zabihi and produced by Touraj Aslani, entered the Showcase of the World competition section of the 27th Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.
The event will be held online from April 29 to May 9, in Toronto, Canada due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
The film is slated to complete with films from different countries in this prestigious cinematic event. The festival is endorsed by the Academy Awards and the winner of the Showcase of the World competition will enter the Oscars, IRNA wrote.
The international distribution of this documentary is Eli Image Company, under the management of Elaheh Nobakht.
The Canadian festival is considered to be the largest and most important documentary film festival in North America. The 27th edition was edited by Christopher McDonald, a well-known American actor, with 219 documentaries from 66 countries. They will be screened in different sections including the Showcase, Feature Films, the Semi-feature films, and the competition, Short Films and the Special Screening.
‘Holy Bread’ was screened in its last international appearance in the Feature Films competition section of the 18th International Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in the United States as one of the most important and annual events of documentary cinema in the world.
The work was approved by the Academy Awards among the final 10 nominees for the festival.

 

Vue cinemas admitted failures in health and safety after a filmgoer died when his neck got trapped in an electronic footrest.
Ateeq Rafiq, 24, suffered “catastrophic” injuries at the StarCity entertainment complex in Birmingham in 2018 when his head and neck became trapped under his seat as he searched for his phone and keys after watching a movie.
Vue Entertainment Ltd. admitted two charges at Birmingham crown court under the Health and Safety at Work Act, the Guardian wrote.
The company pleaded guilty to failing to ensure persons were not exposed to risk to their health and safety, and failing to make a suitable and safe risk assessment between January 1, 2007 and March 9, 2018 in relation to the use of powered cinema seating, BirminghamLive
reported.
A previous inquest in 2019 recorded a verdict of accidental death, with the jury foreman ruling there had been “missed opportunities to undertake comprehensive safety checks of the chairs,” according to the BBC.