Tag Archives: art news

Iranian Film Line Up in Berlin Festival

Posted on by Tara Gallery
24 Apr

Best of luck to the NINE Iranian films that will be featured in this year’s Black International Cinema Berlin, spanning May 7 – 11, 2014. This 29th festival’s tagline is “Pathways to Enlightenment,” honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to Berlin in 1964, and will feature a photography exhibition entitled, “Footprints in the Sand?” The festival aims to promote intercultural communication.

Below is a list of each film and a short description, courtesy of the festival website.

ZENDEGI FAGHAT YEK ETEFAGHE SADE AST // LIFE IS A SIMPLE HAPPENING | Director: Khashayar Matapoor
A young doctor decides to travel for relief and escape from her problems. Coincidentally, she meets a family in Oraman of Kurdistan. The shared experience with the family is very meaningful to her.

ARTESHE PENHAN // HIDDEN ARMY | Director: Mohammad Esmaeili
A lone soldier is running from the enemy. Not the many explosions around him and not even the bullet in his leg is stopping him. But a massive explosion finally pulls him down. He drags himself near a house and puts his back against a palm tree, when suddenly the voice of a woman attracts his attention…

ABRHAYE KOLALEI // COLUMBUS CLOUDS | Director: Bahar Lellahi
Hamidreza, after several years comes back to Iran for his nephew’s marriage, after his engagement has failed and he is disappointed and alone. Gradually, he comes to understand his mother’s and family’s problems.

ZEMESTANE AKHAR // THE LAST WINTER | Director: Salem Salavati
Baji and headman are the sole survivors of an isolated village, which is sinking under water little by little. They are companions and confidants of one another. One night, haphazardly and due to constraints of nature, they are away from each other and Baji is left alone at home. The headman does his best to pass through the snow while Baji, all alone in the village, is embroidering the last part of her story on cloth.

SOSKHA AZ ROSHANAEI MOTANAFERAND // COCKROACHES HATE LIGHT | Director: Hamid Sadeghpoor
A man is trapped in an odorous cubic enclosure and…?

AZ MENHAYE YEK // FROM MINUS ONE | Director: Marjan Ashrafzade
Forced by her husband, Tayebeh is going to a stranger to get her husband’s bad check returned. She is certain, though, that the price will be to sleep with the strange man. Now, to go or not to go, this is her call?

PAYANE FASLE 3 // END OF SEASON 3 | Director: Soran Fahim
A Kurdish writer is writing a story on Anfal, but can’t find an ending for it…

DERAKHTE BADAM // ALMOND | Director: Mokhtar Masoumyan
The story is about a girl who derives a problem because of an old tradition (circumcision). Now at the beginning of her marriage, some other social problems appear. “Almond” is the story of Awat, a girl who encounters traditions and enters a new world full of adversity. Circumcision of girls is performed among traditional Iranian society in some rural regions.

SOBHE ROZE BAAD // THE NEXT MORNING | Director: Ali Hashemi
Sahar wakes up to perform her daily routine. But a strange event has happened because nobody recognizes her. At first, Sahar thinks a mistake has been made, but the shocking fact is, she must face her new reality.

Iranian Art Shines at Bonhams Auction

Posted on by Tara Gallery
17 Apr

Iranian art shines at Bonhams auction! Bonhams recently had it’s bi-annual Islamic and Indian Art auction in London. The auction featured work by many well known Iranian artists and resulted in total sales of $7,554,769.14.

TEHRAN – Iranian artworks shined at Bonhams sale of Islamic and Indian Art in London on April 8.

An acrylic on canvas by Hossein Zenderudi was sold for £158,500 [$266,117.53], and the calligraphic painting by Mohammad Ehsaii was sold for £92,500 [$155,269.39], Bonhams announced on its website.

Farhad Moshiri’s accumulation of wooden panels, doors, books, textile fragments and oil paintings laid onto a board fetched £72,100 [$121,047.24].

Moreover, Parviz Tanavoli’s “Heech” depicting the Persian word “heech” (nil) was sold for £18,750 [$31,478.68], and the painting on paper by Ardeshir Mohasses gained £7,500 [$12,591.47].

Abbas Kiarostami, Aidin Aghdashlu, Reza Derakhshani, Ali Shirazi, Nasrollah Afjeii and Afshin Pirhashemi were among the other Iranian artists whose works were sold at the auction.

An important painting of a Great Indian fruit bat or flying fox by Indian artist Bhawani Das with its 1.5 meter wingspan sold for £458,500 [$769,747.03] at Bonhams. The sale achieved total sales of £4.5 million [$7,554,769.14].

The Islamic and Indian Art department holds two sales a year covering a wide range of art and artifacts dating from the 9th to the 19th centuries. This includes Arabic and Persian manuscripts, pottery, metalwork and glass, ivory, jewelry and stonework, Ottoman Turkish works of art (silver, textiles, arms and armor), and Persian material.

[source: Tehran Times] [Image source: Ali Shirazi | Bonhams]

Mehran Tamadon wins the Cinéma du Réel Grand Prize

Posted on by Tara Gallery
05 Apr

Iranian filmmaker Mehran Tamadon has won the 36th Cinéma du Réel Grand Prize for his film Iranien:

The filmmaker, an Iranian atheist living in France, invites three religious people to live in his family home. His purpose is to see how life in their shared living room can lead to the first rules of co-existence.

“I’m an Iranian who doesn’t think like them and I tell them so”: from 2010 to 2012, Mehran Tamadon, who lives in France, returns to his family home near Teheran to debate with the “defenders of the Islamic Republic of Iran”. Rearranged for the occasion, the living room is to serve as a shared space where he, the atheist, and three believers will live together on the basis of a commonly agreed constitution. Exhilarating to begin with, this arrangement resembles not so much a rhetorical trap as a family gathering or a psychoanalysis on a territory where many words — and parts of the human body — must not be unveiled. Cooking, lighting a fire, choosing framed photos to put in the library or listening to music: in the most commonplace materiality, it is the frontiers of a world that are being shifted inch by inch, in the painfully utopian hope that living together is possible — a microcosm where the house and the world can communicate. The epilogue recounts the project’s out-of-frame outcome, but the spatial and temporal frame of the film make this experience an unprecedented and heartrending exercise of political philosophy.
(Charlotte Garson)

The festival featured forty films from twenty-six countries. The grand prize awards Tamadon with €8,000.

The film was also shown at the 64th Berlinale Film Festival. You can read The Hollywood Reporter‘s review of the documentary here.

[source: Cinéma du Réel]

Iranian Art Prospers – the Fadjr Festival of International Visual Arts

Posted on by Tara Gallery
27 Mar

The Fadjr International Festival of Visual Arts takes place every February, in Iran. Take a look at the video to hear highlights from the Festival and about the state of Iranian art and artists.

The art scene in Iran is dynamic and it has seen the rise of many renowned artists in recent times. One of the events that allows young and thriving artists to showcase their works alongside famous Iranian artists in the Fajr Visual Arts Festival. An art event that is picking up over the years with more and more exhibits going on display.

“Over 19,000 artworks from 6,100 artists from 51 countries entered the festival, from these we chose 990 works from 800 artists to go display and take part in the festival. This art event has achieved a significant turnout this year,” Abbas Mir-Hashemi
Secretary of Fajr Visual Arts Festival said.

The competition was in held in various fields of visual arts from photography to calligraphy and from sculptures to ceramics. As one art connoisseur put it categorizing modern art is itself difficult.

The Director of Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Arts said, Majid Mulla-Nourouzi
“The visual arts were seeing here is from various fields which we usually see these works in separate expos but here there all together, this is of importance as in modem arts we have many artworks that are in between fields such as video arts and performances.”

Works from renowned artists took part in the non-competitive section of the festival, for the young and thriving the government is trying to help these artists become better known.

Ali Moradkhani, the Deputy for Arts at the Ministry of Culture said, “On part of the government we will try in the coming years to make exemplary works known to collectors and at the same time we will support many of the artists by getting many of these artworks for our collection, so in a way it’s the history of art of this country and at the same time its support artists.”

The judges we talked too mentioned the improving scene in their field of visual arts and the artists themselves were happy with the way the event was held this year.

Artist, Behzad Hajir, said “The difference in this year’s festival compared to before is that in the ceramics section which I took part there are no limitations and if you look at the works on display this is clearly shown.”

While the Fajr festival has come to an end these works of art will be on display in 21 provinces in Iran and in Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary arts during the Nowruz holidays as the country celebrates the Persian New Year.

[Source: Press TV]

Parviz Tanavoli Art Scuffle

Posted on by Tara Gallery
27 Mar
Wasn’t expecting to read this in the news today, but alas–there it was, this morning. Never a dull moment in the Iranian art world:
Sculptor Parviz Tanavoli has sued intruders who forced their way into his home in northern Tehran, taking a number of his works.
“Last night, about 20 people broke into my house using a crane and a truck, and, acting wildly and ineptly, took 11 of my sculptures,” he told the Persian service of ISNA on Monday.
“Nobody was at home when they arrived. People in neighboring houses said that they broke the locks to enter my house,” he added.
“When I arrived home, I asked about the reasons for their action. They said they were carrying out a court order. However they refused to show me their documents until they left,” he stated.
In an agreement signed between Tanavoli and the Tehran Municipality in 2003, he transferred the ownership of his 58 sculptures and his house in northern Tehran to the municipality on the condition that the house is converted into a museum for his works.
“Shortly afterwards, they informed me that their plan to establish the museum has been stopped and they no longer wanted to make a museum for my works,” Tanavoli stated.
“I filed a lawsuit and six years later the court ruled that the house was to be returned to me,” he added.
He said that over the past few years, the municipality has acquired all the sculptures, some of which allegedly have been sold.
“A few months ago, I went to court for a decision on the ownership of the artworks. The court ruled that the collection must remain in my house until the court makes a final decision, but the break-in occurred,” he said.
According Tanavoli, most of the artworks have been seriously damaged in transit.
So far, no official comment has been made about this issue and it is not clear where the sculptures have been taken.
Tanavoli, who usually makes large sculptures, is mostly known for his series “Heech” depicting the Persian word “heech” (nil). His “Heech in the Cage” is on display at the British Museum.
His works have been always warmly received at international auctions over the past few years.
His six foot tall sculpture “Oh Persepolis II”, was sold for $940,000 at Dubai Christie’s in October 2013.
His “The Wall” previously fetched $2.8 million at Christie’s in 2008.
[source: Tehran Times]
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