Khorshid castle in Kalat, Khorasan Razavi province

(Photo by Mohammad Hossein Taqi)

5 Films for Italy’s Lucania Fest

Five Iranian short films, feature-length productions and animations will take part in the 2012 edition of Lucania Film Festival in Pisticci, Italy.
Reza Mirkarimi’s ‘A Cube of Sugar’ will participate in the Lungometraggi 2012 section of the event, competing with films from Russia, Finland and Germany.
The film was also screened at the 2011 Montreal International Film Festival, the 2011 edition of Busan International film festival in South Korea and the 17th Vilnius International Film Festival in Lithuania, Press TV said.
The Fiction 2012 section of Lucania Film Festival will screen three Iranian short films, including Mehdi Jafari’s ‘Emergency Exit’, and Fereidoun Najafi’s ‘Rooster’ and ‘Where Is Fatemeh’s House?’.
‘Zero’ directed by Nazanin Sobhan-Sarbandi will also compete in the Animazone 2012 section of the event.
The 10-minute animation is a production by Iran’s Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults.
Bosnian filmmaker and twice Palme d’Or at Cannes winner Emir Kusturica will be the special guest of the 13th Lucania Film Festival, set to be held from August 10 to 13, 2012 at the Regional Center for Creativity (TILT) in Pisticci (Marconia).
This year’s festival will present about fifty short films, feature-length film, documentaries and animations from all five continents.
Films from Spain, Sweden, Latvia, Greece, Serbia, Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, Italy, Georgia, Morocco, South Korea, Iran, Taiwan, the US, Canada, Belize, Brazil and Australia will compete at Lucania festival.

Bismillah Festival Kicks Off

The 9th edition of International Bismillah Festival has kicked off in Tehran’s Niavaran Cultural Complex, exhibiting various Qur’anic artworks.
Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini and the Deputy Culture Minister for Artistic Affairs Hamid Shahabadi alongside many artists attended the inauguration ceremony of the international Qur’anic arts expo on August 3.
Tehran 2012 Qur’anic Art Expo has announced Jalil Rasouli’s calligraphic painting ‘Bismillah Bird’ as the top-priced work of this year’s event. The experts have estimated the price of Rasouli’s masterpiece at about $40,000, said the expo organizer Mohammad-Reza Kamarei. ‘Bismillah Bird’ features a bird-shaped calligraphy of Bismillah in oil and acrylics on two plates of gold in size of 2x2 meters.
Unveiling the best artworks of the previous editions of Bismillah festival, published in three books, was among the programs presented at the opening ceremony.
The first book covers calligraphy works, drawings and graphic designs while the second one reviews different architectural styles from the 11th century until the contemporary era with photos of mosques, minarets and Islamic monuments. The photos come with descriptions written by Iranian architecture experts.
Published by Mashq-e Honar Press, the third book contains paintings of mosques and Islamic monuments.
The festival’s jury selected 132 artworks from among 4875 submitted works in the 3 categories of graphic, photography and painting.
About 62 graphic works inspired by the Arabic word, Bismillah, which is used as the collective name of the phrase Bismillahi-r Rahmani-r rahim meaning ‘In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful,’ have been showcased at the exhibition.

Tehran Museum to Exhibit Gunther Uecker Works

Works by modern German sculptor and installation artist Gunther Uecker will go on exhibit at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts.
The event will be held from September 16 to November 1.
Born in 1930, Uecker began his artistic education in 1949 and continued his studies in Dusseldorf, where he studied under German painter, sculptor and print maker Otto Pankok, Mehr News Agency reported.
Uecker was a founding member of the literal-minded postwar European Zero Group, which he founded with Otto Piene and Heinz Mack to exhibit their work in a series of one-day-only evening exhibitions, often staged in their studios.
His works were partly inspired by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky’s cosmic abstractions and Vladimir Mayakovsky’s injunction that, “Poetry is made with a hammer.”
Uecker created many works using a hammer. He incorporated poetry into his art by making a series of white painted reliefs in which fields of hammered nails create oddly soft-looking, undulant textures and clouds.
Uecker’s work is included in numerous public institutions such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Tate Modern, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris; and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy.
The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts has held numerous exhibitions, showcasing works by modern and contemporary German artists such as Hermann Glockner, Heinz Mack, Gerhard Richter, Ernst Barlach and Kathe Kollwitz.

Iranian Poet Versifies ‘Mokhtarnameh’ TV Series

The Iranian poet Ali Hamdami has composed ‘Mokhtar Saqafi Epics’, which is based on the dialogues in the Iranian TV series ‘Mokhtarnameh’.
“The poem contains 10,000 couplets which are based on dialogues and events in ‘Mokhtarnameh’ directed by Davoud Mirbaqeri,” he said.
Hamdami said that presently, he does not have any plans to publish the couplets. He is currently reading through the collection, ISNA said. The 40-episode ‘Mokhtarnameh’ is about an uprising organized by Mokhtar Saqafi after the events of Ashura, the 10th of Muharram, to take revenge against the killers of Imam Hussein (AS).

Bonhams to Sell Important Collection of Maseratis

Bonhams announced the consignment of an important collection of Maseratis for its Goodwood Revival Sale. The four cars, some of which have not been seen at market for six decades, come from the collection of the Hartley family, from the Home Counties.
They are expected to realize several million pounds in total at the auction at the nearby Goodwood Motor Circuit on Saturday 15 September. Leading the pack is a unique 1929 Maserati Tipo 26M four-seater sports racing car with Brooklands Double Twelve, Irish Grand Prix and RAC Tourist Trophy racing pedigree, ArtDaily wrote.
Estimated to realize between £1.8 and £2.2 million, the car has been owned by the family for 60 years and has been restored and campaigned over a 30-year period. The two-seater sister car also in the collection is expected to sell for between £400,000 and £600,000. Respected Maserati club member Anthony Hartley found the car in South Africa in the 1970s and, in the following years, carried out a painstaking re-build and restoration, tracking down many of the original components.
Also in the collection is a V4 16-cylinder Grand Prix car replica (estimate £400,000 - £500,000) that has been much-admired on the Maserati Club circuit. Built from scratch by Mr Hartley, it is a perfect copy of one of the most awe-inspiring Grand Prix racing cars of all time--“the Sedici Cilindri”--that was capable of speeds of up to 170mph in the 1920s.
A 1955 Maserati A6G2000 Coupe, coachwork by Allemano, also in the collection is expected to realise between £200,000 and £250,000 at the sale. Malcolm Barber, Bonhams Group CEO, said, “Anthony Hartley is a real Maserati connoisseur whose love of the marque began in the early 1950s when the four-seater Tipo 26M sports racer first came into his family’s ownership. “He is a knowledgeable engineer and craftsman who has researched the Maserati marque, followed the work of the four Maserati brothers and in some cases continued their evolution.” Two cars from the Hartley Collection – the V4 and the A6G2000--will be on display at the Bonhams stand at this weekend’s Vintage Sports Car Club Prescott Speed Hill Climb in Prescott, Gloucestershire, prior to their sale in September.

Looted Afghan Artefacts Returned to Kabul

Hundreds of archaeological artefacts looted from Afghanistan have been handed over to the country’s national museum during a ceremony in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday.
Many of the 843 pieces were stolen during Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s and ended up on the black market, BBC wrote.
Some of the items, which include stone statues of Buddha and intricate ivory carvings, are up to 4,000 years old.
The British Museum in London has helped to complete their return.
Some of the stolen artefacts were recovered by British border forces and police, while others were found in private collections and bought back by generous donors.
One stone Buddha, thought to be around 1,800 years old, was stolen from the museum in Kabul and recovered in Japan.
The British Ministry of Defense flew the pieces back to Afghanistan in large crates, landing at their military base in Camp Bastion.
Afghan archaeologists say the repatriation of the treasures, which had been feared lost forever, is a source of national pride.
More than two thirds of the exhibits at the National Museum in Kabul were stolen or destroyed during the civil war.
The BBC’s correspondent in Kabul, Aleem Maqbool, says there will be concerns about the fate of the artefacts, given the unpredictability surrounding Afghanistan’s future.
But archaeologists here say having so many of their treasures back on home soil is a source of great national pride, our correspondent adds.

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH):

The person who had an opportunity to learn but refrained to do so, will be the most regretful on Doomsday.