YARAT Film Club to gather film lovers

/By AzerNews/

By Nigar Orujova

YARAT Contemporary Art Organization has created the Yarat Film Club, as part of the organization’s strong commitment to the younger generation of students and film-makers.

YARAT Film Club aims to become an informal meeting point for the viewing and discussion of contemporary art videos and films. The club is awaiting groups of students, emerging film-makers and art lovers to watch and chat about the works that are on show and also discuss informally in the presence of artists and directors.

All screenings will take place in the multi-functional room at the new YARAT Centre, located in Bayil district near the National Flag square.

The first videos to be screened at the club on April 11 at 7 p.m. are Turbulent, Rapture, Fervor and Illusions & Mirrors by artist and filmmaker, Shirin Neshat.

This Iranian visual artist who lives in New York City is known primarily for her work in film, video and photography.

Since 2000, Neshat has also participated in film festivals, including the Telluride Film Festival (2000), Chicago International Film Festival (2001), San Francisco International Film Festival (2001), Locarno International Film Festival (2002), Tribeca Film Festival (2003), Sundance Film Festival (2003), and Cannes Film Festival (2008).

In 2010, Neshat was named ‘Artist of the Decade’ by Huffington Post critic G. Roger Denson.

In 2013, she was a member of the jury at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.

In Turbulent, Neshat’s 1998 two-screen video installation, two singers (Shoja Azari playing the role of the male and Iranian vocalist and composer Sussan Deyhim as the female) create a powerful musical metaphor for the complexity of gender roles and cultural power within the framework of ancient Persian music and poetry.

Rapture exists as a poignant reflection on the rootless, unsettled psychology of exile. As an Iranian expatriate living in the United States, Neshat maintains a critical distance that has allowed her to locate both the poetics and the power of the veil. While she celebrates the strength and beauty of Islamic women, she remains keenly aware of the horrors of repression.

Fervor is a two-channel black-and-white video/audio installation, courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York. Fervor focuses on the negative view of love within the Iranian culture after the Islamic revolution. The black-and-white medium was an instant reflection of the clear-cut contrast of men and women in the mosque, with women in black veils and the men in white shirts.

Illusions & Mirrors looks forward, perhaps with dread, to a future already lurking in shadowed, antique rooms – as Natalie Portman follows a man in black who appears on the shore, then hurries over the dunes to glide up stairs and through empty halls. She comes upon other, mysterious elements: a line of people on chairs along a wall, an older woman stroking the hair of “another” of herself.

Movement is cautious and tense, the narrative wordless and insinuating. Views fade and double, alternating clear and sharp with other, wavering scenes, like memories or hallucinations, portents of what-will-be. Finally we see Portman from a darkened window as she observes herself outside in sun and wind, back on the shore at the beginning.

YARAT Film Club will host screenings of the films by the following artists for the rest of 2015: