2021: Osa Ebrahim

Video Essay

This episode of our 2021 video series portrays the Iranian sorna player Ebrahim Salmanpor Qashqai. «I am the most famous Qashqai wedding sorna player in Fars province and no one has ever been better than me», he says while looking back on his life, his performances at Qashqai weddings, and the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to his people.

The Qashqai tribe is one of the great nomadic tribes from Southern Iran. The life of the Qashqai people is shaped by constant migration to reach either more tropical or colder climatic zones. In the meantime, their music and dance are inextricably linked to their lives.

Credits

A film by Kamran Heidari

Mahmoodreza Zarinchang, assistant director, was born in 1980 in shiraz, Iran. He is an experimental director with eight years of experience working alongside the executive teams of film making. Mahmoodreza is a civil engineer which is educating in cinema and filmmaking courses and he is inspired by Kamran Heidari and his Filmmaking style for two years. He made five short film as director, assistant director, production manager and likes to photography, imaging, and calligraphy. Follow him on Instagram.

Farshad Abbasi, editor, was born in 1991, in Shiraz, he has an MA in mechanical engineering. He started his cinematic practices when he was 20 years old. He made four short films, including Radio, Entropy, In Between and Sadi Carno. He has his performance as editor in documentary and cinematic works of producers such Kamran Heidari and other film makers. Follow him on Instagram.

For the 2021 edition of the Norient Film Festival NFF, Norient commissioned ten artists around the world to work on short artistic media pieces. They were asked to reflect on their personal thoughts of «2021». How do they see and describe the world they live in? How do they see the present and the future? What sounds, clips, media pieces, and thoughts give hope for «2021» and for the future? What makes them angry, hopeful, depressed, suicidal, or happy?

Biography

Kamran Heidari was born in Gachsaran, near Shiraz, Iran, in 1977. He is a freelance documentary filmmaker and photographer, with an interest in street photography, graffiti, and ethno-music. His work focuses on film and photography about the people of Shiraz (Fars Province) and the South of Iran. «My Name Is Negahdar Jamali» and «I Make Westerns» (2012), his first feature length documentary was screened in many festivals around the world, among which Busan International Film Festival and Rotterdam. His latest work «Ali Agha» premiered at IDFA in 2017. «Ahle Hawa», his current project, would be his fifth feature length film. Follow him on Instagram, SoundCloud, or on his Website.

Links

Azin Feizabadi: «Ebram the Breeze» (Norient)

Published on February 26, 2021

Last updated on April 11, 2024

Topics

Community

Tradition

All Topics

Special

Norient Film Festival NFF 10 (2021)

Snap

print as pdf

Her Bijî Granî

Q&A

by Martin Stokes

As part of the Q&A series of the 10^th Norient Film Festival 2021, the director Georg Mürer and ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes met to talk about Mürer’s film Her Biji Granî (USA, Kurdistan, Türkiye 2020).

The Film «Her Bijî Granî» will be available for streaming on demand throughout all of 2021 via Vimeo.

The conversation is about Mürer’s inspiration and motivation to create a movie about the elektrobağlama-driven genre of granî and its role at Kurdish weddings in Southeastern Türkiye. The film explores the perspectives and creative agency of different performers alongside the geographic networks of communities they serve, while offering a vivid window onto weddings as youth scenes and defiant expressions of Kurdish identity.

Introduction and production: Christopher Blatter
Cut: MR. LU*

Trailer

This video is part of the Q&A program of the 10^thNorient Film Festival 2021. The talk was recorded on January 4, 2021, via Zoom.

Biography

Martin Stokes has been traveling around this part of the world and listening to its music since the early 1980s. He teaches at King’s College London. He is the author of «The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music» (Chicago 2010). Follow him on LinkedIn.

Links

Martin Stokes: «A Yearning for Coherence» (Norient)

Published on March 18, 2021

Last updated on June 27, 2023

Topics

Performance

Protest

Voice

All Topics

Specials

Norient Film Festival NFF 10 (2021)

Norient Festival

print as pdf

2021: Pixel Doom

Video Essay

by Adythia Utama,

Riar Rizaldi

This episode of our 2021 video series is a collaboration between two Indonesian artists: Filmmaker Adythia Utama and musician Riar Rizaldi put a perspective on how freely we receive any kind of information through the screens of our gadgets during the pandemic.

2021, the plagues continue, endless information and entertainment stream throughout the digital realm. Images strobe rapidly, penetrating your tired eyes. In this dystopic imagery of 2021, someone recites a Qur’an verse on the impending doom. This is a reflection and a prognosis of the coming years.

Pixel Doom is a collaborative effort between Adythia Utama (as a filmmaker) & Riar Rizaldi (as a musician) to reflect the year 2021. Riar recites Surah Al-Muddaththir ayah 1–20 about the day of resurrection while Adythia responds with some footages that he watched on the internet during the pandemic, shot through the TV pixels. The idea is to put into perspective on how freely we receive any kind of information through the screens of our gadgets.

<br />

For the 2021 edition of the Norient Film Festival NFF, Norient commissioned ten artists around the world to work on short artistic media pieces. They were asked to reflect on their personal thoughts of «2021». How do they see and describe the world they live in? How do they see the present and the future? What sounds, clips, media pieces, and thoughts give hope for «2021» and for the future? What makes them angry, hopeful, depressed, suicidal, or happy?

Biography

Adythia Utama is a filmmaker based in Jakarta, taking on the roles of director, videographer, music producer, and video editor. He graduated in 2010 with a Bachelor of Art degree from the Jakarta Institute of the Arts concentrating in documentary. Thereafter, he continued directing music videos and documentary films, finished «BISING» his first feature documentary film in 2014 about noise music in Indonesia. Besides making films, Adythia Utama also organizes music shows at STUDIORAMA. Currently, he keeps himself busy by producing music under the moniker Individual Distortion and making pizzas at the apartment during the COVID19 pandemic. Follow him on Vimeo, Instagram, X, or SoundCloud.

Biography

Riar Rizaldi works as an artist. Born in Indonesia and currently based in Hong Kong. His main focus is on the relationship between capital and technology, extractivism, and theoretical fiction. He also performs sound using foley technique, field recording, and computation. His works have been shown at Locarno Film Festival, BFI Southbank London, International Film Festival Rotterdam, NTT InterCommunication Center Tokyo, Times Museum Guangzhou, and National Gallery of Indonesia amongst others. Follow him on X, Instagram, SoundCloud, or on his Website.

Published on February 23, 2021

Last updated on April 09, 2024

Topics

Information

All Topics

Special

Norient Film Festival NFF 10 (2021)

print as pdf