Azerbaijan’s submission to the Academy Awards is a contemporary tale of art and love, told from a child’s point of view.
PALM SPRINGS — Though it has one of the world’s oldest national cinema traditions, Azerbaijan has been invited to submit films to the foreign-language Academy Award competition only since 2006. Buta, its fourth official submission, draws upon folk traditions in a simple contemporary tale, at its center a self-possessed 7-year-old who lives with his grandmother in a mountain village.
The film didn’t receive an Oscar nomination and is not destined for a high profile on the international theatrical circuit, but it’s sure to find warm welcomes from festival programmers. It screened recently in the Awards Buzz section at Palm Springs.
Like many films out of neighboring Iran, but without the political edge, screenwriter-director Ilgar Najaf’s debut feature unfolds primarily from a child’s POV. The title is the name of the main character and the word for a design pattern that’s ubiquitous in Azerbaijan art and architecture. What Westerners call a paisley, the buta is derived from Zoroastrianism and is variously interpreted as a flower bud, drop of water, tongue of flame or ovary — a decorative symbol of the essence of life.
For the little boy Buta, art and life are inextricably linked. In the yard of their modest home, his grandmother dyes yarn in vats of flowers and weaves rugs of striking intricacy, all of which Najaf and his DP, Giorgi Beridze, observe in detail but without fuss. One of her rugs will be a birthday gift for Buta, using colors chosen by his mother before she died. The boy, meanwhile, has been secretly creating an open-air installment piece of sorts, dragging river stones to a mountaintop to form the outline of a giant buta that can be viewed only from the air.
The gang of boys who claim the river as their territory taunt Buta for being an orphan. The chief bully, Azim, is a pugnacious kid whose combativeness might be a preemptive bid to turn attention from his own mark of difference, albinism, and who berates his little sister for her convention-defying friendship with a boy, Buta. A transparent but nonetheless engaging allegory on war plays out between Buta and Azim. The former fearlessly stands his ground, uncommonly certain of who he is. His vulnerability finds expression only with a mysterious old man who befriends him, and whose connection to Buta’s grandmother is revealed in a scene of heartbreaking understatement.
In contrast to their ancient tangled history, love blooms forthrightly for the grandmother’s young weaving protégé and a visiting salesman. The villagers have refused his fancy packaged shampoo samples, and his Mercedes truck has gotten stuck in the river, but he eagerly trades his city ways to be with his “angel.”
Najaf has fashioned a modern folktale celebrating the beauty of nature, love and traditional ways. Its naive, child-centric approach can be precious at times, and the orchestral passages of Javnshir Guliyev’s score are overpowering, but for most of its running time Buta is propelled by an engaging directness and lack of pretension. The terrain, both mountainous and flat, is as much a character as any of the villagers, and the closing, transcendent sequence ties them all together through Beridze’s swooping aerial camerawork.
Venue: Palm Springs International Film Festival
Production companies: Azerbaijanfilm Studio and Buta Film
Cast: Rafig Guliyev, Tofig Aliyev, Elnur Karimov, Laman Naviyeva, Arzu Isayeva, Bahadur Sefiyev
Screenwriter-director: Ilgar Najaf
Producers: Ilgar Najaf, Xamis Muradov
Director of photography: Giorgi Beridze
Art director: Aziz Mammadov
Music: Javnshir Guliyev
Editor: Guishan Salimova
No MPAA rating, 98 minutes
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/buta-film-review-414015
A countryside schoolboy tries to stand up against an albino bully in the charming and gorgeously assembled “Buta,” this year’s foreign-language Oscar submission from Azerbaijan. The titular orphan is named after the paisley shape that finds its way into both the carpet he receives for his birthday and an enormous stone monument he’s constructing on a scenic mountaintop. This naturally acted contempo fable has been making the fest rounds, and will also appeal to tube buyers looking for exotic, G-rated fare.
A countryside schoolboy tries to stand up against an albino bully in the charming and gorgeously assembled “Buta,” this year’s foreign-language Oscar submission from Azerbaijan. The titular orphan is named after the paisley shape that finds its way into both the carpet he receives for his birthday and an enormous stone monument he’s constructing on a scenic mountaintop. This naturally acted contempo fable has been making the fest rounds, and will also appeal to tube buyers looking for exotic, G-rated fare.
Pint-sized Buta (Rafig Guliyev) might be far too small for the hand-me-down shirt he’s wearing, but he’s not afraid to stand up for himself. Scribe-helmer Ilgar Najaf uses the protag’s symbolic name as the binding element of several related stories that elegantly blend light comedy and equally light drama, offering an almost fairy-tale-naive if never quite moralizing look at love, family and village life in rural Azerbaijan. Javnshir Guliyev’s score, alternating between delicate flutes and more melancholy wind instruments, helps underline the emotions, while Giorgi Beridze’s supple camerawork, featuring many helicopter shots, drinks in the scenic landscapes, especially in the pic’s breathtaking finale.
Source: https://variety.com/2013/more/reviews/buta-1117949121/
By Laman Ismayilova
Azerbaijan’s “Pomegranate Orchard” movie by Ilgar Najaf continues to achieve global success.
Ilgar Najaf won the prize of the 11th Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Trend Life reported. The filmmaker gained victory in the “Young Cinema” nomination.
Earlier, movie’s scriptwriters Ilgar Najaf, Asif Rustamov and Roelof Jan Minneboo (the Netherlands) received the “Best Screenplay” prize at the 24th “Listopad” International Film Festival in Minsk.
“Pomegranate Orchard” features a story about an old man, who lives along with his grandson and daughter-in-law in the decrepit house amidst of the huge pomegranate garden. Sudden comeback of his wayward son has changed a gentle rhythm of their peaceful existence. Forgotten bitter memories have come back and even more, new challenges are in store for them.
Scriptwriters are Asif Rustamov, Ilgar Najafov and Roelof Jan Minneboo (The Netherlands). Operator-director is Aykhan Salar (Germany), animation director is Rafig Nasirov, executive producer Akif Aliyev, and producer Mushfig Hatamov.
The cast includes Gurban Ismayilov, Anar Hasanov, Samimi Farhadov and Hasan Agayev.
The world premiere of the movie was held within the “East of the West” competition of the Czech Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Notably, the movie is also included in the long list of applicants for the Oscar 2017 in the nomination “The best film in a foreign language”.
The Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) is an international cultural initiative of the Brisbane City Council, Australia, to honor and promote the films, actors, directors, and cultures of the Asia-Pacific region to a global audience and to realize the objectives of UNESCO to promote and preserve the respective cultures through the influential medium of film.
The winners of the prestigious award, which is unofficially called ‘Asian Oscar’, are annually announced in the Australian city of Brisbane.
The Asia Pacific Screen Awards are to honor the late Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami with a special prize. It has commended Kiarostami’s final feature “24 Frames” and will give him posthumous admission to the APSA Academy.
“’24 Frames’ is an exquisite reverie on scenes from nature. Through still, but precise frames, and aided by subtle staging or effects, he captures the haunting, haiku-like poetry of nature, its beauty, amorousness and brutality. The play with the double meaning of ‘frame’ reflects his profound mediation on the cinematic form,” said Kim Hong-joon, hair of the APSA international nominations council.
Director of “Certified Copy,” “Taste of Cherry,” and “Through the Olive Trees,” Kiarostami died in July this year.
Director and producer, Ilgar Najaf has been awarded the APSA Young Cinema Award in partnership with Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) and the Griffith Film School for his second film “Pomegranate Orchard” (aka “Nar Bagi”).
The story involves a man returning home to the humble family farmstead, surrounded by an orchard of venerable pomegranate trees, 12 years after his sudden departure. He finds that the deep emotional scars he left behind have not been erased.
The 11th APSAs will be presented on Thursday Nov. 23 at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
A movie by Azerbaijani filmmakers has been presented for an Oscar nomination, the state news agency AzerTac reported.
The film Buta has passed the first stage successfully, member of the Oscar National Committee, Ali Isa Jabbarov, said.
Jabbarov said that further to the success in international festivals and contests, the film was sent to the U.S. by the committee. Buta has already been included in the initial list of the Oscar. 12 films will proceed to the next stage and 5 films to the final, he said.
“Buta” is a story about a lonely seven-year-old boy Buta, who lives in a mountainous village with his grandmother. He is befriended by an old man, a liquid soap merchant who once loved and lost Buta’s grandmother. The old man’s friendship and wise advice helps Buta to overcome his difficulties in life. Buta’s grandmother, in the meantime, is weaving a special carpet in memory of Buta’s mother. The carpet features a ‘buta’ pattern, which represents love. Buta, inspired by his grandmother’s work, decides to make his own “buta” on the rocks…
The film, directed by Ilgar Najaf, stars Azerbaijani actors Rafig Azimov, Tofiq Aliyev, Elnur Karimov, and others.
