ZARE movie with live music by BEI RU

We invite you to a film screening with live music within The Rise of Eastern Culture / Another Dimension festival:

Zare (Armenia, 1926) with live music by Bei Ru (USA)

The screening will be preceded with the lecture by Artur Vardikyan, the art director of the Apricot Tree International Documentary Film Festival in Yerevan.

August 31st, 2017, 7:30 PM
Forum Cinema, 5 Legionowa Street
free tickets

Organizer: Białystok Cultural Centre – Film Debating Club “GAG”

Zare is the most famous Armenian silent movie, made in 1926. Hamo Beknazarian (1891-1965), the pioneer of Armenian cinematography, was responsible for the script and direction. It’s a thriller and a melodrama at the same time. The action takes place in 1915 on the slopes of the Alagyz mountain. A Kurdish girl Zare and her beloved, shepherd Saydo, get entangled in the intrigue between the leader of a Yazidi tribe – Temur-bek and the tsarist authorities. Zare and Saydo love each other very much, but their peace is disturbed, when Temur wants her to become his second wife…

The film is considered to be one of the first ones depicting the life of Kurds and Yazidis. It also established Beknazarian’s position among the leading Soviet directors of the 1920s. The creator was hailed as a champion and innovator. When most films showed the East as an exotic land of beautiful belly dancers and picturesque caravans, Beknazarian was the first to show the true, raw, often depressing, life of the people, thus becoming the first realist of Oriental cinema. In the opinion of a contemporary Kurdish director Müjde Arslan, Zare was the first Kurdish film, after which Kurdish cinema was silent until 1991.

The film has been restored and digitized on the 90th anniversary of its premiere by The Golden Apricot foundation, the organizer of the Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival.

Beir Ru (Baruir Panossian)
Armenian American (born in Los Angeles to Armenian immigrants from Lebanon) music producer and composer, known for mixing Middle East rhythms with electronics and live instruments. In his work, he likes to sample from old Armenian recordings, that he had listened to at his family home. His album Little Armenia L.A. (2010), which made him gain ground, was almost entirely produced using samples from Armenian music. His next album, Saturday Night at the Magic Lamp (2014), wanders  between electronics, funk, hip hop, and Middle East influences, spiced up with live drums. Bei Ru also co-produced several songs for the stylish Iranian vampire western A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. He has recently published his third album L.A. Zooo.

The Rise of Eastern Culture / Another Dimension festival’s schedule

Organizers:
Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
National Centre for Culture
Kultura Dostępna
The City of Białystok
Białystok Cultural Centre

Honorary patronage:
Białystok City Mayor
Embassy of Armenia to Poland

Media patronage:
O.pl
Gazeta Wyborcza
Kurier Poranny
BiałystokOnline.pl
Polskie Radio Białystok
Wyborcza.pl
BIA24.pl