News & Events

Event

Rudaki as a symbol of Tajik and cultural identity in music and cinema

Rudaki as the father of Tajik and Persian verse
16 Mar 2024, 10:30am SOAS, University of London, Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre

This paper by Dr Firuza Melville was a part of the Rudaki Day, organised by the Embassy of the Republic of Tajikistan in London.

In 1958 the first great 1100th anniversary of Rudaki was very widely celebrated, when many events were organised. Among them the monuments were erected, a jubilee coin, a stamp and a medal were issued, and even a film was made, called the ‘Fate of the poet’. 

Rudaki is known as both Adam al-Shu‘ara and Malek ash-Shuara as he was the first chief poet at the Samanid court who started to write high quality poetry in his native language after two centuries of silence, two centuries of the Arab linguistic domination.

There are so many mysteries about Rudaki and his legacy - about his blindness, his involvement in the Karmatian movement, the disappearance of his legendary divan, and especially the reasons of his fall and disgrace after such a cosmic career. 

 

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Event

SEVEN LABOURS OF RASTA

Musical by Hossein Hadisi based on the original script by Solmaz Naraghi
8 Mar 2024, 6:00pm Djam Lecture Theatre, SOAS, University of London

To celebrate the International Women's Day and the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, SEVEN LABOURS OF RASTA is a musical storytelling experience centred on the journey of Rasta, paralleling Rustam from the Shahnameh. Rasta undertakes seven labors, symbolically represented by contemporary urban traffic signs, aiming to break free from oppressive frameworks and find liberation.

Solmaz Naraghi: Script, Artworks and Voice 

Hossein Hadisi: Music, Piano, Viola, Percussion

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News

Central Asian art in the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

by Dr Firuza Melville, Embassy of Uzbekistan, London, 6.30 pm
9 Feb 2023

Firuza Melville will speak on her research conducted as part of her contribution to the International project ‘Uzbek Cultural Legacy in World Collections’, where she has been the Project curator of the publications related to the British collections of Central Asian art. She has been the editor-in-chief and contributor of the volume dedicated to the collections of Central Asian art in the Fitzwilliam Museum. She has also written chapters on Central Asian book art for the catalogue of Central Asian art in the British collections with a focus on the artefacts from the British Museum in London, Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Glasgow museums. Her next project is the publication of Central Asian manuscripts in the collections of the Main Library of the University of Cambridge

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Event

Farah Ossouli and her women, life and freedom

“Authority and spirituality in Islam: sources of diversity”, Conference 29-30 November 2022, University of Tartu
29 Nov 2022, 1:15pm

This paper focuses on the artwork of one of the most famous contemporary Iranian artists, Farah Ossouli, who is meticulously applying the classical and authentically Persian paradigm of many-centuries of book art to her own ideas and perception of modern Iran and the role of women in society. 

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Event

Virtual exhibition "Alexander Griboedov: Russian Imperial James Bond malgré lui and the cinema"

17 Mar 2021, 3:15pm

Since his tragic death in Tehran in 1829, Alexander Griboedov’s professional career as a diplomat and his private life as a poet, playwright, composer, revolutionary and businessman have been the subject of countless interpretations worldwide. In this talk, the focus will be on the paradox of an extremely diverse perception of Griboedov’s phenomenon as a person and a professional and its visual representations: film, drama, and visual art. 

To illustrate the talk, it will be followed by a virtual exhibition of works by students of the Film and Television Studies at the Faculty of Arts of St Petersburg State University. The students, studying to become cinema and television artists (under the supervision of Leonid Karpov and Evgeny Sverdlov), will present their works prepared for a screen adaptation of the celebrated novel "The Death of Vazir Mukhtar" by Yury Tynyanov, which tells the story of the last year in the life of Alexander Griboedov.

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