Uzbeki hillock of Yan Mound, near Tehran

TEHRAN, Nov. 23--The latest round of excavations at the Uzbeki hillock of Yan Mound, the oldest Uzbeki site near Tehran, has resulted in the unearthing of remnants from the Silak I excavation round, announced the head of the archeologist team engaged in the area, reported ISNA.
Yousef Majidzadeh complained that the negligence of Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) is responsible for the destruction of a major part of the historical site which dates back to the seventh millennium BC.
He said that the edifices unearthed at Yan Mound and Jeiran Mound had been left without protection for the past three years and parts of the Median fortress and Uzbek Mound have been exposed to ruin.
Majidzadeh said that archeologists are not responsible for protecting cultural sites and it is the obligation of ICHTO Research Center to safeguard them, but, unfortunately, it failed to do so.
Archeologists cover the structures they unearth by daubing them with adobe which gradually wears thin and should be preserved by respective entities, he added.
“Several years ago, we built a wall around the site in cooperation with ICHTO and took measures to prevent water seeping into the ancient structure by filling the crevices with gravel. However, the baked brick wall was destroyed during the past three years and the ancient structure has been ruined,“ he lamented.
Majidzadeh said that the excavation led to unearthing edifices from the Silak I excavation round at Uzbeki Mound at a depth of 6.5 meters.
The archeologist said that the assumption that both Uzbeki Mound and Yan Mound belong to the same age has proved to be incorrect.
“We could not trace features of Silak I excavation round at Jeiran Mound and only remnants from the Silak II excavation round were unearthed there,“ he concluded.

TEHRAN, Nov. 23--Association of Directors affiliated to Theater House will publish the first encyclopedia of Iranian theater directors next year concurrent with the annual celebrations of Theater House.
Fars news agency said that the encyclopedia will contain biographies of Iranian theater directors from 1951 to the present.
Meanwhile, Theater House has planned to launch specialized section for tele-theater for members of the association.
The section will meet once every month at the main hall of the Theater House and the first session will be held on December 6.
The play Hamlet by British playwright William Shakespeare directed by Peter Brook from the UK will be screened for members.
Iranian playwrights will also hold their biennial meeting at Theater House. Applicants will have until December 7 to register and election for the new board and inspectors will be held on December 10.

TEHRAN, Nov. 23--A commemoration ceremony will be held here on Thursday for the late Syrian film director Mustafa Akkad, reported Fars news agency.
The ceremony, which will be attended by Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance for cinema affairs Mohammad Reza Jafari, directors and personnel of the ministry’s Cinema Department, managing director of Cinema House, filmmakers and those involved in the film industry, is being held in cooperation with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and a number of other film institutes.
Akkad, 68, an internationally celebrated film director is well known for his box office hits ’Muhammad (PBUH), Messenger of God’ and ’Omar Al-Mokhtar’, a Libyan revolutionary who rose up against Italian occupation.
Akkad was killed in a terrorist bombing of a hotel in Amman, Jordan along with his daughter Rima, 30.
Akkad, a genius who spent his lifetime for a holy cause of presenting the true image and identity of Islam, died a martyr after sustaining injuries in the terrorist bombing.
Islam is averse to such horrific acts and has never endorsed the killing of innocent people. This is exactly what Akkad had been working on for years on end.
More recently he was working on a new masterpiece Salaheddin Al-Ayoubi, a movie that will give the actual interpretation of the current events in Palestine.
The ceremony to pay tribute to the great man of Islam will be held at Palestine Cinema at 18:30 p.m.

TEHRAN, Nov. 23--Head of an Iranian band ’Sol’, Bahman Mahabadi has announced that the group will perform in Vienna in January concurrent with the commemoration of the 250th birth anniversary of famed Austrian composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).
Mahabadi told ISNA that some pieces by Mozart, including his piano concertos and other 12 musical pieces that particularly interested Mozart will be performed in the concert.
“All musical pieces which have so far been released by Sol have found more enthusiasts abroad than in Iran,“ he pointed out.
Commenting on Mozart’s biography and works, Mahabadi pointed out that Mozart lived for only 35 years.
“He began creating musical pieces at the age of three. It is quite unique in the entire history of music for a person to create a piece of music which could not be recreated by anybody else for generations,“ he added.
Mahabadi noted that benediction, in creation and miniature are latest works released by Sol music group.

An Iranian modern painting

TEHRAN, Nov. 23--An exhibition of Iran’s modern art movement will be held here at the Contemporary Arts Museum from December 12.
According to the Persian daily Hamshahri, the one-month event follows an exposition on modern art movement in the world.
World modern art movement exhibit, which featured works by European artists opened on August 29 and had to be extended twice due to great enthusiasm shown by the audience.
Iran modern art movement exhibit was scheduled to begin on November 6 but due to the extension of the previous event, this program had to be changed.
The event will feature works by Sohrab Sepehri, Masoud Arabshahi, Mohsen Vaziri-Moqaddam, Hossein Zendehroudi, Marco Gregorian and Manouchehr Sheibani.
A number of works by some artists, including Arabshahi and Zendehroudi, was earlier displayed in solo exhibitions.
Iran modern art movement exhibit is the first such event to be held at the national level.
The exhibit is the brainchild of Abdolmajid Hosseini-Rad who recently took over as director of Museum of Contemporary Arts.
Former curator of the museum Mojtaba Samiei-Azar managed to organize the exhibit featuring the world modern art movement in the final days of his tenure.

A visitor walks past a childhood portrait of Spanish master Pablo Picasso as he enters the Sabanci Museum in Emirgan, Istanbul, for the exhibit press preview. (AFP Photo)

ISTANBUL, Turkey, Nov. 23--Istanbul’s spectacular Sakip Sabanci Museum, on the European shore of the Bosphorus, will host a major exhibit of 135 works by Pablo Picasso, including pieces never shown since the artist’s death in 1973, from Thursday, reported AFP.
Among the rarely seen works are two tapestries, one made in 1958 from the groundbreaking 1907 cubist masterpiece, ’Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’, the other a 1970 rendering of the 1938 ’Femmes a leur Toilette’.
The exhibit at the sprawling seaside mansion in the Bosphorus neighborhood of Emirgan, formerly a home of the noted industrialist and art collector Sakip Sabanci, who died in 2004, shows the progression of cubism in Picasso’s oeuvre.
“This exhibition is not only about showing masterpieces, it is an exhibition where you can discover who Picasso was--the way he worked,“ commented the show’s American curator, Marilyn McCully.
“It’s a big exhibition, an important one,“ she told a press preview Tuesday. “It’s a new view of Picasso because you see works you don’t always see.“
The exhibit, organized with the collaboration of the artist’s grandson, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, includes paintings, sculptures, tapestries and ceramics gleaned from private collections, as well as the Picasso museums in Paris and Barcelona and the Almine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Art Foundation.
Explaining why he picked Istanbul as a venue for the show, Ruiz-Picasso said: “All art is fully contemporary. Picasso, Da Vinci, paintings on caves are exactly the same thing. I believe the culture of Turkey has the same level as many other countries in Europe.“
Curators at the museum, which opened in 202 and is known by its initials as the SSM, believe the Picasso show, the first in Turkey by the legendary artist, will help put it on the international art map.
It “proves that Turkey is fully a part of the modern world and has the infrastructure and the know-how to organize such events,“ said Guler Sabanci, niece of the late industrialist and president of the holding company that bears the family name and finances the SSM.
The show, which opens to the public on Thursday, will continue until March 26.