Saint-Exupéry Oeuvre To Appear in Persian

An Iranian translator plans to translate books written by French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry into Persian.
“I am studying books by Saint-Exupéry these days and I plan to translate them into Persian,” Parviz Shahdi told ISNA.
A series of his letters, novels, notes and memoirs which are written in 11 books have not been translated into Persian yet, he added.
“His ‘Night Flight’ and ‘Flight to Arras’ were translated into Persian about 50 years ago and it is necessary to translate the books into Persian again,” he stated.
Several Persian translations of Saint-Exupéry’s magnum opus ‘The Little Prince’ including those by Abolhassan Najafi, Delara Qahreman, Mohammad Qazi, and Ahmad Shamlu have previously been published in Iran.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) was a French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of several of France’s highest literary awards and also won the US National Book Award.
He is best remembered for his novella ‘The Little Prince’ (Le Petit Prince) and for his lyrical aviation writings, including ‘Wind, Sand and Stars’ and ‘Night Flight’.
‘The Aviator’, ‘Southern Mail’, ‘Letter to a Hostage’ and ‘The Wisdom of the Sands’ are his other credits.

Iran, Georgia Stress Expansion Of Bilateral Ties

Head of the Writers Union of Georgia Makvala Gonashvili and Cultural attaché of Iran’s embassy in Tbilisi Ehsan Khazaei emphasized development of the two countries’ cultural relations.
In his meeting with Khazaei in Tbilisi on Thursday, Gonashvili asserted the significant position of Persian literature, in particular the Iranian poetry, in Georgian culture, IBNA wrote.
Writers Union of Georgia is ready for sending friendship delegations to Iran as an approach towards expansion of cultural relations between the two nations.
Iranian cultural attaché to Tbilisi, for his part, underlined the importance of relations between the two countries writers, translators, poets and cultural activists.

Louvre Museum Returns Nazi-Looted Artwork

Seven paintings taken from their Jewish owners in the 1930s are being returned to their surviving relatives as part of an ongoing French effort to give back looted, stolen or appropriated art.
The works include four paintings that currently hang in the Louvre in Paris, BBC wrote.
Six of the pieces were owned by Richard Neumann, an Austrian Jew who sold off his collection at a fraction of its value in order to leave France.
The seventh was stolen in Prague from Josef Wiener, a Jewish banker.
All seven were destined for display in an art gallery that Adolf Hitler wanted to build in Linz, the Austrian city in which he grew up.
The gallery was to have been filled with artworks looted across Europe by the Nazis from museums and private collections, many of them Jewish.
The claims of the families involved were validated by the French government in 2012 after years spent researching the works’ provenance.
The six works from the Neumann collection are to be restored to his grandson Tom Selldorff, now 82 and a resident of the US.

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH):

Kill not your hearts with excess of eating and drinking.

(Photo by Seyyed Kazem Yousefi)

Elgoli Park in Tabriz

French Award for ‘Modest Reception’

Iranian filmmaker Mani Haqiqi’s ‘Modest Reception’ has been awarded at the 2013 Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema in France.
The Iranian drama received Coup de Coeur INALCO Award at the 19th edition of the film festival held on February 4-12.
The middle class drama recounts the story of a mysterious couple from the capital city of Tehran who distribute large bags of money among people in a poor mountain border town, Press TV reported.
Vesoul International Film Festival is an annual special-interest event focusing on Asian cinema.
‘Modest Reception’ was also screened in some movie theaters in Switzerland last year, and is scheduled to hit the movie theaters in Germany and Austria later in 2013.
The movie has so far received five International awards, and has been presented in 36 film festivals and events across the world.
The movie received Free Spirit Award from the 2012 edition of Warsaw International Film Festival. It was also awarded at the 2012 edition of Berlin International Film Festival, where it was described as ‘an intelligent provocation’ by the festival’s organizers.
In India, the 2012 Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival honored Taraneh Alidousti, the movie’s lead actress, and Haqiqi with Best Actress and Best Actor Awards, respectively.

Music Competition Planned

A group of Iranian entertainers plan to launch a music competition series which will be distributed in home video shops.
“In this series, entitled ‘Ideal Voice of Parsian’ a fair Iranian competition will be held in an Iranian atmosphere,” producer Farhad Ashrafi told ISNA.
Only men are allowed to participate in the competition, he added.
The project has been arranged by Saeid Moradinejad, who will also be the artistic director of the series. In addition, musician Mohammadreza Cheraghali will be on the jury.
“The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has approved the series and the group is seeking to provide the preliminaries for the video project,” Ashrafi said.
No more details were mentioned about the series.