OTTAWA GETS RARE CHANCE TO SEE AN AZERBAIJANI MOVIE

Ottawa Citizen
/Ottawa+gets+rare+chance+Azerbaijani+movie/2742083 /story.html
March 30 2010
Canada

The Facts on Fortress

The film is in Azeri with English subtitles and airs at 7 p.m. tonight
at the ByTowne Cinema, 325 Rideau St. It’s free, but donations will
be taken for vicitims of the hurricane in Haiti.

– – –

The cinema of Azerbaijan, mostly an unknown quantity in the rest of
the world, has its coming-out in Ottawa tonight with the screening
of Fortress, a romantic drama set amid the turmoil of a refugee crisis.

That’s to be expected: Azerbaijan has been embroiled in a border
dispute with neighbouring Armenia for years, and while Fortress
doesn’t mention any specific nations, "anyone who knows our recent
history has an idea which country is involved," according to director
Shamil Najafzada.

Najafzada — whose business card reads "Honoured Art Worker of
Azerbaijan" — is in Ottawa to attend the screening, which is being
presented by the country’s embassy. Admission is free, but donations
will be taken to aid the victims of the Haitian hurricane.

Fortress is a movie within a movie in which a film crew is shooting
a historic drama about a 15th century warrior fighting off invaders,
even as present-day refugees are streaming back into the village where
the fortress is located. They’re coming from what the movie calls
"the neighbouring country."

Azerbaijan is a nation of 8.7 million on the shore of the Caspian
Sea, sitting just on top of Iran. Farid Shafiyev, the country’s
Harvard-educated ambassador to Canada, says the nation has the highest
per capita diaspora in the world. Some 5,000 Azerbaijanis live in
Toronto; there are about 50 in Ottawa.

Fortress screened previously at the Montreal film festival and at a
special screening in Toronto. It has also shown in festivals in Russia,
India and Japan. It was the country’s official entry for the 2009
Oscars, only the second time an Azerbaijani film has been submitted.

"It was important to me as a director to show the way ethnic people
should protect their culture and history," Najafzada said through
an interpreter.

He said there is a proverb that "art is the expression of our life,"
and in the film, art becomes real when the film crew flees and a few
residents have to decide whether to stay at the ancient fortress to
fight the new invasion.