Young Corn | Grant Wood (1931) - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus | Terry Gilliam (2009)
“It's something you're aware of, like it's right in front of you. I just hadn't thought deeply enough about it until that moment”, explains Vugar Efendi, recalling how investigating Dalí's life, works of art and filmography, after a visit to his hometown, sparked the curiosity to discover the connection between the cinema and the works that are part of the History of Art.
He spent the summer, started his final year of college, and the idea fell asleep until, six months after the spark, watching Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen 'he saw' The Birth of Venus. “It was when I said to myself: this is it, I need to work on this project; and so i started my investigation ”, He clarifies.
The result is a trilogy that shows, like a mirror that defies time and space, the relationship between cinema and painting. For Efendi, any artistic expression is, in some way, a manipulation of emotions.
“You are transported to something you have never experienced. EITHER in some cases it becomes incredibly personal to you because it is something you have experienced . You see yourself in their protagonists or in their worlds.” This was the first stage of this trip.
Film Meets Art from Vugar Efendi on Vimeo .
His curious gaze reveals to us, for example, the painting by the English painter John Constable, Malvern Hall, Warwickshire (1809), in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975). A painting that, as highlighted on the Tate Modern website, was not commissioned but rather a personal wish of the artist.
Reasonable similarities?
“It is well documented how Stanley Kubrick he was relentless with the investigation of him for Barry Lyndon. That included the use of classical paintings to capture the look and essence of that period. When he was working on the movie Film Meets Art II there were countless examples he could have picked from Barry Lyndon. However, what caught me the most was that the Malvern Hall, Warwickshire , by John Constable, is one of the few landscape paintings Kubrick used. Also, the most interesting fact for me is that the novel Barry Lyndon's Luck it takes place more than 50 years before the painting was actually made.”
FILM MEETS ART II from Vugar Efendi on Vimeo .
Among Vugar Efendi's favorite road trip movies we find into the wild , by Sean Penn, or Easy Rider by Dennis Hopper. But his favorite is, without a doubt, Baraka. “Ron Fricke did a wonderful job of showcasing different parts of the world in his glorious cinematography. It's not just the images, but how he captures the daily life and rituals of people around the world. . I think he shows the planet in its true form, in its true reality, and in its true beauty,” he explains.
If we opt for wide angles, infinite horizons in 8 mm and film landscapes, it is decided by: “ Lawrence of Arabia, by David Lean, and I am Cuba by Mikhail Kalatozov.
A JOURNEY TOWARDS ART
Vugar Efendi has lived in England for almost a decade, four years in his country of origin Azerbaijan , five in Turkey, around three in Spain and a few months in Ukraine. "For me, traveling means enriching the understanding of the world we inhabit . Understand the different cultures, traditions, the way humans think, act and go about their lives in their daily routine on the opposite side of the planet. It's just all fascinating."
For the director, everything that surrounds us is food for creativity, “either deliberately or subconsciously”. Now that he has finished his trilogy he believes he has fulfilled his goals: to educate, entertain and inspire. “ I wanted to show that inspiration can come from anything, that you can use any source you want to be creative. ”.
FILM MEETS ART III from Vugar Efendi on Vimeo .
To Prince Edward Island | Alex Colville (1965) - Moonrise Kingdom | Wes-Anderson (2012)
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