Winners of first Booktrailer festival named

By Laman Ismayilova

Nizami Cinema Center in Baku hosted the awarding ceremony of the first Booktrailer Festival in Azerbaijan organized with the assistance of Azerbaijan's Culture and Tourism Ministry, Trend Life reports.

Booktrailers are short videos that promote a book or an author, providing a good illustration of the book content.

Founder and Director of the Festival Ruslan Sabirli, addressing the opening ceremony, said that the Organizing Committee of the Festival has received 25 works, including from Italy, France and Bulgaria.

"We are very pleased by the attention given to our first project by foreigners. However, since the project isn't international, only 21 booktrailers were allowed to compete in the Festival. The jury evaluated the work of each participant separately. After that, the Organizing Committee summarized experts’ opinions and winners have been identified. All films submitted to the Festival are available on www.booktrailer.az. Here, you can once again confirm the talent of our youth," said Sabirli.

First Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Vagif Aliyev, for his part, noted the importance of the project in education of the youth.

"The Festival aims at promoting books, supporting and developing creative forms of reading, searching talented young people in cinematography and promoting bookrailers as a part of art and business," said Aliyev.

Later the winners were named. Thus, the first place went to Elchin Guliyev (E,Akarsu "Melody for Two), the second place were shared by Natiq Akhundov (N. Vujicic " Life without limits") and Farid Rasulov (S. Baharı "Aztagram"), the third place were taken by Elchin Elhanli (O.Fikretoglu " Dead text"), Elmin Aliyev ), Elmin Aliyev (V. Yolchiyev " Crumpled photos") and Asif Aliyev (V.Nuru " The President’s daughter"). Sabina Guliyeva and her work "Another, Happiness" (Marc Levy) received the prize of audience recognition.

The first place winner received a cash price in the amount of 1000 manats ($604), while the winners of the second and third places 800 manats ($483) and 500 manats ($302), respectively.

The secretary of Azerbaijani Writers' Union, President of the PEN club, world-famous writer Chingiz Abdullayev, screenwriter, director, honored art worker and laureate of state prize of the USSR KGB Prize Ramiz Fataliyev, a graduate of Russian State University of Cinematography, laureate of national awards, director Elkhan Jafarov, honored art worker, laureate of national awards, director Ulviyya Konul and another graduate of Russian State University of Cinematography, laureate of national and international awards, filmmaker Nadir Mehdiyev and founder and director of the festival, actor Ruslan Sabirli were the jury members of the festival.

Media partners of the event were Trend, Day.az, Milli.az and Azernews.az

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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