ASTANA – “Makhmalbaf Film House,” by Gulnara Abikeyeva, was released by the New Literary Review, one of Russia’s top publishing houses.
Gulnara Abikeyeva began cooperating with Iron Store, one of the publisher’s magazines, in 2009, when she published the article “Cinema and cultural influence in Central Asia,” which later became popular in the Internet. The same year, the Kazakh critic and New Literary Review concluded a contract on the book, “Makhmalbaf Film House,” for its Cinematic series.
“I met with Mohsen Makhmalbaf in 2005 in Dushanbe at the Didor film festival, where we both were members of the jury,” Abikeyeva said. “In 2007, as part of the Eurasia Film Festival, we held a major retrospective of his films and the films of his family members.”
“Later, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, author of the script for ‘Paradise for Mother,’ arrived in Almaty to negotiate work on the picture. Understanding the scale of this outstanding personality, I recorded our conversations and interviews… that’s how the idea of this book was born. It includes not only reviews of the films, but also three scenarios, four articles by Mohsen Makhmalbaf and two interviews with him that share the secrets of his art.”
