Istanbul Arts and Culture Festival to take place in June
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
Felicity Jones
This year, the Istanbul Arts and Culture festival aims once again to host many famous guests in Istanbul between June 6 and 9.The IST International Arts and Culture Festival is a high-profile, free and public forum, dedicated to educating, informing, and acquainting the audience with all that is current and contemporary.
Using the effervescent city of Istanbul as the stage, the event invites leading cultural figures from around the globe to participate in a series of talks, lectures, exhibitions, film screenings, book signings and commemorations. The impetus for these assemblies is to encourage discussion, ask cognitive and relevant questions, and examine the definition of creativity essentially is as well as to reflect and share personal experiences within the realm.
The festival is exaltation on the interchange of ideas, and focuses on the importance of interconnectivity and ingenuity.
This diverse program of the festival aims to reinforce the cultural ties between Turkey and the rest of the world.
Outstanding cultural figures from around the globe will gather to partake in the Istanbul International Arts and Culture Festival, which brings together some of the world’s most important and talented writers, designers, editors, actors, poets, film-makers, dancers and musicians to beguile and open minds.
The festival will be hosting many writers, artists, directors, actors and actresses. Among them Elliot Goldenthal, an American composer of contemporary classical music, will be in Istanbul.
Goldenthal is also a film-music composer, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2002 for his score for the motion picture Frida, directed by his long-time partner Julie Taymor. Composer Elliot Goldenthal creates works for orchestra, theatre, opera, ballet and film. He most recently scored Julie Taymor’s feature film adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, starring Helen Mirren, Russell Brand, Djimon Hounsou and Alfred Molina, which was released by Touchstone Pictures on December 10th, 2010. A soundtrack album of his original music for The Tempest will be the maiden release on Goldenthal’s Zarathustra Music label. Previously, Goldenthal composed the original score for Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard.
The director Lynne Ramsay, who has proved her credentials with the movie “We should talk about Kevin,” will also be in Istanbul. Her films are marked by a fascination with children and young people and the recurring, irresolvable themes of grief, guilt and death and its aftermath. They are low on dialogue and explicit story exposition, and instead use images, vivid details, music and sound design to create their unsettling worlds. In April 2013 she was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
English actress Felicity Jones, who is best known to television audiences for her role as the school bully Ethel Hallow in the first series of The Worst Witch and its sequel Weirdsister College, will also come to Istanbul.
Opening of the festival
Inez and Vinoodh will open this year’s Istanbul Culture and Arts Festival with Francesco Carrozzini’s exhibitions. The festival will be held in partnership with ISTANBUL’74 and Gagosian Gallery, and will take place in Karaköy.
The opening will be held at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum on June 6. This year famous artists and cinema directors will also be at the festival.
In his early teens, Carozzoni began taking pictures and making short films with his friends. He has since directed many commercials for clients such as Tommy Hilfiger and Fiat 500 and a viral video for the sunglasses brand Ray Ban, for which he was nominated for a Young Director’s Award at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.
In 2012 Carozzoni released his first two music videos: one for Chester French’s new single “Black Girls” and the other, “Wavvy.” He is currently working on his first feature documentary.