Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan Baku International Multiculturalism Centre Azerbaijani Multiculturalism Textbook for Higher Education
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mugham and folk songs with Norwegian songs and Argentinian rhythms, creating examples of multiculturalism for musical ensembles.
To return to the idea of the wheel of culture, another of its axles is sport and the culture of sport. The Azerbaijani team at the first European Games, held in Baku, showed the whole world that sport is a multicultural idea. Today the teams competing in various championships (football, basketball, volleyball, hockey) in European countries are multicultural too. Multiculturalism is the demand of the times and no one can remain outside it. Cultures cannot live behind closed doors. This might have been possible only in such a remote country as Japan in the Middle Ages. Since the late 19th century, an informal law has come into force: ‘Nobody has the spiritual right to live in isolation.’ Perhaps if integration had not begun in Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries, the situation of the Japanese would have been miserable. In conclusion, it should be said that when cultures are open to the world, their development and breadth expand. The future of modern world culture is multiculturalism. 4.7.7. Film Two and a half years after the Lumière brothers showed their short film The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station on 21 June 1898, Alexandre Michon made his film The Arrival of a Train at Sabunchu Station. Photographer Michon was the first to shoot film in the reportage genre when he filmed a fire at the oilfields of merchant James Wishaw in 1898. The film of the Bibi-Heybat fire, kept at the cinema museum in Paris, is a visual symbol that Baku and Azerbaijan as whole had entered the historical stage of multiculturalism. 240
On 1 August 1898, the newspaper Kaspi informed its readers that Alexandre Mishon’s Live Photos of Central Asia and the Caucasus, made for the World Exhibition in Paris, would be shown at the Vasilyev-Vyatski circus in Baku. This is confirmation that intercultural relations arising out of multiculturalism had already entered public discourse. These moving images showed different cultural elements: Fire at Bibi-Heybat Oilfield was a piece of reportage; Farewell Ceremony for His Majesty the Emir of Bukhara on Board the Velikiy Knyaz Aleksey Steamship, commissioned by millionaire Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, was observational; Caucasian Dance and You Stumbled were both short comedies. The new film technology allowed cameramen to film the surrounding environment. They showed how people of different nationalities behaved and greeted each other and the camera, creating original information about cultural diversity. Since the early 20th century film reels, or documentaries, about popular games such as tightrope walking, cock fighting or dog fighting, industrial and agricultural subjects and political issues such as strikes and demonstrations, show the cultures. Félix Mesguich, representing French and English film companies, is also known to have shot several times in Baku before 1905. In 1907 the French film companies Pathé Brothers, Gaumont and Eclair, Italian companies Cines and Ambrosio, Danish company Nordisk, German Messter and American Vitagraph opened representative offices in Moscow. They filmed a multicultural view of the provinces, including Azerbaijan. The same year Gaumont made a documentary film The Third State Duma, which showed inter-ethnic relations in the state administration through the extreme right winger Fedor Timoshkin and Dashnak Ivan Sagatelian from the Baku and Yelizavetpol governerates, and Khalil bay Khasmammadov, the only Azerbaijani to have been close to the Constitutional Democratic Party.
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On 8 March 1917, hostile forces filmed Stepan Shaumyan’s speech after his return from exile in Saratov and election as chairman of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, confirming the violation of demographic balance in the political administration. The following year Shaumyan led the Dashnak-Bolshevik massacre of Azerbaijani Muslims. At the end of World War I, at the request of the Red Cross, the painful condition of Turkish prisoners on Nargin Island in Baku bay was filmed, confirming the threat to the Turks and Azerbaijanis in the region.
The newsreel Red Army Parade in Baku was a piece of propaganda for the Bolsheviks who put an end to the independence of Azerbaijan on 28 April 1920. Film in Azerbaijan was then dominated by documentaries about anniversaries and the lives of political leaders. The documentary Anniversary of Soviet Azerbaijan, shot in 1921, was a piece of Socialist Realism in the propaganda poster genre. Though Azerbaijani films mainly focused on industry, there were other films, such as Kalinin’s Arrival in Baku (1923), Rest and Treatment for Oil Workers and the film about the visit of Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and the Bolshevik writer Demyan Bedniy to Azerbaijan all had interethnic relations in the background. Multicultural relations catch the eye in the two-part film Legend of the Maiden Tower (screenwriter N. Breslav-Lurye, 1924). The film was based on Jafar Jabbarli’s poem narrating one of the legends of the Tower, which was published in the magazine Enlightenment and Culture (Maarif və Mədəniyyət, No. 4-5, 1923). The rare event at the centre of the tale is that a father falls in love with his own daughter. The contradiction finds its dramatic solution in the film, as in the poem, and the tragedy shocks both of them. Though these events find their artistic resolution in the poem through ethical, moral and spiritual categories that are above national fanaticism, the silent film failed to show the struggle of contradictions. While the plot repeats much of the poem, the film is a melodrama, a category deemed bourgeois by Socialist Realism, devoted to the propaganda of Soviet ideology. Samad khan (Qantamir) is presented as a bloodthirsty, dishonest tyrant, who had fortresses built out of human skulls and loved orgies. By placing episodes of riot and rebellion at the forefront, the director emphasizes the topic of revolution. The nub of the plot centres on the khan’s plan to marry his own daughter. The murder of the khan by his daughter’s lover, who is also the rebel leader, adds to the socialist theme. Unaware of her father’s death, the daughter throws herself off the top of the tower, bringing the ballet to its climax. The dramatic focus on the revolutionary met the demands of Socialist Realism, which was tantamount to a new ideology in the sphere of art; a new work of art emerged, national in form and socialist in content. National costume and palatial interiors served to bring socialist revolution to life. The transformation of a fine work of art based on oral folk literature into a piece of propaganda demonstrates the colonial psychology of the foreign film-makers who overlooked interethnic relations. The advent of sound in films created a multicultural palette with a new representational aesthetic, dramatic model, directorial role and major scenes, but it could not penetrate interethnic relations. As the new dramatic model moved further away from representational language, the director became subordinate to the camera and the representational plot line moved to the background. To meet the demands of plot, actors developed a new plasticity, learning how to convey emotion, using mimicry, gestures, allusion and, finally, intra-textual pauses. However, plot line and text were introduced mechanically in the new audio-visual structure based on the method of silent cinema production. ‘Talking heads’ cross-cutting the film structure impeded the audio-visual narration. While silent films took into consideration the external features of
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human activity, talking films penetrated the psychological world too. Events in silent films were described in the past, while in talking films the drama presented everything in the present, as if it were reportage of the events on screen and the audience became participants. Nevertheless, multicultural values could be seen in newsreels about culture. In the four-part concert film Azerbaijani Art (1934) Ashuq Yusif from Ganja appears before collective farmers, singing the song Yaxan düymələ (Button your collar) to the ashuq tune in praise of Karam. The audience shown in the film turns it into a social and cultural documentary. In the second part of the film the rhythmic mugham Heyrati is sung by Jabbar Qaryaghdioghlu. Before singing he moistens his right thumb and clutches the rim of the tambourine as he sings. This creates a visual representation of the unique national culture. Fragments from Uzeyir Hajibayov’s Leyli and Majnun, Muslim Magomayev’s Shah Ismayil and Glière’s Shahsanam are extremely important in film chronicles of Azerbaijani national music. Multicultural values can be seen, though in passive form, in the regional audiences shown in the background as famous artists perform in the newsreels The 15th Anniversary of the Baku Workers’ Theatre (1936), The Ashuqs of Azerbaijan (1938) and Long Live Azerbaijani Actors and Actresses! (1938). Multicultural values can also be seen in information films such as Travel to Azerbaijan, The Fire Worshippers’ Temple, The City of Winds, Azerbaijan, Lokbatan, The National Bird Park, Nagorno-Karabakh, Visitors to Khinaliq, Shusha Health and Recreation Centre and Zagatala. The first film with synchronized sound to be made in Azerbaijan, Three Songs about Lenin directed by Dziga Vertov in 1934, showed the drama of people living as if in slave conditions. Although the various minorities are shown on screen in the context of Lenin’s 244
desire to bring them a brighter future, the accusing spirit of the film could not conceal the multicultural values behind the imagery. The film On the Shore of the Blue Sea came out in 1936. In an article ‘Where the Bad Screen Writer Takes the Floor’ published in the newspaper Literature on 1 June 1936, Mammadkazim Alakbarli, literary critic and philosopher, accused the film of making fun of Azerbaijan with its depiction in the first scene of ‘a Turkish woman wrapped tightly in a black chador sitting alone, with no-one else in sight; she is smoking a tobacco pipe and facing the wind, which ruffles her loose skirt to reveal her skinny thighs’. The critic accuses the screenwriter Yusif of making Turks resemble Kurds from the 18th century with wide trousers flapping in the wind, a rope instead of a belt, slippers, and a swindler’s Turkish cap. The critic said the screenwriter had distorted his language and turned it into a laughing stock. He also criticized the film-makers for failing to understand national policy and for accusing the minorities of ignorance, at the same time showing that the intelligentsia was able to influence public thought before the repressions. The episode in question was removed following this article and at the insistence of Samad Mardanov. After the removal of the first scene, the film begins with two young sailors who survive shipwreck for two days before being washed up on an island. The island scene is set by fishermen, fishing nets and boats, though attention is focused on the three main characters. One of the heroes, Yusif (Lev Sverdlin) speaks Russian with great difficulty and does not seem too keen on the Azerbaijani instrument the tar that was rescued with him, though he never puts it down. Although Yusif and Alyosha’s (Nikolay Kryuchkov) travel papers have been lost in the water, they are to spend three months working at the fishing collective farm. Both friends fall in love with the fishermen’s team leader, Masha (Yelena
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Kuzmina), providing plenty of comedic moments against the background of Russian folk songs.
Yusif, the only ethnic Azerbaijani out of the film’s three main characters, very often uses the Azerbaijani swear words köpək oğlu or ‘son of a bitch’. The director adds nothing to the film by using that expression. He simply makes the ethnicity of the hero more conspicuous. When the string of a necklace breaks, scattering beads into the sea, Alyosha avoids work by pretending to be ill and goes to town to buy a new necklace in order to win Masha’s heart. Yusif , however, continues to behave like an ethnic stereotype, quoting the proverb ‘Dərdimi dağa desəm, dağ əriyər’ (If I tell my sorrows to the mountain, the mountain will melt’ and the swear word ‘Mən ölüm!’ (‘Upon my Death!’). As was common at the time, at a team meeting Alyosha’s behaviour is considered a social disaster. ‘The third Azerbaijani at the meeting sits silently without uttering a word. He comes across not as a man, but a puppet. He wears a large sheepskin hat, considered the choice of the petty bourgeois. His name isn’t even given in the film.’ The critic who wrote this, Mammadkazim Alakbarli, was himself subject to such a meeting and sentenced to death as an enemy of the people. After his friend Yusif’s speech at the meeting, Alyosha becomes a manifestation of hatred because of his negative personality. Aware of the warmth between Yusif and Masha, Alyosha decides to give way to his friend. He takes Yusif by the arm when they are on the boat and talks to him, which confirms that sympathy is built only on political motives. Imagining his wedding to Masha, Yusuf cups his hand around his ear and sings the folk song ‘Uca dağlar başında’ (At the top of the high mountain), especially the couplet ‘Uca dağlar bashında bir sürü qoyun, uzaqdan baxmaqla mən necə doyum’ (There is a flock of sheep on the top of the high mountain, How can I be satisfied when I look from afar). This is a superficial characterization of his nationality. As the sea turns stormy, the two friends fight to win Masha’s heart. Water fills the boat and as they struggle, Masha falls overboard. In a dramatic scene, everybody is mourning and Alyosha and Yusuf have to return to the town, as their time on the island has run out. The island’s social club has been decorated for the expected harvest holiday, but instead a funeral is to be held. As a grieving fisherman is making a speech, Masha appears. She managed to save herself as she had a lifebelt. The transition from mourning to joy and celebration is accompanied by the seagulls picking up small fish from the surface of the water. Dancers are shown in parallel, bringing the scene to life. Yusif is thought to have rescued Masha and cannot get rid of the people; they throw him up and down to show their support. The departure of Alyosha and Masha increases the humour. Yusuf sets sail, singing a sailor’s song and the film ends with a flight of seagulls against the sun and sea. Though one of the characters is an Azerbaijani, the film distorted national culture. Soviet cinema always opposed nationalism, and especially in the 1930s could not reflect the manifestation of local culture. Finally, the screen version of Uzeyir Hajibayli’s comic operetta Arshin Mal Alan (The Cloth Peddler), released on 21 October 1943, became a positive display of Azerbaijani culture. The dramatic structure within the operetta created the foundations for an excellent film. The screenwriter was Sabit Rahman, who had graduated in screenwriting from the Soviet Union’s Institute of Cinematography in 1937 and worked as the head of the scripts department at the Baku film studio for two years. The directors were Rza Tahmasib and Nikolay Leshshenko, a Ukrainian. Rza Tahmasib was a well-known director and actor with a track record in the theatre. He had graduated in film direction from what was known as the Rabfak (the workers’ faculty) at the Soviet Institute of Cinematography in 1937 at the age of 43. The same year he made
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the documentary Honoured Azerbaijan and was the second director of the film Sabuhi, which was completed in 1943. He had already staged the play in Nakhchivan, so he was well acquainted with it.
The film begins with an aria of Asgar, played by Rashid Behbudov. Asgar sings Naledan bir ney kimi ... (Because of grief my song sounds like a flute…), winning the sympathy of the audience in the process. Asgar clutches his prayer beads to his chest, changing expressions crossing his face. The servant Vali (Lutvali Abdullayev) carries in a tray of sweets to the anxious Aunt Guljahan (Munevar Kallatarli), the whole scene full of colour. Asgar protests against the old traditions, because he does not want to marry a woman whom he has not seen and loved. This is the nub of the comedy. ‘I want to get married!’ Asgar tells Aunt Guljahan. She weeps to hear this as she remembers the command of her late sister, Asgar’s mother. She sings an aria, wearing a veil, but also puts on make-up and begins to dance. Beating his tray like a drum in accompaniment, Vali joins the range of characters conveying national traditions. The directors show plenty of local colour in this clip. The director includes Asiya (Rahila Mustafayeva), Sultan bay’s niece, and her servant Telli (Fatma Mehraliyeva) to bring merriment to the scene when Gulchohra (Leyla Javanshirova) sings her arioso. They try to cheer Gulchohra, up but she insists: ‘If I do not see him, if I do not love him, I will not marry him!’ She is very upset. To calm her down Asiya and Telli act out wedding scenes, in this way becoming a continuation of the text. Sultan bay (Alakbar Huseynzada) enters, showing the suffering of loneliness and old age, adding to the richness of local characters and exaggerating the multicultural colour. Suleyman bay (Ismayil Afandiyev) is in a good mood as he goes to see his friend Asgar. He is joined by Aunt Guljahan and Vali, enlivening the multicultural context. He advises Asgar to walk from street to street as a cloth peddler. On his way Asgar encounters camel caravans, an elderly woman who wants to buy and sell, a dog running from the yard to the street and a dirtily dressed girl running out into the street. All this continues the folklore semantics. On the street Asgar meets Soltan bay, a stubborn man, who tells him not to step into his yard; Asgar promises not to go into the yard any more, creating social drama and adding new spirit to the multicultural aspect. But when Soltan bay is not there, Asgar goes into his yard as a cloth peddler and shows off his wares. The young ladies encircle him, singing and dancing in chorus. Vali sits on the wall watching them. This carnival of different strata of society continues. Saving himself from the circle of young ladies, the cloth peddler jumps over the wall – he has fallen in love with Gulchohra. Vali runs like Charlie Chaplin to convey the good news to Suleyman bay, adding to the comic effect. Grocer Mashadi Ibad (Mirza Agha Aliyev) thinks that all that you need to get married is ‘One mullah, a big lump of sugar and one manat in money’. But it also becomes evident that the impoverished Soltan bay is unable to pay for the food he has bought, which shows that the respected title of bay is losing its social status. The grocer is not keen to give him what he wants, which shows the greed of merchants. Under the pretext that he left behind his wooden ruler to measure cloth, Asgar returns to Soltan bay’s yard, where he sings a duet with Gulchohra and they dance. Aunt Guljahan comes to Soltan bay’s house to see the young lady whom Asgar wants to marry. Seeing Aunt Guljahan in his house, Soltan bay is eager to marry her. He quotes the ‘One mullah, a big lump of sugar, one manat’ custom to great comedic effect. Asgar proposes that Soltan bay marry Aunt Guljahan on condition that he allow him to marry his daughter, which is rejected by Soltan bay. This heightens the clash between social strata. But the relationship of the two families’ servants, Vali and Telli, reveals the closeness of the social
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strata too. Drama continues as Soltan bay drives out Vali, ending up with a piece of his waistband in the process. Soltan bay takes a slipper and throws it at Vali who catches it and presses it to his chest. Vali collides with a man carrying a tray full of fruit. The man drops the tray, spilling all the fruit to the ground. When Soltan bay realises that Asgar is really Suleyman bay’s friend and a wealthy merchant rather than a cloth peddler, he is happy to agree to his daughter’s marriage to Asgar. The film laughs at the warm relations between the upper strata of society. Suleyman bay goes to Soltan bay’s house as matchmaker for the marriage, where he meets Soltan bay’s beautiful niece Asiya. Suleyman bay confuses her with Gulchohra, and envies Asgar his choice of bride. This leads to more closeness among the lead characters. Soltan bay is enraged and also grieved that Gulchohra wants to marry the cloth peddler, not the merchant. He goes to Suleyman bay’s house, but Suleyman is not at home. He does not allow himself to enter the house when its owner is not at home. But the contrast between the merriment in Suleyman bay’s house and Soltan bay’s grief creates a successful counterpoint. Finally he meets Suleyman bay and gives his consent to the merchant kidnapping his daughter rather than to her marriage to the cloth peddler, not realising they are one and the same.
Gulchohra is alone in Asgar’s house, her little figure and sorrowful aria a contrast to the size of Asgar’s hall. When she sees the portrait of an old man on the wall, she thinks that he is to be her husband, so she wants to hang herself from the chandelier. But at this moment Asgar comes in slowly, singing a song. She throws herself into Asgar’s arms, as the dramatic knot is untied. The wedding party begins with large cooking pots full of pilaf, trays piled high with fruit, hookahs to smoke and Telli singing a song full of grief. Vali is sitting close to the hearth to dry his wet clothes. Soltan bay is enraged because his daughter has run away with the cloth peddler. Soltan bay’s marriage to Aunt Guljahan and Suleyman’s marriage to Asiya create a catharsis, resolving the tensions among the characters. Mashadi Ibad enters the hall with gifts for the couples, raining money over their heads. The music, dancing and production of the film won hearts around the world. When release of the film was discussed at the USSR Cinematography Committee, the chairman of the art council Nikolay Okhlopkov and Mikhail Romm criticized the film. They were silenced in turn by Sergey Eisenstein for their sociological criticism of the film. In this way he praised the film’s multicultural values and its release was approved. On 18 September 1945, the film Arshin Mal Alan appeared in cinemas. It was a hit because of Uzeyir Hajibayov’s music and sense of drama, the direction of Rza Tahmasib and Nikolay Leshshenko and their faithfulness to the original. Many factors contributed to the film’s success: the skill of the cameramen Alisattar Atakishiyev and Mukhtar Dadashov; the costumes showing national traditions designed by set designers Alisattar Atakishiyev and Yuri Shvets; the wonderful voice of Rashid Behbudov, who played the part of Merchant Asgar; the movement of Gulchohra played by Leyla Javanshirova (Badirbayli), who had originally been a dancer; Soltan bay; Aunt Guljahan; Vali played by Lutfali Abdullayev, who had been a conjuror before he was an actor; producer and actor Ismail Afandiyev, who played the part of the aristocratic Suleyman bay; singer Fatma Mehraliyeva; naïve Telli; and humble yet sharp Asiya. The main factor in the film’s success was multiculturalism. The showing of Arshin Mal Alan abroad, first in China, brought a good income to the state budget, and encouraged the production of musicals. Nevertheless, the hardship of the post-war years led to insufficient funding for the film studios. In parallel, the showing of ‘trophy films’, brought back from Germany, including some gems
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of world cinema, made visible universal values in the context of the West.
After making the films Fatali Khan (1947) and The Lights of Baku (1950) Baku film studio remained idle for ten years. The ‘trophy films’ made it difficult for the studios to get funding. The festival of Indian films held in 1954 found a good market. Unfortunately, the musical aesthetics and melodrama in the cheap commercial films influenced Azerbaijani cinema. Moreover, India had been freed from the colonial regime only seven years before. This prevented our cinema from establishing its own traditions. The film Bakhtiyar (1955) (scriptwriters B. S. Laskin and N. V. Rozhkov, director Latif Safarov and composer Tofiq Quliyev) was made in the hope of repeating Rashid Behbudov’s success in Arshin Mal Alan but Bakhtiyar fell under the influence of the Indian film aesthetic. In the film Bakhtiyar sings the song Great and Powerful Russia for hospital patients, accompanied by Sasha on the piano, who had ignored the reproaches of his aunt and father, all within the context of colonial psychology. When Bakhtiyar has grown up and made new friends at the oil field where he works, he performs the song of Friendship with three characters, moving the music to the forefront. The oil worker friends go to the hall where they see Yusif (F. Mustafayev) and Sasha (T. Chernova). Dancing a love waltz with Bakhtiyar, Sasha advises him to go to composer Rajabov at the Conservatory to get a musical education, raising the issue of who has the right to give advice. The wealth of songs performed by Sasha who whistles just like a child holds up the plot, turning the film into a concert. The song of the sailors is performed against the background of the Oily Rocks offshore platforms, continuing the labour motif, which does not conform to the structure of the genre. Sitting on iron pipes in a lorry, which moves against the background of the Oily Rocks industrial scenery at sea, Bakhtiyar greets his friends on a boat by waving his cap. In this way the scenes match the music. The leader of the amateur Aghabala (A. Geraybayov) scolds the members of the group, who are his friends and relatives, when he hears that a commission is to visit. The film concert continues when guests with bouquets of flowers and tickets sent by Bakhtiyar arrive at Sasha’s 19th birthday party. The song Zibeyda, which Bakhtiyar sings in different cities, shows he does not need special education. To fill his own pockets Aghabala forces Bakhtiyar to give five concerts in a day. Bakhtiyar, however, has to leave the stage during the concert because of problems with his voice. Then the owner of the hall demands that Aghabala return his money. Uncle Rza, who has already become a member of parliament, comes backstage and shows Aghabala a caricature of the singer as a milch cow in the magazine Kirpi (Hedgehog). This device brings Rza back into the story. On the advice of Uncle Rza, Bakhtiyar goes to the conservatory and passes his examination by singing Uzeyir Hajibayli’s song Sevgili canan (My Beloved). This shows the director and film composer’s profound respect for Hajibayli. Yusif brings a basket of champagne to mark Sasha’s 23rd birthday. This shows the merchant’s generosity and puts moral questions on the backburner. The melodramatic triangle provides comedy when Bakhtiyar and his oilmen friends take bouquets of flowers to the railway station to meet Sasha, but to punish Yusif they exchange Sasha for an old woman at Bilajari station. Bakhtiyar’s oilmen friends take Sasha to the conservatory, where they listen to Bakhtiyar singing a classical song for them, Dear Friend. Sasha whistles in accompaniment, in a sign of admiration and showing Bakhtiyar’s victory. The explosion of the champagne bottles and the tyres of Yusif’s car symbolize the bankruptcy of evil. At the end the song Dear Friend is heard a second time to mark the happy ending.
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The film Under the Hot Sun, directed by Latif Safarov on the basis of the story The Village Doctor by Hasan Sayidbayli (1957), centres on the contrast between the characters and nature.
When a tiger chases a mountain goat in the Caucasus mountains, a rock fall blocks the riverbed. This marks a major dramatic event. Rain washes down the tracks. The fields need water, but it will take time to dig channels. Eldar (A. Mammadov), a former shepherd who is now head of the farm and future chairman of the collective farm, looks for the reasons why the water has disappeared. His search in the inaccessible mountains becomes a manifestation of heroism. The song that Eldar sings to his beloved Narmina when he visits his favourite farm emphasizes the importance of music in the film’s structure. Eldar suddenly falls asleep and loses his speech. Although the contrast between Aydin (A. Farzaliyev), a doctor, who is sent from the city to treat Eldar, and Mursal (J. Aliyev), the local paramedic who has no special education and illegally takes money from his patients, remains outside the main story, the music tries to bring it together. Gulpari, a member of the Young Communist League, tells everybody in the village that the patient will speak again. Her relationship with Aydin is conveyed in song, easing the tension. The songs of the girls who pick tea in the plantations, both solo and together, expand the multicultural values by introducing elements of Talysh folklore. Aydin advises Narmina to tell Eldar that she does not love him in order to shake him. This advice is heard by Jalal, an engineer, who is watching them secretly. Now the plot moves to the foreground and multicultural values are forgotten. From the 1970s Soviet film moved away from propaganda towards social issues, at the same time giving an impetus to multicultural values in the information context. On the initiative of the National Leader of the Azerbaijani People Heydar Aliyev, in 1975-79 a group of Azerbaijani students of different ethnicities were sent to study in Yevgeny Matveyev’s acting studio at the Soviet State Cinematography Institute, creating multicultural diversity in film characters in subsequent years. The freshly graduated actors boosted demographic diversity and multicultural values, showing different aspects of behavioural culture. Over the next decade students were sent to Aleksey Batalov’s studio at the Institute, enabling the continuation of multiculturalism in the cinema of independent Azerbaijan. During the independence years, film, which in essence cannot be national, became an irreplaceable tool in conveying national thought. Traditional artefacts, such as carpets and other household items, were shown in the background, giving films a traditional external look. The national way of thinking was conveyed on screen through drama. In this regard, let us take a look at an episode in the film The Execution is Delayed, made in 2000 by Alakbar Muradov, who wrote the script with Isi Malikzada. Khan, a leader in the criminal world who has become a champion of justice, is finally released from prison and returns home. His words ‘My sister has also grown up’ mean that he wants to take responsibility for his sister’s future, but the teenager finds refuge in her mother, rather than him. This gives a well balanced display of multicultural values. The teenager Lalazar, who is seeing her mythologized brother for the first time, does not dare to approach him; this revives local ideas about decency. The artistic solution of the problem lies in an alternative administration in the country, when the legal government is unable to rule and the criminal world does it in its own way. The decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev announcing that 2016 would be the Year of Multiculturalism was an integral part of state policy. It created the right conditions for finding multicultural topics to show on screen.
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