I spoke with the management of IFFC Manaki Brothers, who told me that their intention this year is to give an artistic aspect to the visual design. In agreement with the festival heads, we looked at a couple of options and they chose this work. It is a painting that is half abstract and half the face of a lady. The predominant colour is blue, but I don’t think that the colour has any meaning.
“I wrote an aphorism, аrt is in the shades, colours are the uniform”, Urdin says.
He says that each painting in his oeuvre is different.
-That is how I paint and that is how I think. Repetition is a sign of powerlessness. Because the basic postulate in art is creativity, it means that you need to constantly create something new, something creative. Art is sometimes successful, sometimes average, and sometimes unsuccessful, but it also depends on who is the artist and who is the viewer, Urdin believes.
He explains that the first steps in cinema were made by the Lumière brothers in France.
-There is a spiritual parallel between them and the Manaki brothers, but also between Paris and Bitola. They opened up new worldviews. At that time, they were not understood by their contemporaries, but were great enthusiasts and opened up the road for cinema that is hugely beneficial for the current generations. I am particularly happy that many Oscar winners are also recipients of the Golden Camera 300 awarded by the Brothers Manaki Film Camera Festival. This is a great success for the festival. These Oscar winners had faith, understood the festival’s reputation and came to receive the award, Urdin said.
Kiro Urdin was born in 1945 in Strumica. He graduated at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade in In the 1971-1973 period he worked as a journalist, and later he studied at the Art Academy in Paris. He was awarded by the Paris Film Academy and in 1982-1983 he made portraits of the distinguished participants at the Struga Poetry Evenings. Since 1984 he has been working as a freelance artist in various countries.
In addition to painting and books (aphorisms Le Dedoublement de la Personnalite and Le Dessin, le Pastel et l’Aquarelle of the contemporary arts published by Mayer) Urdin also illustrated the books by Jacques Delors Combats pour l’Europe and Anatoly Karpov’s Mes plus belles victoires.
The painting “Planetarium” (with a surface area of 48 m2), made in the most significant cultural centres around the world, is one of the biggest in contemporary Europe and was procured and displayed in the building of electronic giant NEWAUS in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
“Planetarium” as a multimedia project is one of the first art pieces in the Mondidalism art school. A film was made about “Planetarium” which was shown in the official selection of the renowned TV festival in Monte Carlo (1998). He also designed a ballet that played on the stages of Ohrid Summer, Toronto, Geneva…
-The “Planetarium” ballet is a coproduction. Teddy Wilson is a dancing star on Broadway. He was twice the ballet dancer of the year in Canada and when they saw the film, they suggested we make a ballet. It was set on the stages of Ohrid Summer Festival, the Macedonian National Theatre, it played twice in Toronto, Chicago, Ankara, and it was also staged in Geneva for the 60 th anniversary of UN. The film “Planetarium” was also screened in the Congress Hall, Urdin said, explaining that in three hours he completely changed the setting for the ballet at a suggestion of a prima ballerina immediately before the premiere.
His exhibitions were covered by 600-odd newspapers, in almost all countries where he exhibited. In addition to these articles, he has made more than 30 TV interviews.
