Film director Elchin Musa oglu tells VK about his ‘Fortieth Door’
Elchin Musa oglu was born in 1966 in Baku. He studied at an art institute and shot his debut short-film in Baku. Elchin has worked for Azerbaijani TV since 1994 and shot his first full-length film ‘The Fortieth Door’ in 2007.
- You are a script writer, director and producer. Which one do you like the best?
- Being a director. I write scripts only because no one else does.
- Your ‘Fortieth Door’ is a phenomenal success…
- Our scriptwriter won a Swiss prize in a South Caucasian film scripts competition in 2004, but we managed to shoot the film only in 2007. We took part in 30 international festivals and won 11 awards, the last one this year. So, as you see, the film is a pretty big success.
- How did you come up with the idea for the film?
- I’ve worked in the sphere of documentaries for a long time and a made a lot of films about children. I once shot a film about a prison for under-age criminals. During the filming we talked with 150 children, who told us how they ended up there. I then shot several films about children – refugees from Karabakh. All these stories served as the material for ‘The Fortieth Door’. The film setting is in the early 1990s. Its main character is a boy, whose father was killed in Moscow, and now he and his mother are trying to survive.
14-year-old Ali has to earn his living himself, but he dreams about being a musician…
- And what does the symbolic title of the film mean?
- It is taken from traditional Azerbaijani tales. A hero opens 39 doors, freeing prisoners of a monster he had killed, but he can’t open the 40th door – the door behind which his unpredictable destiny awaits. This is the door of Choice – and our hero faces the most important choice in his life at the age of 14.
- Does the hero make the right choice?
- Yes, in the film. He hasn’t killed anyone, but I don’t know what awaits him in the future.
- Are you planning on shooting a sequel?
- I was offered to do so many times during the festivals, but I don’t like sequels. I think that vagueness is much more interesting.
- What’s the main zest of the film? Why did the juries like it so much?
- A lot of awards were given to the film for its humanity. We managed to tell a simple and sincere story from real life.
- During the filming you yourself had to open some ‘doors’ didn’t you?
- Yes. We had a low budget (220,000 dollars). It’s a funny sum for a movie. My friends helped out a lot, and colleagues from Iran, of course – all the sound work was done in Iran. Our chief operator and one of the film editors were from Iran, though they were ethnic Azerbaijanis.
- And what about the actors?
- I like working with non-professionals. The boy who played the main character was the most amazing one. We couldn’t find anyone for the role for a long time, but the first time I saw him I realized that he was perfect for it. During the festivals everybody asked where he studied his acting skills and were very surprised to learn that this is his debut.
- What films are popular today among the Azerbaijani audience?
- We need films about our own lives, our problems… and these films must be sincere. The audience senses insincerity immediately.
- And why do Azerbaijani films appear so rarely?
- Financing was the main issue for a long time. No films were shot here in the period 1992-2001. A lot of cinema artists changed their professions. But now young professionals are interested in shooting films, although we have to rent the equipment in Russia and Iran.
- What part does the cinema play today in the development of society?
- Today everyone is too busy to read, the rhythm of live has changed. We live in the era of the cinema. So it has to play its part in social life. People should learn to do good deeds from the films they watch, not bad ones. The cinema should offer beauty, kindness and humanity.
- Is it possible to shoot a box-office hit in Azerbaijan?
- It’s a hard task… Now films can recoup their budgets, even in France or Russia. We won’t be capable of shooting blockbusters for a long time, and frankly – we don’t need them. The "passionarity" theory of Lev Gumilev, in my opinion, works in cinema: the passion for it rises, lives through its peak and dies out. I think that every country should have its own cinema. Azerbaijan has a rich culture and history so we are up to the task.
Interview by Ramin Nazev, exclusively to VK.
