- Published: November 16, 2021
- Updated: November 16, 2021
- University / College: Harvard University
- Language: English
- Downloads: 38
The author of the documentary movie « Paradise found: Islamic Architecture and Arts» creates this project with the purpose to show the beauty and greatness of the Islamic art pieces. In order to fulfill this idea he travels to muslim countries such as Syria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Mali, India (the last one was included due to the muslim period in India and building of Taj Mahal as a result) and shows the greatest pearls of islamic art. The author is absolutely passionate about the muslim culture, he starts his story saying that people who create such masterpieces cannot be evil or bad, because art never lies, like it didn’t lie about the romans or greeks, the same way it cannot lie about muslims.
The name of the movie “ Paradise found” appears in the beginning of the each episode, the author believes that muslims represented the pictures of paradise as they understood it according to their religion, for example the Damascus mosque has the mosaics of beautiful green land full of trees, ponds, and illuminated with golden shine. There are no people on the fresco paintings, so the author suggested that the artist reflected the paradise prepared for the people who chose the right life and the right God.
The other interesting idea why the islamic art is so charming is that it shows only beauty and strength. Muslim artists never included personal troubles into their works, as they though that doing so would be a waste of artistic time, that is why islamic art is so positive and charming opposite to the european art.
In the beginning of the film the author, Waldemar Janusczak, makes a short introduction, he says that there were a couple of denotations in the London subway, he was stressed out, as the bombs exploded on the stations that his daughter uses in order to go to school. He had a doubt if he should proceed with the film, and finally, he decided to finish it and show to the world. He said that “ the truest evidence that any civilization leaves about itself is its art”, art provides the opportunity to get to know the culture and as we can see from this movie, all we can learn about islam is that its culture is beautiful, friendly and has “ the atmosphere of the paradise”.