By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

IMDb (Internet Movie Database) has presented Top 100 Azerbaijani Films by rating and popularity. 

The list is dominated by films with 8.5 points, including Rasim Ojagov's works "Tahmina" (1993),"Temple of the Air" (1989)  and "Birthday"( 1978), Huseyn Seidzadeh's "If Not That One, Then This One" (1956), Vagif Mustafayev's "Everything for the Better" (1997), Ramiz Hasanoglu's "The Life of Javid "(2007), Huseyn Mehtiyev's "Someone else's time" (1996). 

Apart from that, Jeyhun Mirzoyev's "Scream" (1993), Hasan Seyidbayli's  "I remember you, teacher" (1969), Shamila Makhmudbayova's "Shared Bread" (1971) and "Kamilia" (1971) and many others are among the films with 8.4 points.

The list of the most popular Azerbaijani films on IMDb features Asif Rustamov's "Downstream" (2014) followed by Rasim Ojagov's "Tahmina" (1993), Elkhan Jafarov's "Hail" (2012), Jeyhun Mirzoyev's "Scream "(1993), Hasan Seyidbayli's "Nasimi" (1973), Vahid Mustafayev's "Khoja" (2012) and others. 

IMDb is an online database of information related to films, television programs, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, plot summaries, trivia, ratings, and fan and critical reviews.

Internet Movie Database registered users can cast a vote (from 1 to 10) on every released title in the database. Individual votes are then aggregated and summarized as a single IMDb rating, visible on the title’s main page.

By "released title" IMDb means that the movie (or TV show) must have been shown publicly at least once (including festival screening).

Users can update their votes as often as they’d like, but any new vote on the same title will overwrite the previous one, so it is one vote per title per user.

Azerbaijani cinema has come to be an internationally recognized modern art enjoying a huge popularity and recognition at international film festivals, which frequently award the national films.

Over the past years, more than 300 films and 1,200 documentaries, as well as hundreds of cartoons were filmed.

Shortly after the Lumiere brothers from France invented cinematograph, an apparatus for making motion pictures, in 1895, Russian photographer and cameraman Alexandre Michon began shooting motion pictures that depicted everyday life in Baku. 

The first short, silent film of Azerbaijani cinematography "You are caught" was shown in Baku on August 2, 1898. The audience witnessed a historical event - the birth of Azerbaijani cinematography.

To honor this historical day, the national leader Heydar Aliyev signed an order on December 18, 2000, to declare August 2 as professional holiday of cinema workers – Day of Azerbaijani Cinema.

At present, it is planned to carry out systemic reforms to develop and modernize cinema art in Azerbaijan.