Owrang Ganjineh Grows, With Three New Houses Beside the Library

The Owrang digital library, first launched to give access to trustworthy sources in literature, drama, poetry and research, is now part of a wider collection called Owrang Ganjineh. With three new sections, the Film House, the Theater House and the Music House, the collection has grown beyond books into cinema, the performing arts and music.

Ganjineh currently presents 3,064 books, 174 films, 84 theatrical works and 72 musical works. Alongside them it has gathered information on 651 productions and 714 reviews from 48 countries. The collection is available in Persian and English, and its information is completed step by step.

The Owrang Library remains the first part of Ganjineh. Readers can search by title, author, translator, subject and the author's nationality. Besides pointing to free and legal sources, the library helps readers find the published translations of a work. The audiobook section includes stories, musical tales and poets reading their own work, among them recordings from the archive of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanoon).

The Owrang Film House is devoted to the cinema of Iran and the world, from silent and classic films to contemporary work, documentaries, comedy, melodrama and films for children. Each film is presented with its details, a summary of the story, the versions available, a trailer link and published reviews. The aim is to make it possible to search and compare works, not just to list films.

The Owrang Theater House looks at plays and productions within the history of theater. Arranged in historical periods from ritual origins and the theater of Greece and Rome to contemporary theater, it gathers information on plays, directors, landmark productions, staging methods and stage design. A separate section is devoted to the search for an Iranian theatrical language, from ta'zieh and naqqali to siah-bazi and contemporary work. Where a legal recording of a production is available, a link to watch it is given.

The Owrang Music House gathers works and performances from Iran and the world, from Persian classical and regional music to Western classical music, opera, jazz and contemporary experiments. Works are arranged by style and historical period, and the record of each performance gives the composer, the performers, the time and place, and related reviews.

A feature shared by the three new houses is their attention to the different versions and productions of a single work. A play, for example, may have been staged in many countries in very different ways. Ganjineh tries to set these experiences side by side and, by presenting reviews from different points of view, leaves comparison and judgment to the reader.

The collection also groups works by historical period. In this arrangement Iranian and world works stand side by side, so that artistic developments in the same period can be studied together.

Owrang Ganjineh is not a store of film or music files but a guide to finding works and trustworthy information about them. Its links point to official and legal sources, and some works may require a subscription to the original service.

The collection is still growing. Anyone interested can help complete it by suggesting a book, film, play, musical performance, translation or review, or by reporting wrong information or broken links, at info@owranginstitute.com.

Visit Owrang Ganjineh at https://owrang.org/ganjineh/