About Kulis.az

Kulis.az

Kulis.az is an Azerbaijani-language culture and arts portal based in Baku, Azerbaijan, operated by APA Media Group, one of the country's leading media companies. Its name is the Azerbaijani word for the wings or backstage of a theatre — the place behind the scenes — and the site presents itself simply as "Kulis — Mədəniyyət Portalı", the Culture Portal. It is a digital-native publication covering literature, theatre, cinema, music and cultural life in Azerbaijani, and it is listed by APA Media Group among its main brands alongside APA News Agency, Lent.az, Vesti.az, APASport.az and APA TV. Within the group, Kulis.az is the cultural title: the place where Azerbaijan's literary and artistic life is reported, reviewed and argued about.

Kulis.az combines news reporting on cultural events with essays, interviews, criticism and a substantial video strand of readings and conversations. Independent descriptions of the site characterise it as a platform for articles, stories and creative work showcasing the cultural and literary landscape of Azerbaijan. This profile is based on the portal's own output and on APA Media Group's published account of itself.

Ownership: APA Media Group

Kulis.az belongs to APA Media Group, whose own history is documented on the group's website. The company began in 2004 with the establishment of APA News Agency (Azeri-Press Agency), which built its reputation on speed and accuracy and became one of Azerbaijan's most trusted news agencies. In 2012 the group's outlets were brought together under APA Holding, described by the company as Azerbaijan's first structured media holding, with centralised management of multiple brands and editorial teams. In 2019 APA Holding was reorganised as APA Media Group, marking its evolution from a traditional news agency into a diversified media, data and technology company. The group's published brand list today includes APA News Agency, Lent.az, Vesti.az, APASport.az, Kulis.az and APA TV, delivering news, analysis, interviews, photojournalism, video, sports and cultural content to a daily audience.

Kulis.az's place in that portfolio matters for understanding the site: it is not a hobbyist blog but the culture desk of a major commercial media group, produced to professional newsroom standards and cross-promoted with the group's general and sports titles. When the whole APA Holding stable was briefly suspended in August 2018 — after a mistranscription in an APA report of a speech by President Ilham Aliyev, an episode reported internationally at the time — the group's sites, including its sister titles, ceased publishing for a period before resuming. The episode is part of the documented history of the group to which Kulis.az belongs and illustrates the pressures under which even large, well-connected Azerbaijani media groups operate.

Literature and the written word

Literature is at the centre of Kulis.az's identity. The homepage gives prominent place to poetry and prose: a poem by Nüsrət Kəsəmənli performed on video by the singer Aybəniz Haşımova, essays on writers and their work, and interviews in which authors discuss books they did not expect to see published. Pieces observed on the site include an essay built around the words "You, who made me fall in love with the one who created me" and items on the poet Mirzə Ələkbər Sabir's legacy. The portal functions as a public square for Azerbaijani letters: new books, literary anniversaries, writers' opinions and debates about the state of criticism all find space. One of its video items is an interview with the critic Mətanət Vahid answering the pointed question "Why is there no criticism among us?" — a self-reflective subject that a purely news-driven site would be unlikely to air. The same critic appears in another item arguing that statues of prominent figures in the regions resemble cartoon characters, the kind of provocative cultural commentary the portal evidently welcomes.

Cinema, theatre and music

Film coverage is a major strand. At the time the homepage was reviewed, Kulis.az was giving sustained attention to the feature film "44" — evidently a production on a patriotic theme connected with the 44-day war — publishing a series of its teasers: a main teaser, a special teaser, and character teasers titled "Həkim oğlu" ("The Doctor's Son") and "Vətənə sevgi" ("Love of Homeland"), with view counts in the thousands. Music coverage ranges from the classical and mugham heritage to popular song: the portal marked the fifty-ninth birthday of People's Artist Zülfiyyə Xanbabayeva with a video item, and carried the Honoured Artist Elza Seyidcahan reading her new poem. Theatre is present through the site's very name and through its coverage of the stage world, while essays on historical and cultural themes — an Atatürk-related piece on a sunken treasure he sought, a story of the conquest of the sky — broaden the cultural file beyond the arts pages' usual limits.

Video and multimedia

Kulis.az is notably video-forward for a culture site. Its homepage presents a stream of short video items — poetry readings, interview clips, film teasers — each with a duration and a view counter, formatted like the reels of social platforms. View counts observed ranged from dozens to several thousand, giving the portal a measurable, public sense of which cultural content travels. This format suits the way cultural material is now shared in Azerbaijan, where social networks are a primary distribution channel, and it distinguishes Kulis.az from text-only literary journals: the spoken poem and the filmed conversation are treated as first-class content alongside the written essay.

Voice and editorial character

The portal's editorial character is discursive rather than wire-like. It runs surveys and questions to readers — one item posed a poll on patriotism — carries first-person essays and polemics, and gives cultural figures room to make arguments. Where the group's news agency APA is built for speed, Kulis.az is built for voice: criticism, appreciation, obituary and debate. Its subject matter nonetheless tracks the national cultural calendar closely — anniversaries of artists, new national films, honours and birthdays of People's Artists — so that it also serves as a chronicle of official cultural life.

The portal's content also shows an instinct for the shareable cultural moment. Its video items include short performances — the Honoured Artist Elza Seyidcahan reading her own new poem drew over a thousand views, and the "44" film's "Love of Homeland" teaser more than two thousand — and brief provocations, such as the critic Mətanət Vahid's remark that statues of prominent figures erected in the regions resemble cartoon characters, a clip plainly designed to start an argument. Poetry occupies an unusually prominent place for a news-group title: the homepage gave top billing to a performed poem by Nüsrət Kəsəmənli, one of the most beloved Azerbaijani poets of the Soviet period, read by a well-known singer. In the Azerbaijani cultural tradition, where poetry retains a mass audience, this is not a marginal feature but one of the portal's strongest connections to its readers.

Language and audience

Kulis.az publishes in Azerbaijani. Its audience is the country's cultural public: writers, artists, academics, students and general readers interested in literature and the arts, together with the Azerbaijani-speaking diaspora. As part of APA Media Group it benefits from the group's reach and cross-promotion, while serving a niche that general portals cover only thinly. In a media market dominated by political and incident news, a dedicated, professionally run culture portal is a distinctive presence.

Regulatory environment

As an Azerbaijani online medium within a registered media group, Kulis.az operates under the Law on Media of 2022 and its Media Registry. Cultural journalism is less exposed than political reporting to the pressures documented elsewhere in the Azerbaijani media environment, but the 2018 suspension of its parent group's sites, described above, is a reminder that group-level decisions and disputes can reach every title in a holding, cultural ones included.

What is not publicly documented

APA Media Group documents its own history and brand list, and this profile relies on that record. The precise launch date of Kulis.az itself, its dedicated editorial staff and its audience figures are not published in the sources reviewed, and no separate claim is made for them here. The site's editor-level leadership is likewise not separately documented in open sources.

Summary

Kulis.az is Baku-based APA Media Group's culture and arts portal, publishing in Azerbaijani across literature, cinema, theatre and music, with essays, interviews, criticism and a strong short-video strand. Backed by one of Azerbaijan's largest media groups — founded as APA in 2004, structured as a holding in 2012 and reorganised as APA Media Group in 2019 — it is the country's dedicated digital home for cultural journalism.