Gohar Kheirandish
Audio of the Entire Interview
Interview Transcript
Part 01
I was born in August the 23rd, 1954.
In Shiraz, Fars
In one of the big luxurious houses
I’m the last child of my family.
And I was very spoiled.
My father was a landowner in Eqlid, Fars.
His lands and gardens had fresh fruit.
I went to Eqlid just once.
It was when I married Jamshid Esmailkhani
Back then we had bought a brand-new Peykan (car )
And went to Eqlid
And there, I saw that this beautiful city had
the roots of trees and the sound of water in its alleys.
Local butter, nice and kind people
What I also remember is the taste
of the yellow and green wheat on the farm
The farmers put them on the fire to burn them slightly
and then they put the burned wheat in their hands
and rubbed their kind working hands together
in order to peel them, they were very hot and
they blew them to cool them down
And then, they gave us these still-hot wheat
They were as delicious as corn.
I will never forget their taste.
The peasants also brought some muddy potatoes from my father’s land
I have never talked about these things in my life
They made a small clay furnace
When the fire was on,
they put the potatoes in the furnace
They gave us these potatoes seasoned with local butter
It was as if you would never get hungry
in your life after eating them.
Because they were so delicious.
And they would satisfy your hunger.
In fact, I was 14 or 15 back then.
Because I married at an early age.
I will never forget their taste.
Together with the love and kindness the peasants treated us
When my father passed away,
we gave our lands to our peasants
Whenever I would go there, they gave me all
sorts of crops from the lands
I would thank them and tell them
“we don’t need more than this. They’re yours”
And now I don’t have any news of those lands and that city.
I went to school at Shiraz.
I remember a lot about our school
When I was at first grade,
our school was a very big one
They’d give us free nutritions
at that time
I remember big pots
of boiling milk
And fresh smell of milk
and Sangak bread
And when they’d come to school
to give us vaccine injections
I saw kids get into a room
have their injections
I remember a kind lady
who was a nurse and kids laying down to have injection
I’d imagine the whole injection
process so much that…
The place on which they’d inject
would hurt already and I’d cry and they’d send me to class
I’d go to the class
before getting the injection
Would you believe it?
Anyway, It’s my childhood.
But I cand talk about my childhood for hours
I always loved to play
I liked to play the role of an aunt,
anurse, a teacher or a mom in our group
I used to play with dolls a lot
I remember them perfectly
and had them all the time untill…
Esmailkhani proposed to me,
my mom told’em that don’t think that…
she’d play for you like in theater
She’s still playing with dolls
She won’t even tidy up after herself.
She’d leave her clothes were she wears them off
When I’d take off my pants
I’d leave them like two cicles behinde
One day my mom took Jamshid hand and showed
him my left behind pants
She won’t be able to live with you
Don’t think she’d turn into a housewife
It’d allright if you go to theater together
Because I was in eighth grade
when I saw Jamshid first
We got married when
I was at ninth grade
But at eighth grade
in a big and beautiful state school
At the Moshir crossroad
in Shiraz, There was our school
Shahdokht school
And table tennis was one of my interests
I earned some positions
and participated in competitions
I played basketball and…
Next to it,
I liked theater very much
As I used to play since my childhood
I’d became the principle,
the director and…
I used to do everything while running a show.
My mom’d say that She would play roles since her childsood
Sometimes even for our family gatherings
And when I went to highschool
next to sport, I was really into theater
Esmailkhani came to our school
and selected me
The first show in which I played forEsmailkhani
was called “The Bride” written by Farideh Farjam
And we performed at Shiraz Hayat highschool
which was for boys only
And Esmailkhani as the director of the show
was a student there too
Esmailkhani didn’t have his diploma
when he met me
He used to have cultural activities
besides his studies too
For example when they’d pass exams
The selected party’d go to Ramsar
And they’d play their shows
over there
For years Esmailkhani’d been to Ramsar,
and there were many love affairs there
and when I got selected,
he didn’t let me go there
Said you shouldn’t go there too
and you might go there and fall for someone else and leave me
When I got selected and
he came to get me to cultue houses
at Zand street at Capri crossroad
There were a couple of cultural houses
in Shiraz
One day I went to a culture house
but my mother came and refused to let me go
So Esmaeilkhani would come
and get me each time to go to theater
My mom said: Dear don’t
trouble yourself, I’d escort her back and forth
Then our housr door
was one those big wooden ones
And as our house had
Orsi (Sash)
The kind of rooms that are
higher than the yard
We should have lift those colored little doors
and fasten their bottom
I couln’t reach them so
he’d say let me help you
Ans my mother would say
don’t bother I’d help her myself
In the end he’d come and help
anyway and touch my hand for a moment
Well it was the way of love then
it was very delicate unlike nowadays
To glance at each other and wink
or send kisses
or have a moment of touching
hands and get all fired up
Just these stuff,
It wasn’t like nowadays then
It’s been like this for month
to lie down on the bed over the pond
and look at the sky and count the stars
and feel that touch of hand and kiss your owns hand
The hand which is kissed or touched by him
and feel love in dreamland
Anyway, when my mom asked Jamshid
not to come and take me to theater
after a few times escorting me,
she got tired and after that Jamshid would come and take me
The old doors had two knockers on them
one was a stone knocker
The other one is cicle shaped
for women
Stone knockers were for men
He would come and knock
with the stne knockers
and my mom’d say that it’s you again Jamshid khan
My mom called him Mr. Jamshid Agho (Sir)
One “Mr” at first then Jamshid
and then an Agho because of Shiraz dialect
Is it you Mr. Jamshid Agho?
Whenever he’d knock on the door
Then he’d say to me,
Imamzadeh (Saint) give me my heart’s desire
In the end while we were going
to the high school…
As my mother was a religious person
but she was very open minded
and would help everyone a lot
She kept us for years
in her house
Jasmshid would call my
mother Mom
And a lot of tomes they’d join
forces against me
They were like friends
We lived with my mom for eight years
then we bought a house and left
He was kind of a Live-in son-in-law
My siblings were jealous of him
My sister and brothers and everyone else
would tell my mom that she is his mom not theirs
And when my son was born,
they’d say that you are Omid’s “Maman Joon”
Cause my kids called her “Maman Joon”
and called me “Madar”
They all said that I am their “Madar”
meaning that I’m always out
And my mom took great care of my child
so that I’d be able to go to the university
Part 02
When Esmailkhani selected me for “The Bride” play
written by Farideh Farjam
The role of Ozra Khanom, the hair remover,
who is also a matchmaker
She finds spouse for people
I performed the role so good
at the highschool that they took me to Culture and Art ministry
so that I’d be able to have officila
contracts for acting
to be an actress for
culture and theatre house
We wroked for culture and art
in those years
At Fars art and culture center and…
Esmailkhani and me had the same salary
The were a sort of contracts named
article 5 for those who were working there
As I wasn’t eighteen then,
I had an agreement with them
Those years were accepted as my working time
later and they recruited me at eighteen
Then, a series of acting course were held by…
Ali Shojaeian who was
an expert in theatre affairs
and Nemat Asadollahi who
had graduated from Fine Art university at Tehran
would go to other cities and teach performing art
and would take some plays to the stage
I’d both take courses
and practice performing at nights
Performing practice itself contained
body training, expression exercise…
and learning how to say
the dialogues
and before that they’d
give us some emotional etudes
Which I encounterd those etudes years later
at the university too
Because those who were teaching us also
learned the etudes in the same university
And we’d also teach thrm
to kids
There were some cultural houses
built in Shiraz
In which kids from elementary school
would come to us
and they’d learn lessons
of theatre
and poetry and writing stories
Mr. Amin Faghiri who is a great writer from Shiraz
He used to teach writing story
Mr. Karimi who is now at France
used to teach painting then
Mr. Safari who is a musician from Shiraz
used to theach music
For four sessions, four great master would
teach kids
And the schoold would
get the scores from us
The period in which I worked there
And thaught the elementary school students,
I selected some and took three theaters to the stage
Tuka in the cage writter
by Farideh Farjam
I directed a work
by Nima Yooshij
Uninvited Guests written
by Farideh Farjam
We performed in the open space
at the Hafezieh
I played the narrator myself
and later I entrusted the role to the kids
And in the play kids played the role of the dog, the cat, the donkey…
Uninvited guests are some animals
who come to the house of an old woman
We did makeup on kids and
for makeup I tried to use professionals from Fars province
I directed it myself
And we even took it to Shiraz counties
We’d take our plays to counties too
For several times we have traveled to other cities
to perform on stage
“One sided Chess” was a play
that I directed myself
But I didn’t go on directing anymore
As I thought it’s a very difficult job to do
because I’m a perfectionist
I think that a task should be done
in a spectacular state
I’m afraid when I’m directing a play
as I’m not in control of many departments
I won’t be able to provide or execute many
tasks which are needed perfectly
That’s why I didn’t direct any other
plays after those ones
Esmailkhani and I were performing
in a play named Rostam and Sohrab at Shiraz Pahlavi Hall
I shouldn’t have looked at the stairs while stepping down
I’ve had practiced to look up front while going down the stairs
While saying: “I’m a daughter of Samangan king”
My ancestor’s are Lions and Tigers
No one has seen me
except through the veil
And no one has ever
heard my voice before
I’d get near Rostam and look him in the eyes
and say:
“My heart decided to love
you without seeing you”
“The affection was made
just by hearing about you”
Of course I remember most of it
“The sub hasn’t seen me naked”
Once when I was reciting this
A very respected poet told me:
Don’t sat” “I’m a girl of Samangan king”
But say: “The only daughter…”
Meaning one and only
So you are the only daughter of
Samangan King
Esmailkhani was playin the role
of Samangan king
One day, Mr Pahlbold, minister of art and culture
asked me how much my salary is
I said 600 Tomans
He said why?
Based on contract charts it should be 1200
I said: “Well, Esmaeilkhani and I become one salary”
He bursts into laghter
and said it’s not a family gets one salary
I went to Mr. Kojouri,
general manager of Fars province
I asked: “What does your wife do?”
He said that sh works in education
I said: “Do they pay you one salary
together with her?”
Just see how saucy I was
He said: “What do you mean?”
I saind: “Esmaeilkhani and I are two employees,
It’s right that we both work here
But do you think that
we should receive only one salary?
In the end, my salary got corrected
after a month or so
It became something like 1200
I have some sweet memoriesof Esmaeilkhani
while we were working on Rostam and Sohrab
I was pregnant then
Mrs. Malek Jahan who is a famous
costume designer
The dress she had provided for me had
a colored part in the middle
And when Sohrab was getting killed,
I’d stay still and…
Two of the cres would change my sleeves
and skirt and put a black veil
The only part that wouldn’t change
was the middle part which was black itself
which was in the shape of a sternum
and was very beautiful
I was pregnant but as I was
very slim, I wouldn’t show
We had practiced a lot to change the crimson court dress
into a black one in a few seconds
And I’d get on the stage very fast
and mourn for Sohrab loss
In the meanwhile I said
how much I’d craved for some tangerines
I saw it in my sleep last night
It was about eleven or twelve o’clock
that I saw they brought some tangerines
I asked where from
Esmailkhani’s family had
a garden in Darab
Our fields and gardens were around Eghlim
and theirs were in Darab
And in that season he was able
to find some tangerines for me to eat
But they didn’t allow him to come in
Because the agents who were guarding
the hall for the ceremony
wouldn’t let anyone to come in
or get out and wouldn’t let anything to get in to eat
They told them that she is pregnant
but they said that I wouldn’t show
They said not to look at her dress,
as she’s very slim and wouldn’t show
She is pregnant and wants
to eat it
I remembered this memory because
Esmailkhani and our crew
We had a very intimate crew
which were like a family
When we had a play
we’d been together in each other’s house
I myself had a lot of performances
in other cities
But as I was in late months
of pregnancy, Mrs. Zahra Saeedi
Whom we called Shahla Jan,
played the role of Tahmineh in Tous festival
Later when I had my baby,
we went to Bandar Rig, Bandar Abbas and Bandar Lengeh
What’s interesting while going to these places to perform was,
they’d provide a double engine aircraft for me to feed my baby
This means I could get back for
a few hours and be back by the night to perform
I remember that I was frightened
every time I flew with them
The airplane was one of those
small ones just like helicopters
Well, of course stress wasn’t good
for me who was feeding my baby
Mr. Nasirian was the writer
of Pahlevan Kachal
And Mr. Mozafari directed it
Esmailkhani also played in it,
Culture house number three
Shiraz had three culture houses
As I remember, we had a play in the yard
of culture house number three
And Mr. Asadollahi had come to Shiraz
from Tehran as an art expert
And the viewpoint was
a guerrilla one
And he also had a guerrilla perspective
And all the guys had revolutionary views
They rushed in and wanted to arrest everyone
And wanted to arrest Mr. Asadollahi
before anyone else
As they accused him of encouraging
the guys to follow communism and marxism views
There were some issues and accusations
which ended well
We performs that play
at Shiraz Arts Fetival
Part 03
Late Mohiedin Layegh
was my highschool teacher
We had Arabic and
painting classes with him
He who was an actor and director
and a wonderful human being
He was Esmaeilkhani’s
teacher at his highschool too, and…
We were working on “A Genius of the Aryaramna Dynasty”
at Shams Hall at Shiraz
We were working with Mr. Hamid Mozafari
and Mr. Ahmad Sepasdar
There was a big group doing
a dance scene at the start of the show
Which was choreographed
by Mr. Abdollah Nazemi
He had tought us to start
the show with a choregraphed dance
“A Genius of the Aryaramna Dynasty” was one of those
beautiful historical works which was performed at Shams Hall at Shiraz
The director has done a great work
and also we did a great job too
Another work that we worked on together
was “Once More” play which I liked a lot
Majid Afsharian was acting in my husband role
and his brother who looked a lot like him played my son role
My hands were wide open in that performance
I’d even sing a song in that play
which I still remember
The song was sung by Elahe
and it was playing in the radio
and I’d sing along while
sewing
The part that I’d sing was:
“Lalaee…”
<i>♪Singing Lullaby♪</i>
<i>Singing an Iranian folk song</i>
Of course, i don’t know if I’m
singing in the right order
and I might’ve sang it better then
I liked the play very much
cause at first there’s a conflict between the husband and wife
But they’d become calmer
when the uncle comes
And the wife is not very literate
A while after the fight,
she wants to say to the uncle
to pull himself together
and be calm
She’d say: “Dear uncle,
you should full yourself together”
Meaning she’s not literate at all
But when the uncle arrives they’d become calm
and when he leaves the fight starts again
“Once More” was the name of this play
which was a very spectacular play
A very great hall was built at Shiraz,
Abū Rayḥān hall
Looked like Mr. Pahlbod ordered to
build a hall at the most deprived district of Shiraz
Which was a spot at the south of Shiraz
named Kazeroun Gate
There was a beautiful garden there
which turned into a great professional theatre hall
“Tenant” which was a play
directed by Mr. Layegh
has been performed for over a month
at the Rodaki hall with a lots of audiences
It was really one of those
interesting and spectaculat plays
I came to Tehran with
the “Apocalypse Cafe” play
Late Mohiedin Layegh and I
were playing as husband and wife in that play
Mr. Layegh who was also my teacher
was playing as a man who had married a much younger girl
Who is kindda playful
“Confused Nightingale” was one of those plays
that I was very relaxed while performing in
And it was one of those roles that
both critics and professional theatre crowd liked
“Manners Makes Man” was about human values at that time
and how everyone has a price
Devil himself comes to seduce
my husband
My husband who is a calligrapher
and is a simple employee
The devil wants to make
a deal with him
It somehow reminds me of
“The Visit”, where…
Claire Zachanassian wuold come and buy people of the city
saying everyone has a price
It was such a fundamental word that…
Humans, depending on their status,
would withhold to be bought
We wanted to perform this play
at Sangelaj theatre hall
We practice all of Nowruz holidays
at Sangelaj hall with Mr. Farhad Majdabadi
At the exact night of the performance
A man who I can’t remember his name right now,
came and shot at the hall
Said you should stop the play,
the play is written by Pezeshkzad
And he’s gone to ENgland and spoke
at London radio and you are forbidden to perform it
They started shooting,
a few shots reflected from ceiling and could kill someone
“Parvar Bandan” and “Dikte va Zaviye” written by Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi
were directed by Abbas Jamali
It was just before revolution
We ahd a kindda revolutionary passion at that time
and wanted to show out political views through the plays
Specially “Dikteh va Zavieh”
and performance like plays
An intellectual person’s feet
were fastened by rope
And a big scissors were designed
so that I as a someone who…
wants to free this writer person
and cut him loose
And then they’d take him while
his hands are fastened and he’s shouting
It was performed mostly as an performance
He’d go with the audience to the cafe
There was a cafe in Abū Rayḥān Hall
which had Rostam and Sohrab painting on its wall
Professional Shirzi storytellers (Naghals)
would’ve performed there
This play, Dikte va Zavieh,
by Jamali
was designed in a way so that
some painting would decorate the corridor
At the back od the scene.
Mr. Karimi who I told you now is a famous painter
He had painted a man with an open mouth, shouting
at the back of the scene
Mr. Jamali’s scream in the role of the intellectual
was matched with the painting of Karimi
It was a loud scream…
He worked from night
to morning and finished the painting
There were similar paintings
in the corridor too and they’d changed the cafe a little
And the audience would come with us
into the cafe
Which I think was influenced by
Arby Ovanessian or maybe Peter Brooks
Who would carry the audience with himself through
the mountains of Persepolis at Shiraz Arts Festival
and would perform his play…
Maybe
Anyway, what we’d done was very new
and was welcomed very well
Esmailkhani had worked on a lot
of plays as the director
I can say that he was
a very talented director
I don’t know how
but he didn’t even go to the university
but he had a lot of students
in his classes
and the way he had
directed the plays
I think he had a cinematic gene
I really learn by being with him
and I also practiced a lot
Cause when he’d described a mise en scène
or say “Action”…
I’d be amazed and had no time
to let the relationship stuff in
or to have an argument
or talk about our tastes and I’d be mute
I really liked
his authority
He was such a noble man,
he’d reception at the back stage
He was a tastful person
and was a great cook
For example, one day he’d
make Kookoo sandwitch for everyone
or his famous cheese and bread
or any other things between the scenes
Beside being the director,
he really took care of his crew
Altough we always had our arguments in the home
when we were at work, I don’t know if it
was because of his ideas and creativity
or it was my good judgment
which made me shut my mouth
As I’m one of those who talk a lot about work
and give new ideas which sometimes angers the crew
but we were a very good team
and he was mostly pleased with me
And most of the time he would give
me the main female role
cause he knew I could do it
Maybe he knew me,
I don’t know
Or maybe we could
work with each other better
I’m Jamshid Esmailkhani
I’m abouy forty years old
My height is one hundred and sixty eight centimeters
Today, the reason that I’m here is
I’m supposed to work with Mr. Beyzai on his new scenario
Apparently, everyone should give an audition
And I’m giving my audition,
but I don’t know how it’d turn out
Part 04
I didn’t have my diploma when
I got married and was pregnant
I passed the exams
and gave birth to my baby
After one year,
I took the university exam
I got accepted in three courses
English literature, Medicine and Faculty of Dramatic Arts
When I got accepted in Tehran university,
I took both of written and practical exams
And I came out in first spot
My dorm was at Malek street
So I went to Shiraz
and told my mother that I should go
My mother ask about
the course that I got accepted in
I said dramatic arts
SHe said that I was already performing,
what about study?
She was thinking that it’s not study
My mom had sore feet
I’d tell her that instead
of her rheumatism
I’d cyre your romanticism
She wouldn’t understand
what I was saying
Saying that she didn’t understand
what I was saying and how am I supposed to cure her
I’d this way and
caress her playfully
and saying that I’m going to Tehran
She said: “If you to Tehran,
then what about a job? What should I say that you do?”
“You were supposed to be a doctor”
As I passed in medical shcool entrance exam
When my baby cut her hand
by a can, I just fainted
I lost consciousness,
and I understood I can’t look at blood
I said that in this situation
I can’t become a doctor
She said you don’t need to be a surgeon,
you can become a general doctor
I said: ” No, they’d probably force us
to pass a surgical course. I don’t want to.”
I deliberately wanted
to go to dramatic arts
And i went to Tehran
He sold the furnishes
and packed everything and brought our son
No one’d believe me when
I told them I had a child then
Even at university when they’d call me mom
they wouldn’t believe and say she’s their sister
Cause I think I gave birth to my son
when I was 16 or 17
My son and I have about 16.5
years of age gap
And I came to Tehran,
my son was at first year of elementary school at Shiraz
And when we came here,
we got a house and I went to university
Mr. Masoud Ohadi who is a famous teacher now
was a photography teacher there
Mr. Nosrat Karimi was teaching
makeup and masks
After him, Mrs. Mihan became the teacher of that field.
She was great teacher and I think she’d came from France then
Others were Mr. Hakim Rabet and
Mr. Saeed Soltanpour
Mr. Yalfani was teaching playwriting
I didn’t have any course with Mr. Beyzai
but I’d attend his classes independently
I’d attended his allegory class
Mr. Rokneddin Khosravi was teaching
our acting class
I have learned a lot from him
Besides learning how to act,
I have learned from him to be human
Abou how much an actor should have
humanitarian views
And besides how much should an actor learn and
should be a few steps forward than others
and have more awareness
He’d say that “Your weapon is your knowledge”
And you should never be
arrogant of the place you achieve
Our literature teacher was Mr. Sepanlou,
Mr. Aryanpour was teaching music
Mr. farhat also tought music
The great masters of our country
were really there
When I look back,
I envy myself
And I think about those days where undr those ceilings
the great masters of art and literature of our country were teaching us
We had analysis of play
with Dr. Mozhdah
Mr. Dilmaghani and his students
were like a family
His students would invite
him to gatherings
I was about to work on a play by Mohammad Rahmanian
named “Joan of Arc on fire”
In which only was one personage,
a woman who has gone crazy in the first world war
and she was in Buchenwald concentration camp
and had a very insane behavior
He told me no to get too close
to the role, as you are already crazy
Most of artists who are now, masters of cinema, theatre and tv
were my classmates then
Mrs. Shahin Alizadeh, Mrs. Azita Hajian
Mrs. Roya Teymourian, Mrs. Afsar Asadi
They were in the same university as me
Mr. Asghar Hemat was in there
but with some year difference
Mr. Majid Oji who was a student in my class and Esmailkhani’s at Shiraz
is now a famous producer
I remember he was my classmate
in university
It was after revolution and
I was in university
I played in Prometheus directed by
Majid Jagari at Shahr Theatre
It was a huge play
There were some board from the center of the scene up to the middle of the audiances
I’d jump down to the scene,
As Io character would be sting by a gadfly
A girl who’d be cursed by gods
and they’d send flies to sting her
As the only girl in Prometheus play
I’d jump down with a torn dress
I remember Mr. Anasori
who was theaching us allegory in the university
He had written a beautiful article about the play
and way I have acted in it
The way I have moved my body
across the scene and perform
and my voice,
the way I’d use my diaphragm to talk
So that my voice would
reach the audience
And that paly had a lot of adience
and it was at Roudaki hall
When I wanted to pass my thesis
choosing the Cave dwellers written by William Saroyan
I changed from melodrama by
omitting the ending
I changed the home scene
to a scene in theatre
Thetre is being destroyed slowly by a machine
which is cinema
And the transition from feudalism
to capitalesm was shown in the gears of the machine
and they were designed by late Kambiz
Samimi Mofakham who was marvelous
Mr. Ghotbeddin Sadeghi and Mr. Shangele
were my supervisors hearing my thesis defense
He said that I came here to
embaress Mrs. Kheirandish with this book of “The Cave Dewellers”
But now I’m stunned
Because with my political views at the time,
I was thinking that I should perform a play which is lasting
And not just a melodrama and
it should contain political and social views
And I had the help of
my friends
I asked Mr. Farhad Majdabadi
to design the poster
Mohammad Rahmanian had helped me
a lot with the playwritting
There was a theatre scene,
a Countess, a Count, a girl and a duke
who have their title from their previous roles
but now are poor and living on the scene
Her shoe heel is broken,
they burn candles at night
they have lefovers and
used cans and cokes for dinner
And the woman has
lung disease
Saying that theatre is being decayed
And cinema is fading out the theatre
And I had put Mr. Hassan Zarei and Levon
on stage as municipal workers
They want to vacate the place
So that they’d be able to destroy the place
And to make a path there
for army vehicles for going to war
Not our war…
i mean, I made connection between
our society to the scene
And the gear wheel are there
and there is a carriage
The couple of handles in carriage
which are fastened to a horse or donkey
Have fallen on the ground and are in
poor condition and also its wheels are about to break
And on the othe side there are gear wheels
that could be factory gears or film reels
They have created them in a way that
represented both film reels and gears
And velvet fabrice thay were hung
from abondoned sets
Meaning it’s from another set decoration
And the previous decoration had
the gears
Meaning the set was a puzzle
of different designs
And I was trying to tell something by it
I wanted to say that
the theatre is being annihilated
And the social transition from
feudalism to capitalism
And how cinema and machines
come and annihilate primer things
After the war, we got transfered
to Tehran to the Theatre House
We got recruited at the Theatre House
I was already employed
and passed the university
I got transfere from Shiraz Arte and Culture office
to Tehran Culture and Guidance office
I was supposed to be
Abgineh Museum manager
But I said that
I don’t know how to do the office work
And I want to be an actress
Esmailkhani and I continued
to be actors at theatre department
After the war, we were presented with some
social issues to choose from and work on
Our group chose “War”
War issues
And the resault was “Nane Khazireh” play
There were Mr. Hamid Mozafari,
Mrs. Tania Johari
Mr. Faridi Masuleh
There were a lot of known actors
And It was one of those plays
that Mr. Kalhor asked to bring to TV to record
And we recorded it at channel two
And It became a great work
We were all singing in that play,
the music was composed in Sharve Khani and Dashti Dastgāh
All the role were southern
And I played as Nane Khazireh
As I was pregnant with my daughter, Azadeh
When I gave birth to my her,
Mrs. Tania Johari played the role of Nane Khazire
I played Nane Abdou
when we were practicing
The second woman who
loses her cow
Her cow gets hit
by mortars
And how she mourns her cow
as her whole life was that cow
The story was a one line
news from papers
“Nane Khazireh is a woman at Sousangerd,
who bakes bread and puts poison on them
And gives the breads ti Iraqis
And gives the poison to her
daughter in law and hides her in the oven
And she, herself, eats the bread
so that they’d trust her
and she kills them
Thats the piece of news
that we turned into a play
The play was very believeable and was very welcomed.
The theatre was full of audience standing by the walls
They wouldn’t clap at that time,
They’d praise the gods
Part 05
When we came to Tehran,
theatre groups were divided into five by theatre office
They said that everuone should
choose a group
Our group consisted of
those who had similar believes
Farhad Majdabadi
Hamid Mozafari, Jamshid and me
and ourother group
And even Mr. Iraj Rad,
we all joined farhad to work together
The play that we all worked on was
“Schweik in the Second World War” written by Brecht
At the Roudaki theatre hall.
It had a huge audience
Mr. Behrouz Baghai played
as Schweik
Esmailkhani played in many roles
Hitler, gestapo and german soldior
It was a musical so some people came from embassy of Czech Republic
and tought us how to do their dance
As “Kopecka”, the role I played,
had a restaurent
Actually it was a cafe which
she owned and she’d also sung in it
And other guys would
dance as choreographed before
And the play was in many acts,
showing how Hitler took over the world
When the curtains wide opened,
I’d sing while standing among the tables
And I’d invite the audience:
“Come and see our dear guests”
“Coem and sit with us
around the table”
“So that we’d serve you,
meat and cabbage”
“Fish and warm soup”
And then the dancing starts
And then the play would start
and everyone would come
As it’s war time,
they are low on meat
And the role played by Atila Pesyani
who is in love with Kopecka
He would steal meat
for her
And Baloun who was played by Mr. Mozafari
and was a gobbler
Was always about to sell some information to the SS
and we had to give him something to eat to stop him
And she was politically active
and would send informations to their soldiors
And some the song that
we’d sing are:
“What’s come from Netherland
for the female soldior?”
“A colorful hat
which really suits her”
As Hitler is sonquering a country
after another and now has conquered Netherland
And what has his soldiors
have as spoils of war?
they have taken beautiful hats
for their wives
And by these songs would
show which place had Hitler been taking
And what kind of trophy his
soldior had taken for their wives
I’d sing for Baloun:
“Come here my dear,
come and sit by my side”
“Come darling as no one is
more dearer than you”
“But if you’ve came
and hugged me”
“Be calm, be calm”
We’d relax him with song like this
so the Gestapo would come and go
And I think I wasn’t half bad
singing these songs withou a microphone
My voice wan’t like now,
all off and scratchy
I thibk I was able
to overcome the lyrics
I have song in most of my plays.
And here…
I remember that I has a friend
Whose husband was the brother
of Mr. Aligoli
Mr. Aligholi’s brother was
a singer himself
His wife was living in Germany,
My friend, dear Nasir Ranjbar had came from Germany
She asked me to go to Shahreke Gharb
with her as she really wants to see me
She also lives in Germany
and had worked in theatre before
When we went there,
I found her reading the same lyrics
It was really strange as
those lyrics were written for me
She said that she had
a play at Vahdat Theatre in which she’d sung those
We just got here that year
and no one knew us very well
I wasn’t famous at all
Later when I worked on “The Mirror” TV series
And I performed in TV series
and film so people started to know me
I’ve only performed in plays
so people didn’t know me ver well
That Lady, thinking that our group is
a non-famous theatre group from Shiraz and me just being a student
has been rehearsing the lyrics that her brother in law,
Mr. Aligholi, had written
and as he would bring the songs
home, she had listened to them
And now was singing them
I pulled my friend to another room
and told her that there’s been only one performance of this play at Vahdat hall
“Schweik in the Second World War” play which I acted in
and Mr. Farhad Majabadi has directed it
And later we found out that as her brother in law was the composer
she had listened to the songs from him
I never forget this memory
Before the end of “Schweik in the Second World War” play,
I’d stand at a corner and sing this verse:
I only worked on “The New Tenant” and “Turandot”
with Mr. Karam Rezai
When he asked me to
play in “Turandot”
coincided with me playing in
“The Grand Day” movie
And I was forced to replace myself
with Mrs. Mahin Torabi for a few days
Later I played in it with the same costume design
and acts that we have practiced before at the City Theatre
Esmailkhani plays as “Siah”
Reza Rooygari play the role of
the persian prince who’d propose to Turandt
It was very popular
I mean people were standing
around the City Theatre hall in three circles
Three full circles were the queue
to get our play ticket
The play was a hit
for a few months that was running
As it had singing in it
and Esmailkhani playing the role of “Siah”,
the servant of prince, was really free to make political statements
and up to date comic
And Mr. Rooygari was a real celebrity then
A good singer and handsome
And he’d also sing when the father of Turandot
would imprison him and put him in the dunon
As they had supposedly went
to China and he’s put in dungon
With such great lightning
The decore, costume and set design
were spectacular
It was very popular.
It ran for months
Even though Mrs. Mahin Torabi performed for ten days,
I also performfor over two months
And I continued the performance when I came back
from Semnan filming “The Grand Day” movie with Mr. Kianoush Ayari
I’d really laughed sometimes while
playing the role of Turandot
as Esmailkhani was really funny
in his role of “Siah”
And Mr. Karam Rezai would say that
there’s no problem
You can laugh if you want.
And when we’d laughed the audience would have laughed more
And he really wouldn’t make a fuss
and would let us laugh
He’d say to let the distancing effect be
and after when you laugh, you could go beck to your role
I really liked that play
Anyhow, Mr. Karam Rezai recorded the TV version
with other actors
Mrs. Nasirpopur played my role
I was busy filming
another movie
I worked with Dr. Ali Rafie
only on “Blood Wedding”
When I was playing in
“Cycle of Fire” at Charsoo hall
They told me that the actress who’s been playin
the role of the mother is gone
and you should come
I have many great memories of
that play, working with some of my old classmates
It was one of those very beautiful
and popular works
And the set design was spectacular
which was done by Mr. Rafie
Everyone knows how
tasteful he is
I can say that the audience would enjoy the set design
and lightning at the begining of the play before seeing the actors
And the clothes that he’d choose
for the actors and even the texture was important to him
All our clothes were
black
And the red apple would create
a collage with black dresses
And he really let us to
express oyr ideas openly
And he’d ask what
is our view on a scene
At a level in which for example
a dining table would be used for things too
Like they might have step on it
and walk over the table in the scene
And the audience should’ve imagined
and see it as something other than a dining table
It was such an interesting
and spectacular play
Music, singing…
Choreographed dances…
And very good actors
Mr. Rafie broke a taboo.
A girl is about to get married
but at the night of the wedding,
she’d run away to be with her lover
A wasn’t a kind of play
that was allowed to go on stage
I think there was more freedom
at that period
It might have been
the most popular play of that time
Then there was “The New Tenant”
written by Eugène Ionesco
In which I played
a seventy or eighty years old woman
I have many interesting
memories from this play
While I was on this work,
I worked on another play, “The Grandpa and Torob”
I work on that play
for Mr. Gharibpour at Laleh Park
Mr. Gharibpour had a professional theathre hall in there,
in which I was a fixed actor
It was always full of audience.
We had performances in the day time for schools
In those plays also
professional cinema actors played
Our performance time was 4 to 6
He would send me away with his
own driver to get to the other performance
Our makeup artist was
the puppeteer at the other play
She would put the foun on my face
on the way in the car cause the play was at Charsoo
She’d practically put one my
basic make-up
And when I’d get to
the City theatre hall
Two people would work
on my face and paint the wrinkles
So that I’d be able to enter the stage
with my white hair and wig
Scene would have begun
with Mr. Saeed Amirsoleymani
He would have came and measured
the place carefully to prepare the arrangment of his furniture
I just had enough time to get ready
and they’d put my dress on
A wrinkled skirt, sleeves
and the dress while
working on my face
believe me, two people were
doing my makeup to be ready on time
So that I’d go on the stage
The scene would start with me coming in
with a big key chain
I was a person who’d talk
like machines
We were talking about mechanization
and their heartlessness
and the way things surround people
in this play.
Just the way, we are assign the best
part of our house to our furniture
They surround us
Even the dining room, hall and TV room,
they are full of furniture
We only have a little space
This would go on until
he’d make the room full of furniture
And they’d keep coming like machines
And in the end he’d sit in small spot
and close the door
It was the main concept
of the play
How the things surround us and we’d never
assign the best space of the house to ourselves but to our furniture
And how things surround us
And I remember that they came and
forbade us of saying these things
Anything that had a mark
the past was omitted
Mr. Karam Rezai told them that
she is a machine and talks and talks
She would talk fast and non-stop,
and she went on and on
It was a monologue
of 27 or 28 pages
The play was about eighty minutes.
It wasn’t a very long play
The man who was the new tenant
wouldn’t talk at all
But the woman who is the landlord
would talk non-stop
Talking about how the previous
tenants were
She would talk fast
just like a machine
And I had some markings
so that I wouldn’t forget the whole 25 pages
And when the supervisory board
omits some parts, I don’t know what to do
Mr. Karam Rezai said that we can’t
She has practiced for four
months to be able to do it
Sh should practice again
to be able to omit them
Meaniwhile, if you open any book,
whatever is written is somehow related to the past
So you should confiscate them
all too
Ionesco wasn’t talking about a regime
He was using the woman to show
how she only talks about the past tenants
and passes the information
like a machine
And people doesn’t have any connection anymore
They hear but don’t listen.
They only think about themselves
The tenant was thinking about how to arrange his futniture
and the woman talked non-stop
When absurdism started after the second world war
and people suffered menatl injuries and depression
and became self alienated and have their own pains
and can’t connect emotionally to others
And everything has become machinary
and connections are by letters
And the connections are by means
which makes people isolated and alone
and everyone is in his own coccon
and social connections are low
because of mental injuries and war
The play was talking about these stuff
And as we recorded this tele-theatre directed by Mr. Karam Rezai,
it’s been confiscated up until now
And it hasn’t been released yet
Because everything that’s said in the play
is just like the past
As the woman has been talking about the pre-war period
How people were happy
and wearing colorful clothes
What was said, was migth have been
about the situation we were in
And the play was very popular
and there were no space for more audience
And…
I remember when Mr. Rahmanian
came and watched the play
I have chosen a very special
laughter for the role of the woman, like hee-hee
And whenever she laughed,
she would start the hee-hee
And would go on
I really liked the design
that I did for the character
And It was so interesting that
when Mr. Rahmanian came and watched the play
Of course we were very close friends
After the play we walked all the way home at Ekbatan
and talked all the way about the play
And we didn’t realize until we got home that we
were analyzing it the whole time
Because it had so many things to say
And also the decor, set design and directing
was really good
We recorded some plays for the TV
One of them was “Gozareshe Mahramaneye Octavio Valdes”
written by Mr. Rahmanian
It tells the story of a boy
who wants to go to military service
And his old mother
who had worked at a mine
and when the mine had collapsed,
she became mute
Later this play was broadcasted
by another name as “Maternal” at 2 am
It was broadcasted about the time
that US embassy occupation
As they wanted to say the play
has anti-American theme
While it’s about a boy who’s
going to war for his military service
And the mother gives him his father’s gun
but the boy says they’d give him a gun
And when he goes to war
he’d turn into a hangman
Meaning the system converts
him into a hangman
At first he’d say that the lieutenant
told me if you say “Fire”, you’d get a promotion
He was thinking that
saying “Fire” is enough
But whenever he’d say “Fire”,
his mother would unfold her knitting
She knows that the sustem is
changing his son into something else
In the end, he’d go back to Bolivia,
forgeting his old love
His mother’s life starts
with grey things
The set design and directing
was done by dear Farha Majabadi
Farha Majabadi whomm we
lost at Germany
But the TV version
was directed by Mr. Sadegh Hatefi
When it broadcasted,the set and custome design
would change over the process of play from grey to red
If she had a grey scarf,
it would change into red or also the sheets
Everything turns into blood
And aldo the boy’s make-up
would change everyday
He would go bald
with a big belly
He’d become a general and
everytime tells her mother that…
He has bought a house near white house
and should take her there
Now an old poor mother who used to cook
apple pie for him but no more
When he’d come back,
she understands that he’s changed a lot
He is not that simple rural Bolivian boy anymore
The boy who used to help him mother
and father at the min has turned into a famous general now
And he tell her about how he drove there
and talks about the geography of there
And when for another time he screams and tell her where
she has hidden the rebels and surses his own people
The mother kills him
with her husband, Juan’s gun
And at the courtroom no one understands that
she is the colonel because she’s mute
And Mr. Tahmoures was added to the group in TV version…
No, he was a part of the group before too
In the TV version there was
a huge courtroom
A big scene with barbed wires…
It was more cinematic
and like a movie
Not a theatre box
We performed the play
at Ghashghai hall
At the trial she is sentenced to death
And the mother is crying for her son
not because of the death sentence
The audince knows everything
But the court doesn’t know
that she is the colonel
This very powerful play
is written by Mr. Mohammad Rahmanian
And the only one time which it was broadcasted from TV,
was with a lot of censorship
At 2 pm in the middle of the night
with the help of Mr. Hossein Pakdel
Another one of my recent plays
was “The Visit”
Directed by Mr. Hamid Samandarian
After that I didn’t participate in
another play although I had a lot of offers
Part 06
I think, we got busy playing in
TV series and movies at Tehran
The first TV series I play in
was “The Mirror”
The reason I was invited
to play in the series was…
I played in a TV play
with late Esmailkhani, my husband
The name of the play was “Marbles”
which still exists at the Melli Television
and Mr. Hossein Panahi was the writer
There was a series of short plays
One of them was directed by Mr. Mir Bagheri
Named “Geraniums”
It was abou the revolution.
A family has put their kid at their doo
to prevent everyone from
writing slogans on the wall
But the kid, itself, had everything needed
in the flask. Color, brush,…
And writes slogans like “Death to Shah” or other slogans of those days
I remember when we wanted to record it for TV.
Mrs. Shirin Jahed was the TV director
She asked Mr. Masoud Foroutan who
was an experienced director for help
saying that she can’t take a hold of us
So the recorded the whole play
in one take. A twenty five minutes long play
They switched the cameras
Just when my son would go behinde the window…
She would curse him
and he would go behinde the window
People asked for an insert of the boy in the edit
but they said it’s awaste to cut your act
A cut to the boy who was in the distance
Everyone was saying where
were us?
We used to perform in plays at Shiraz
and contnued our work at Tehran
But we’ve never been to TV
Nobody had seen us at TV before
This job made us known to backstage
crew at National TV
And introduce us to each other
And after that when Gholamhossein Lotfi
wanted to work on “The Mirror”, he came after us
Jamshid and me went to work there,
even my son played in a few episodes
There was Mr. Tahmoures who was older
than me or Mrs. Shahabi, on that series
I was about 25 years old but
playing the role of mother in law, with lots of makeup
And even the role of wife’s mother, grandma,…
The only one at that age who’d
let them use heavy makeup on her, was me
Young girs usually didn’t want to play
old women role
But I really liked diferrent
kind of makeups
For example when I played, mother in law
in “Days of Waiting” at Kashan
A woman told me that my daughter in law
should come and see you, let me kiss yor hand
“I always tell my daughter in law that
there are mother in law like this”
She really believed my character
And I must have been believeable
in that makeup
When those works broadcasted
from TV, they made us very popular
I mean whenever we went in the society
everyone knew us
I remember I was in Tehran university
We would go to 16 Azar street
for my kid’s kindergarten
When I had my daughter,
we would bring her to our office kindergarten
And then I’d go to university
I was wearing my glasses while sitting
then a woman called me and said
even if you were glasses we’d know it’s you
Then I just understood how well
can TV makes you famous
Sometimes you needed not to be known
It was my first TV series
The first time I was invited to work on a project,
It was an office and Mr. Asghar Hashemi was there
Mr. Kalari was just back from US,
studying photography. They told me that he is aprofessional photographer
He was just begining to work
The story was happening in a village
In which our sheeps become sick
They get flea and all die
They had to be anesthetized
and put them in a pit
But they kept walking around,
either the anethetic was weak
or we didn’t have the shadow requierd
for the seen and sun would come up
By the way Mr. Kalari got the concept
for his film, “Clou and the Rising Sun” from there
My kids were at Tehran,
I would dictate to them by the phone
And at that there was no mobile
so we’d have to go to telecommunication
And I’d stand in the telephone kiosk
and dictate to my son and daughter
As their father was at a movie shoot
or at a theatre and wasn’t with the kids
The kids were at home
and I had to do these thing by the phone
Esmailkhani would say that I was
supposed to be back by tommorow but ten days has passed
I’d say that he didn’t know the situation
we were in
But really, old and young, we were
all gainon experience there
And I think it was one
of those effortful movies
In the scene where a truck is going
to pass a river to vring them foods
and gets stuck in the mud. It was such
a difficult scene to film at that time
The river, water and the wind in that place at Kashan
It was one of those both
hard and attractive works
I was playing the role of
a rural woman but my dresses were kindda new
Iremember that I, myself, would use
dirt and remains of ashes to make the dress more ragged and dirty
I remember that Mr. Hashemi got really happy about it
and said that she’s an actor who wants to become the character
And I’d look at the native people to understand
how they laugh or look
When they want to laugh, they wouldn’t laugh loudly or laugh in front of guys
They’d cover threir mouth with their hand
or with their scarf
And they’d get embarrassed.
When they look at something
They are not thinking about how they’d look
beautiful and might evel open their mouth too
So I didn’t care for making
my face look beautiful
Or when I was cheering or acting,
I was trying to be like the natives
For “The Grand Day” directed by Mr. Ayari.
Asghar Hashemi intriduce me to Kianoush Ayari
He is a director who is very
clever, moralist and full of energy
Whenever I improvised a dialogue,
he’d say to keep the new dialogue and use it
So that it’d feel more real and
have real sense and be closer to the character
I guess that’s when I started to have the habbit
to interfere with the script and I still have it
And I think I found the courage and was allowed
to let myself participate and give my notes even written ones
I remember when we where on the minibus with Mr. Ali Nasirian, my master,
who was playing the role of my husband in that movie
And I had brough three or four baggages
full of dress, fur and coats
When we got to Semnan, we found out that there’s no
suitable dress for me in the role of governor’s wife
Dear Mr. Valiollah Khakdan who was the art director
and in charge of cutome and decor
Got really happy when saw
my clothes and told me to bring them with myself
At night, in the hotel, he told me that: “Dear Gohar, we couldn’t find suitable clothes for the governor’s wife”
“Is it possible to use your clothes?”
I let them nearly use
all of my clothes
One the memories that I have from Semnan
is they used to arrange everything and set the decor
and they have made some triumphal arcs
then a rain started and ruined everything
And Mr. Khankdan and his qroup would work
from night till morning so that we’d be able to shoot the scenes
There was a huge crowd and only thing that controled them
was Mr. Ayari’s good morals
The cooperation from Semnan people was the reason
Mr. Ayari could finish the movie
Although there was many problems
with the weather and the ongoing rain and snow
He was really pleased with my work
And Mr. Jamshid Arya appeared in
that movie for the first time after the revolution
as he was not allowed to work
He was playing the role of Ashraf Pahlavi’s
representative coming to Semnan
And we have some meetings in which
he tells that Ashraf is going to pass through Semnan
And you should prepare some program
for her and welcome her to the city
And if there is a play or we
want to chant a song
And things like that or
if she wanted to visit the old traditional bath
In the bath our sound would have echoed and was very hard
to record the sound so they’d film it in one take and we were done
I remember when they put some rails
to take a tracking shot of me passing through the old shops and people
The camera would take a tracking shot
of those and comes to me and my husband while reviewing the parade
And his steward, Mr. Saeed Amirsoleimani
following him in the back
And Mr. Dariush Ayari, brother of Mr. Kianoush Ayari,
who was the cinematographer, did a great job
And i could very well adjust my position and distance
to the movement of the camera
And the night of the day when we took the bath scene in one take,
They told me that Mr. Ashtian wants to give you a golden coin
Of course they didn’t
But I think they said that
they had. It’s okay
It was really interesting
to me
It wa enough that they were pleased with my work.
We used negative then
And the fact that I didn’t waste any negative made
them call me “Gohar One Take”
Meaning when they shoot only
one take and it’s okay
Most of the tims, I’d play my role in two of three version
I’d present them with some propositions
I showed them one version and we’d record it
and they’d say it’s great
I’d play in another way and
they say that it’s okay too
And then he would shout at me saying
that “Gohar! you are confusing me”
And it makes me to praise myself
at this age
But I really gave it my everything
And as I really worked hard and focused on my work
and gave my heart to give life to my character
And I had learnt to watch
a lot of foreign films
beacuse of the film archive of the university
at Jahad Daneshgai department
A film archive that Esmailkhani and me
established there while Mr. Montazeri was that department manager
I used to watch a lot of movies.
I was trying to learn
Now that my acting is in this level,
I know that I have tried my best
And I was learning how to keep
my sound continuity
And I learnt to keep my physical
and emotional continiuity
In both long shots and close ups
Therefore whenever I saw someone although professional
that doesn’t keep the continuity, I’d say that they don’t pay attention
Part 07
Jamshid and me were very close
to Mr. Karam Rezai
We played in a movie together
named “Willow branches”
Which Mr. Ahmadjou was
it’s writer and director
A lot of actors were
playing in that movie
And Mr. Karam Rezai was one those patient persons
and was riding on top of a camel in that movie
and the camel was too tall
And he suddenly fell from
the top of the camel to the ground
Mr. Ahmadjou and Mr. Jafarian who was the director
of photography, were filming fron the distance with a tele lens
Whose work was really great
From the distance they saw that someone has fell
from over the camel and Mr. Jafarian told Mr. Ahmadjou
He hit his own head and cried.
Thought he was dead
And thanks to God, it was a miracle that
there wasn’t a broken bone and just some contusion
He dealt with this accident so normal
and patiently laughing, that I never forget
“The Night of the Accident” was my first
work with Mr. Alvand
It played with Mr. Parviz Pourhosseini.
We had many disputes
When I read the script,
I felt it has some weaknesses
As I have been studying and
my university education was almost over
In that circumstance, I was thinking
that I should argue with the director
And to tell him about all the weaknesses
in the script and the things that should change
In a scene in which Mr. Pourhosseini is about to
fall down and sees all his life in front of his eyes
I was reminded of a film
by Mel Brooks
And I said that The character remembers his childhood
while sleeping in a cradle as he is an adault with pacifier in hei mouth
And for a long time keeps
remembering his life
Now is it possible to remember this much memories
in the short time between hanging and falling?
It was a lot of pages.
Of course I’d read it with my friend Mr. Rahmanian
And he would talk about its weaknesses too.
I wouldn’t have been able to act if I didn’t consulted about it before
As I came from theatre, I was worried and
wanted to do great works
In “The Night of The Accident”, I didn’t have the courage to argue about the script,
but I wrote down my thoughts and gave it to them
Then he understood that he is
facing another knid of actor
I really got his attention as a person
who focuses on the script and really cares
Later, Mr. Hashemi work with me in
“Under the Roofs of the City”
In “Under the Roofs of the City”, I was playing
as Esmailkhani’s landlord
I had rented a house to them
and I want them to evacuate
Esmailkhani really shone in that role
And at that time, Mr. Entezami nominated both Jamshid and me
for the best supporting actors of male and female
And I’m able to say that
Jamshid performed really well
The first time he was seen in the movies
I have very good memories
of that work
One day that we were on the scene,
I had a house which was being confiscated
Mr. Rafie Jam was the director
of photography
Esmailkhani came there
Wanting to say that he hasn’t found
another house and can’t evacuate yet
And I know you are rich
and want to throw us out
But comes and understands the woman has also money issues
and her house is being confiscated
A junk man has come and is getting
all her furniture with himself
And I’m sitting sadly in a corner
and should put my husband’s photo down and cry
Esmailkhani was standing behinde the camera
near Mr. Rafie Jam
Sending kisses from there and flirting
with me and I’d laugh
I was bursting into laughter just when
I had to cry as I had lost everything
And my husband photo was there and
I had talked to him and wanted to cry
When I’d put my head up I’d see him
behinde the camera again and he’d tease me
Asghar Hashemi and others laughed a few times,
But suddenly said to him to go out, they won’t film his scene
Jamshid begged him to film his scene
So he said tha “You’re teasing her
and making her laugh, don’t interrupt the work”
And he told me not to laugh too
I told him “You should come sit here
and watch his posture and the way he kiss’ and winks”
“Then see if you won’t laugh”
But in the end, although I was laughing
I perform so well, watching the photo
and getting sad and crying
and when I put my head up my eyes were full of tears
They said “Wow. You ere just laughing”
I said that by watcing the behind the scene
of great work that acting should be like this
I watched Orson Welles speeching for
a crowd in a hall
and he was sharing his
own experience with them
And three persons were sitting
behind him like the jury
Suddently he turned towards them
and made a funny move
then he turned back
and started to cry and shed tears
Then I found out that acting is to start your role
by hitting the botton and turning it on
and finishing it by hitting it again and turning it off
To get into the role and cry
and after you get out
As my teacher, Mr. Rokneddin Khosravi,
used to say, you are not supposed to…
If Desdemona was supposed to
get suffocated every night by Othello then she’s dead
so you should perform
under control
Even if you are supposed to grab
them with your hands, if you press your hands
so that the other actor feels like choking
and their eyes pop out
and you get the feeling of suffocating
someone
But if you press them, it’s wrong.
You should learn to use technics
Well, these are the resault
of academic education
If a person learns anything
in the university
And the sensory practices
that they repeat everyday in the class
How to approach their griefs
and how to imagine a sad story
and to it all over in another practice
with happiness
That’s why it’s possible to
convoy a happy feeling in a scene
and after get away from the camera
and talk to the friends easily
I was supposed to work with Hossein Panahi
in “Two Ducks in the Fog” but I couldn’t
Esmailkhani worked with hem and
it made us acquaintance
He would visit us and
read his poems
He’d bring his painting
to me
One they he that “I’m going to make Bibiyoon and
you are going to have a role in which you have the Sun on your hand
I asked how?
Later when I went and played that role
and by the way, it was such an interesting role
Mr. Arasteh who would shave his head completely
like Yul Brynner at that time
and in his role he had a carriage
and the role was my husband
When she brings her hand, he’d
put an egg yolk on the palm of her hand
And with lightning they made
it look like the Sun
And all the crew in that series
were completely listening to Hossein’s words
You’d think that he’d
never focused
From this branch to the other,
he is just all over…
but then you’d find out
it’s full of brevity
Of course I worked with
him for short time
But he played the role of my husband
in the “Ashpazbashi”
He had two wivies and
the other
wife was played by Tania Johari
He would talk non-stop
And no one could stop him,
And I…
started my Improvisations and giving my notes
about the play from that work
i thought if I know it,
I should give them my seggestions
The director may accept them
And Hossein would do it
He was a very strange human being
In “The Shadow of Imagination” which I was
his co-actor, he was more strange
It was a masterpiece of his
strange works
He would say everything
like a poem and would go on talking
I really like the script of
“The Shadow of Imagination” written by Mr. Dalir
I played the role of a rich girl
who’d hold poetry nights at her house
It was at Mostofi garden
It’s a poetry night and guys come
and recite their poems. Mr. Panahi comes
And Mr. Jebeli come too,
Although he works at a slaughterhouse
and is a butcher who
deals with cleaver, knife and blood
he also plays Tar
And then, something which was
particularly interesting was
We had some chicken for the scene and after,
they told us if you want you can take them home
I asked them to give me
a couple of them
They said you should take
three cause they might die
I took three of them home,
our house was at Ekbatan then
We were on the first floor
and downstairs was full of trees and grass
When I got home saw
that one one them had died
Esmailkhani threw it in the garden there
and said it’s alltight, it would turn into fertilizer
and ants won’t gather in the house
because of it
The next morning I woke up and
found three chikens running in the house
I said “Didn’t one of them die?
I brought three of them”
My daughter, Azadeh, would get the chicken
from the garden
and brings it to her bed as she
sympathizes with it and cris
And when she wakes up in the morning
she finds it well and healthy
And It might have been like that because
of the cold and thought that it was dead
The heat saves it
I had many TV plays which the most
important ones were “This Infinite Description”
and “Green In the Fall”
I played with Mr. Mashayekhi in
“Green in the Fall” which was written by Mr. Farhoudi
And “This Infinite Description” was
inspired by old stories
It was written by Esmail Khalaj
In that series I played
a different role in every episode
It was a theatrical TV series
Once Mr. Parviz Pourhosseini played
as my husband
and another was Mr. Keshavarz
and there was Mr. Hormoz Hedayat
Mrs. Golchehreh Sajadiye played in it too
There were many great actors
in that series
And it was such a good work then
As the TV didn’t have any work with such scripts
and good actors up untill then
except the big production
historical ones
On of the episodes names “A Sack of illusion” made me known to Mr. Mehrjui
In which I play the role a judge’s wife
and the judge wants to take an amount a money
that someone had entrusted him with
When Mr. Mehrjui watched this
episode, he selected me for tho movie, “The Lady”
And he didn’t remember the name very well,
saying that I saw an episode which you played, “Sack Together”
Instead of “Illusion” he said “Together”
but I corrected him
“How interesting” he said
I played the role of an old
judge’s wife
With such heavy make up
which was very beautiful
and old style. Mahin Navidi did a great job with the makeup
Now, he had selected me for the role of Hajar,
the gardener’s wife with a burnt face
who should’ve been very ugly
Part 08
Mr. Beyzai said that he wants
to make “Travelers”
I went and soke
with him and got a copy of the script
And again I got saucy and made a page
full of notes about the script along with my master
and took it to Mr. Beyzai
And for instance I ask why is it that Esmailkhani who is
playing the role of a realtor, talke like a peofessor?
Or what the others are like this?
As was talking, I got Mr. Beyzai’s attention,
thinking there is someone who is bold and citicizes
And I was supposed to play the role
that Mrs. Mahbubeh Bayat played
the wife of Esmailkhani’s character
The production was stopped for a while
and I had given him a writing for participation
It was a custom to give a writing to promise
that you are going to play a role in the movie at those times
They had my writing and when the production stopped,
Mr. Salahmand who was Mr. Beyzai’s assistant
went to Mr. Mehrjui’s film,
“The Lady”
They asked for me and when I read the script
I found it very weak
It’s very untasteful to reaveal the truth
by dropping some photos
And I think it’s very simplistic
to find out that the man has a lover
And as I had seen lots of films at that period
I said that the subject is like Bunuel’s Virdiana
It was kinda influenced with that film
But as I thought that it’s very much
like that film, I went to Mr. Mehrjuis…
and told him very boldly that
I think he should write in the credit
that it’s adapted from Bunuel’s Virdiana
Saying it’s better to mention it
Which I think he might’ve been
annoyed by my boldness
But he didn’t show it
And as I wasn’t very off in my recommendations,
here and there, he’d sometimes accept my notes
I really tried my best to play my role and
help the movie with all my heart
For instance he wrote theat Hajar and Karamali
which was played by Ferdos Kaviani, would be courting
But he didn’t say how.
There was only a general description
I would tell him that I’d do it and you
edit out anything that you want
If there was anything wrong
I went and sat at the head of Korsi
and Karamali was working in there
I sat there and ate the seeds
and threw it around
and my niece was there
with me too
and the seeds were drops on my dress,
she would order her husband around and then…
And they come, she would
ask him to come sit by her
and they’d whisper in
each other’s ear and laugh
and she reacts like this which
shows it’s been a lovey dovey word
So we perform the courtship this way
but not showing what we say to eachother
And by saying just some phrases
like “Stop it” or “Shame on you”
The scene became believable
Mr. Mehrjui saw it
and said it’s perfect
Don’t change it and
what you did was very good
By other things that I’d recommend
in different scenes, I’d find a place for myself
ans it made me recommend more
And again when we were sitting
around the Korsi, I asked to say some stuff
If I say something about poor Hajar
who’s face is burnt. The makeup had so much to say too
The makeup really got me
too close to the character
As her face was supposed to be burnt
they use rubber part of pacifiers and
put them in my nose holes to make it look swollen
And as they wanted to lower the light in my eyes,
they’d use creams whivh make them look sick
And there was an ointment named OSP
which they used on me that would make my skin burn like hell
So much that the tears would fall from my eyes
and they’d fan my face to cool down
But Mr. Eskandari would say that
it was just the way I felt
Although my skin started to hurt
after a while
for which they had to ive us
off time for two weeks
But you can’t ingnore the role
of makeup on the character
Which without it,
it woyld’ve been impossible for me to play the role
I remember when they had confirmed
the makeup test, Mr. Mehrjui’d told his assistant
That sign the contract with her
but don’t her that the role has a burnt face
As I used to play the rich women roles,
and now a poor woman with burnt face role
and being pregnant and ugly with
yellow teeth
and to put brown colors arount the teeth
and she has dirty nails
with tangly hair and ruined face
So she may not accept the role.
But I…
I’m crazy about this stuff
Saying if this is the role
it’s much better
When Mehrjui came to the room and I said
that I love the role, he said “Great, I don’t believe it”
I even have both of the pictures,
from the real makeup and the fake test makeup
Jamshid went in front of the makeup
test panel and said you can’t make her ugly
“She is still pretty”
Well, Jamshid was very kind…
He was in love and to quote Mr. Eskandari
“What have you done to his brain that he still thinks you’re beautiful”
And it was such a difficult makeup
It was very time consuming
When I saw her, I said there should
be some kind of pride in her too although she is poor
Her dad, Mr. Entezami, may be a thief
but Karamali and I are hard working people
We were gardners of the neighbour
who don’t have a house anymore so we came here
And when the lady calls them thieves,
it’s better if she just let her and leave
And I went to the room upstairs and
recited the dialogue and told them I’m doing it this way
And say for a couple of times that
we’d leave, we won’t stay here like this
We won’t stay here if you are
going to insult us like this
I’d go sleep under a bridge but
I won’t stay here to be called a thief
Then she’d leave there and
goto the yard which is filled with snow
And really that snow hurt me so much
And she would get sick in there
She falls into bed with swollen face
And I asked Abdollah [Eskandari]
“What would happen now?”
He said that it’s much better
if I like it
He made some pieces,
swelling behind the eyes
the eyes were just a line
swelling up and down the eyes,
swollen face
So I’d just drink water or cold
tea with a straw
Cause I’d try to do anything else
the latex would tear apart
And that makeup would make get
sick and faint everytime I saw it
That’s how much I’d believe it
As a matter of fact Mr. Eskandari accepted it
and Mehrjui was much happier
I said that I have prepared a song
for the scene where the lady changes
her dress from black to white
to sing while playin Daf to make her happy
he said “No. They don’t let a woman sing”
“A female voice can’t be played”
I said that I’d make up a voice like a rooster”
I use the throat in a way
that it won’t be sweet at all
He said “Let’s hear how it is”
And I’d go like his…
Singing a folk song in a tuneless voice
I’d use my throat and chest
to create a stupid and noisy voice
He laughed his guts out
and said allright
I’d go out and bering Turaj Mansuri in
and no one else should come in
Gohar should sit on the sofa
and play the Daf
In fact I have this scene
in the film, “The Lady”
I’m sitting there, singing…
I play the Daf and when the music finishes…
I’d burst into laughter and it is used in the film
although it’s actually me laughing
I’m laughing but they wouldn’t say “Cut”
Mr. Turaj Mansuri was looking
through the visor
And Mr. Mehrjui would go
out so that he won’t laugh
He keeps filming and shakes
with laghter but won’t say “Cut”
I’d raise my head and see
Mr. Merjui is gone and the other one is laughing
So I keep playing and singinh
while laughing and telling myself why don’t they stop it?
Then they’d say “Cut”.
In fact you can see both of these parts in the film
And many more parts that I added
myself, and he liked them
Like a story that I had heared before
from my sister
When a Colonel throws a party
he’d put his maid’s kid on a shooting target
And at the end of the party when everyone
is drunk, they’s throw darts but shouldn’t hit the kid
And the mother of the child who is
a maid there, dies and revives a thousand times
Praying that these drunk bunch wouldn’t
hit the chile with the darts
And the maid talks about the time she worked there
saying “I was their maid and whenever their silver spoons and forks
would fall into the pool, and the pool was frozen in the winter,
they’d strip me naked and make me go in the pool to bring them out
It was on my mind and I had a
story too. So I used half of the story in the film
Jamshid granfather’s name was
Soltan Abdol-Hossein Khan
I used his name and some of the stories
from his home in this movie too
At first, Mr. Mehrjui told me
to adapt turkish accent to talk
I said that I can’t even
tell a turkish joke
In all of my works I had never done
it and I won’t be able to
He said that it’s not possible for you
to no be a Turk but your father be
As Mr. Entezami had adapted
turkish accent for his role
I said that I’d tell a story that he’d moved to Shiraz
and got hired in the house Soltan Abdol-Hossein Khan as a cook
As my father role played by
Mr. Entezami was a cook
He was a good cook too
I said that he had come to
Soltan Abdol-Hossein Khan house to cook
He sees my mom and they get married,
but when she gets pregnant, he would leave us
I would cry over my fate and would
believe my own story
and Mehrjui would agree with me to mix my story with
the story of “The Lady”
This film was banned for eleven years
Each time they’d edit out some
of the dialogues but they wouldn’t screen it again
The subject of the film and the awards
that “The Lady” received were very important in my life
Firstly, I hadn’t adapted any accent
up untill then
I hadn’t used Shirazi accent before
Using the Shirazi accent really made
that character believable
And somehow sweet too
In that work I broke my collarbone
and got hurt very badly
My kidney got infected which
I’d never forget
But sweet oart is when it got screened
and Khane Cinema gave me this award which is here
They gave it to me for “The Lady”
after eleven years
When I went on the stage
I said…
In a ceremony Mr. Mohajerani told me that
“Gohar…”
I mean I didn’t use Mr. or Mrs.
for Gohar and Kheirandish
I said that Mr. Mohajeran told me that
this film will be screen and it did
And I’m grateful
Suddenly after I got the award…
Maybe they didn’t want to throw me
under the bus as I was a nobody
They wanted to pull Mr. Mohajerani down
Newspaper title read in four colors
of green, red, velvet and black
It read in there that…
“Mohajerani called me Gohar in a party”
What?!
In the nest title it read
“Mohajerani called me Gohar”
I really wanted to record it in
my lide history for you to see
And for instance they wrotre that
the rest of the story is at page three
But when I’d go to the page
three, there were no more related news
I wrote a text with the help of Mr. Rahmanian
to publish in the papers but they didn’t allow it
So it didn’t get published
Don’t know what happened
which made them not to publish it
And it’s one of those memories.
Even after eleven years when the movie was screened
The consequences were that some wrote
these stuff
to ruin the happiness of winning
this award for me
Afte I played in “The Lady”, Mr. Mehrjui
deided to make some films about behind the scene of films
For Instance, “The Mix” is one of them
in which there is the scene where Mr. Kaviani
and me are on fighting in the snow
The scene on in the snow which
I recommended myself to fight and argue there
And I curse heaven and earth
for the fate I was given
They said that we want to film the mixing
and sound designing of this scene in the studio
Mr. Mirshekari and our sound recordist were there
THey had given me a pillow
and we are acring like we are creating sound effects
There’s a scene in which Asghar Shahverdi
and the crew are sitting in the back
And they are using a Pikniki,
small ovens are called Pikniki
They have put it in the back
and they’re making a smoke with crackly noises
Everyone would think that they’re
doing drugs like opium
But they are using that to
create new sound effects
And we would hit the pillow
instead of Mr. Kaviani hitting me
And he would swear while hitting
the pillow and I’d say my dialogues
So I repeat the dialogues from
“The Lady” here again
I played in Mr. Mehrjui’s “The Mix”
Part 09
We were working on Mr. Ahmadjou’s “Roozi Roozegari”
in Meymeh in Isfahan
Which was our second work with
Mr. Ahmadjou after “Willow Branches”
As he said, he had plans to
use us, actors of Shiraz theatre, in the series
He’d say that I like you very much
and I’ve been following your works
He used a lot of these
guys in “Roozi Roozagari”
At that I was colleague with
dear Khosrow Shakibai at theatre office
Working with him was such an honor as beside
his extraordinary abilities that he’d show
and each one of them can be a lesson
even though he didn’t have academic education
he was a man with morals
Morality was the most important
trait you coud observe among the crew
who were working on “Roozi Roozegari”
Firstly they were mostly related,
Amrollah himself had his daughter, wife…
his uncle and other relatives
playing as natives there
Most of the crew who were in that series
were fascinated by the dear natives
That amount of patience they had,
which made them be silent and continue their work
And you’d be amazed when you sat
and listened to any of the native old men
When they’d talk, you’d understand
whose heartly words Ahmadjou was inspired by
Inspired by the heart of these people.
As Mrs. Zhaleh Olov would say to Mr. Khosrow Shakibai
“Do you know how to earn your living
by picking these bushes from the desert?”
He said “No! I can’t”
She said “I’d teach you how to
harvest a thorn bush”
To what purpose should you
pick the thorn bush
To make fire,
to create colors
Saying that the desert would
give you things to live on
You shouldn’t just rob the caravans
That’s how she’d convert him
to a revolutionary man
Well. The life you’d adore
is in the desert
The colorful mountain that you
see in “Roozi Roozegari”
Which everyone of them
is a beautiful painting
Ahmadjou would look around and spot them.
And when the caravan would go through them
They really were like postal card pictures
The horse which is running
at the credit roll of “Roozi Roozegari”
Would get on fire and runs to
the wild and burns there
Or the snake which was supposed to
bite the horse the next day, died
Very difficult thing that happens in the desert
And the difficulties that I endured
during the filming of “Roozi Roozegari”
Mrs. Olov and dear Khosrow Shakibai too
In the night the temprature was below zero
degrees and in the day it was too hot
Our shalites (A kind of native dress) would become stiff
when getting wet by the rainmakers
while we had to get on the minibus
wearing those to get to our camp
And the dress would freeze and
make our kidneys infect or get cold
which did happen
And I got hospitalized for a month
getting treated by antibiotics
I can say that it was full of both
happiness and hardship
The happiness came from having great dialogues
and playing along with great actors
And what you say is fundamental
values of life
To rebuild a human being in
the heart of a desert
They said that it got longer than
it was supposed to
“It’s going over the budget
and you should wrap it up”
Orders came from the top that
in the end it should become a story about revolution
They made it more urban
Mr. Shakibaei would change from a thief
to a man who could even be revolutionary
He would fall in love
There were three generations in the story.
Mrs. Olov was among the first generation
Even on the fringe of her scarf,
there were green, white and red tassels
Which were from Iran flag
making her the mother of the home country
I was the woman from
middle generation
And the girl played by Shohreh Soltani
was presenting the younger generation
They were the three generations.
Mrs. Zhaleh Olov would teach life lessons
I teached how to live lessons
And the girl teaches him love
He would fall for her and marries her
and will have a baby with her
He would settle down and
rob the caravans no more
He starts to work with
his own hand and earn a living
It was such a beautiful series
Companionship of the great people
teached me a lot of lessons
Esmailkhani has played one of the Khan’s
agents role with a Kazerouni accent
It’s not Shirazi
Which he learnt most of it from Mahmoud Pakniat
as he was Kazerouni himself
He was playing the role of the second
Khan in “Roozi Roozegari”
Ahmadjou was very strict
He was very intelligence, Sharp,strict
sometimes angry and sometimes happy
His anger was more than his smile
Cause it was really hard to wake up in the morning
and lead a large group in the desert
Maybe the fatigue or the pressure of all
these works made him smile less
He would walk around very slowly
and would think about the scenes
And then he would ask you to perform
in a particular wasy to do both crying and laughing
I learnt it for the first time
from him
He’d say that you should laugh
while weeping
I learnt about character design in there.
That you should analyze the role and get to know it
Like a kid who is hungry and crying
then you show him a puppy or a delicious food
an it would suddenly start to
laugh while weeping
It’s the exact simple and clean
spirit of the desert people
Then I played in Madreseye Piremardha
Again I wrote a hundred pages
about the script problems
Mr. Nikkhah told me “Why are
you playing in this film it has this much problems?”
I really didn’t know what to say
I said we could sit around and talk
about the problems and see what we can do about it
There’s a woman who is the manager
of a retirement home
Many of the great veterans of acting
were playing in the movie
I really learnt by being on their side
both morally and of their experiences
There were many great veteran actors
in “Madreseye Pirmardha”
After this film, one day Asghar Hashemi
came to our house
We just had move to a new place then
Mr. Hashemi came to our house
And we didn’t have a TV yet
to hear about the news
He said if we had heared about
Ali Sajadi Hoseini getting shot and die
I couldn’t believe it
I got really shocked
He said that he didn’t know
they we don’t know about it
I said “No. Why should he get shot?”
He saud thaat the actor in his
film had a louded gun
They were acting and he was standing
behinde the cameraman when they were supposed to shoot
He said that “I heard the action but
no none said cut”
“I turned back and saw him sitting where
he was standing and there’s a hole in his forehead”
I checked and found that he is dead
And when they asked from the others,
they said that the bullet had passed over their shoulder
and came from the distance and hit him in the forehead
while he was standing behine the cameraman
And he would sit right where he was standing
and the camera man wouldn’t notice anything
It was one of those rar thing
that made me really sad. It’s the fate of Mr. Sajjadi Hosseini
I was at Ekbatan with Mr. Jafari Jozani.
It was very early in the morning
Jamshid and Mr. Jebeli were playing in his
film and a bear was their co-star too
One day he told me that there’s a role for a woman
whose husband is Rooholah Mofidi
You have three or four daughters
together but he has married another woman now
cause he wanted a son
They said you should come play
and you’d totally run him over
He said that only you can do this,
will you come?
I said yes
And when we I rehearsed the dialogues
they said it’s good
SHe would go to the wedding party.
Esmailkhani’s playing my brother role
And Mr. Mofidi played my husband role
I go to the wedding while hugging my baby to
crash the party, saying “Bro! Kill him!”
“How can you do this? Is it my fult that
they’re all girls? Did I brought them from my mom’s?”
I think I played in two scenes. One of them was
the fighting and crying scene in the Ghazali cinema town
And the other one was in the house
which was for the wedding party
It was such an interesting
cooperation
When I played in “The Razor’s Edge” directed by Mr. Shoorje
which was about Mr. Atighechi at ASP towers
I didn’t know it was from Ministry of Intelligence
I got a script and we were playing with other actors
When I was checking the story or
when I was communicating with the crew
I was so relax and honest
when I talked to them
that when they wouldn’t look at me and would
look at the ceiling instead
I would tell them that nothing would
happen to you if you look at me too
I’m like your sister, your friend
and your colleague
We are working here
They’d put a toupee on my head
and sometimes I’d cheat and curl my hair instead
Mr. Shoorje would encourage me
whenever I played
Expecially when I let them do a makeup for the scene in which
I’m in chemoteraphy process so…
they’d put a skin on my head and do
a heavy makeup that was done by Mr. Habibi
When I put off my scarf and for the first
time in the film my hair is shown
And it reveals that Atighech’s wife
has cancer
When I did the scene and cried,
Mr. Shoorje praised me a thousand times
I worked with Mr. Abolhassan Davoodi
on my first film, “Boo-ye Khosh-e Zendegi”
Then “Nan va eshgh va motor 1000”
And later on “Crazy Rook”
I played in “Boo-ye Khosh-e Zendegi”
along with Mr. Alireza Khamseh
Mr. Khamseh played in two roles
I’d seen some films from
Mr. Abolhassan Davoodi
I can say that the jokes in his movies
were very appealing to me
I have many good memories from that film
Both his intelligent directing
and the movie itself
Part 10
I worked with Mr. Alvand on “Chehre”
which was a very interesting collaboration
I’d gone to watch Mr. Khosravi’s play
As I was walking with my hands in my pocket
while the fountains were spraying waters around
I slipped and fell
and my tailbone broke
I was reading a book by Mr. Radi
in with one the characters name was Malek Taj
He came and offered me a role.
I asked to use the name, Malek Taj
He said okay, say no more.
Your role’s name is Malek Taj now
And this Malek Taj was such
an interesting character
Someone who was richer than most
but a lot of people didn’t know it
Mr. Cyrus Ebrahimzadeh played the role of the husband
In a scene which Mr. Alvand tells tells stories
of it every time and everyone remembers
Malek Taj is just standing and looking at all of them
who are fighting each other over money
She just stands there looking
then says “Shame on you all, It’s what you deserve”
It became a catchphrase that many used
and when people saw me outside
They’d repeat it or say that this scene
was very good in the movie
Another part which Mr. Alvand talks about,
actually I saw him recently in the US
He was talking about a scene among the friends,
saying “There was a scene in which Gohar is cycling”
“She is exercising herself
and the husband is ironing the clothes”
They talk so much about it
and laugh
Her behavior is really something.
She knows some English, Mrs. Malek Taj
It was Mr. Poorarab’s first movie
collaboration with us
And I was kind of a protester
and would make a fuss over nothing
I would say that he can’t speak very well
and has rhetorical problems
Saying that you can’t compare some superstar
who may not even have academic education
with the actors who have
theatre acting experience
To cut it short I was a person
who always had her guards up
I remember Esmailkhani and me
were at home and had some guests
Mr. Alvand called saying “Come here, Mr. Ganjavi
is editing the film and we want to show you two something
I thought that when you say a dialogue
in the long shot, you sould repeat it the same way
with the same tune and mood
and act
in the close up but it
shouldn’t be exaggerated
So as I was acting in the “Chehre”
When Malek Taj come to the house
of Shamsi Fazlollahi and Saeed Poursamimi
Who ar the people that were conned
by Mr. Poorarab and lost their money
They are a group who has periodical
gatherings and are always together
As I come and say that “If you
had lost your money, I lost even more”
The camera pans with me
to the door frame of the kitchen
Suddenly they said it’s a surprise
and it’s a birthday
They threw a birthday party and
everyone ate cake and after a couple of hours
And when everyone took their photos
we started again
Now I’m playing the rest of the scene
where I’m at the frame door and want to say my dialogue standing there
Mr. Ganjavi said just look at it nothing has changed
between the two takes
And it is really amazing
We have some takes and we are
choosing the best
They that “We thought it’s a pity
if you don’t come and see this”
Of course “Chehre” was my second collaboration
with Mr. Alvand because we worked together on
“Night if the incident”, “Chehre” and “Saghar”
In “Saghar” I play the role of Golrokh, a crazy woman
who is in a sanatorium
Mrs.Farimah Farjami and Mr. Amin Tarokh
play as a couple who come to the sanatorium
To hospitalize her for a while
And as I had dressed as a doctor
and had been sitting on their desk
they’d think that I’m a doctor
As I’m going out of the room, and they were wondering, I’d turn and wave my hand at them
When I suggested to do this move,
Mr. alvand really liked it
She would go like this
Showing she is crazy and
therefor happy
and also shows them that they were
tricked by her
She would go to her room and sit there,
then Mrs. Farimah Farjami would comes to the room too
Golrokh goes to her and asks
her what her name is
She’d say “Saghar”
I’d sing without looking at her
“My Saghar is broken, Saghi”
“I’ve been wasted…”
I’d keep singing and go,
passing by her
She’d say her name is Saghar
but she sings and goes away
Golrokh was an interesting character
Then it screened in the cinema hall
with an echo
Everyone was surprised
saying that they let a woman sing solo
Isaid that she is crazy
so it’s allright
When Mrs. Parisa Bakhtavar and Mr. Asghar Farhadi
were working for the National Television
At one time, Mr. Farhadi offered me a role
through Mr. Babak Shoai who was Mrs. Mahin Navidi’s husband
who was our makeup artisit
We going to be the producers of a new work
which Mr. Farhadi is its director and writer
“We are going to produce some TV series”
In “Cheshm Be Rah” series,
Mr. Pak Niat and me were playing a couple
I really liked that work
I played the role very well, it was the role
of a red haired old woman with henna on her hands
with a very good makeup
by Mrs. Mahin Navidi
In the middle of the work power went out
And I was soaked with sweat
as I’d been acting under the lights for a while
I laid down on a bench to rest
untill the power’s restored
The power didn’t restore for a couple of hours
and this lying down ended up in getting sick
The resault of this was getting very
very sick for a long time
I was supposed to go to Mr. Raei’s
work, “Victorious Warrior”
But I got sick very severely
I really liked the movie.
It was a very sweet work
In which we’d wait behinde the operation room
and await the new born children
In fact the story’d take place in
the neonatal ward of a hospital
And each time a group of people were
waiting for their children to be born
And we worked together with Mr. Farhadi
in “Dayere Zangi” again which was written by him
I remember that I wanted to
have a lone monologue
But Mrs. Bakhtavar wouldn’t let
me add anything at that time
and Mr. Farhadi’s writting is so brilliant
that no one even moves a comma
But i perform a part for them in which
I’d hold the ice cream and talk to
all of the neighbours as my son wanted to make a film
I performed that and ask him to tell mrs. Bakhtavar
that it’s his own writting so she’d accept
That how we lobbied to add the part
that I recommended
Esmailkhani and me won an award
for a trip but Esmailkhani couldn’t go
So a my daughter, Azadeh, really liked to go with me,
I took her with me to Mecca
Mr. Kamal Tabrizi and Mr. Raei were
both there, of course I knew them from before
Then Mr. Tabrizi asked me if I like to
play in small role
Esmailkhani and me both played in the movie
Mr. Parsa Pirouzfar come to
propose to my daughter
As I sit there and see how handsome the groom is,
I dose off staring at him
And it became a very good scene
when it screened in cinemas
They said the they’d checked to dailies
It wasn’t as easy as today to
check the dailies after the filming
They would print a copy in the laboratory
and watch them on the screen
And if was okay, then they’d continue
filming the rest of the scenes
They said that “We all burst into laughter
when we saw the scene”
Mr. Sharifinia also said that it was very funny
The girl’s mother is straing like this
Until Mrs. Nadia Golchin calls her
So I’d come to myself
I’m in awe of his beauty
the whole time
I worked with Mr. Raei on “Victorious Warrior”
which had a lovely and beautiful script
Mr. Abdi was playing in two roles
We had a heavy makeup which
was done by Mr. Eskandari
The filming location was at Qazvin
When I first went there, our relationship
was very professional and kinda cold
But when we started to work
and he saw my passion and sincerity to work
And I even thought that I could
play in Mrs. Fatemeh Goudarzi’s role much better
She had two roles too,
there were two sisters
One sister was crazy and
the other one was king’s wife
He said “No. I have selected my actor
and I want you to play the role of her maid, Amineh”
He said that it’s a very difficult
role and I want you to play
She is woman who is very cunning
and she is also a mother
As Amirfazli was playing
my son role
So she was a mother who wanted to make her
retarded son become king
Just see who she was
It was a very beautiful
and complicated role
She was a woman who would flir,
and she was a mother
And she would also pull the rug
from under others
She was a bastard, a fixer and
everything else you think of
She was a strange mixture of
everything that was inside the court
Mr. Raei was very strict
when we’d practice
We would practice most of our time
And he was worried that my acting
would be very bold
I remember in the scene where
I was supposed to make the girl escape from the carriage
They’d ask me to give her
a hint to go
No matter how small a hint I’d do
They’s say that it’s too much
They said so much that
I suggested to just move my pupil
How many times you want to say?
Of course when I saw it in the cinema,
I found that it was too much
And you couldn’t see anything anymore
I would never forget the glorious landscapes there
The beautiful old houses
at Qazvin
And our set and costume designer,
Mr. Majid Mirfakhraei
who is ine of the best set and costume designers
of our country
What beautiful dresses
he had designed
And they were all really gorgeous
It was one of the most star studded
movies of that time
Firstly, I really liked Mrs. Marzieh, herself,
very much, and I still do
I have very good memories of her
I think I told you one them…
When I was forbidden to work and they asked
her to act instead of me but she didn’t accept
She showed her kindness
and generosity
She was our neighbour when
we were at Niavaran
I got selected to play in her film,
“Sweet Jam”
To play the role of Mr. Sharifinia’s
wife, a Haji’s wife
I have many sweet memories
from then too
Of course I didn’t have any
mutual scene with Leila Hatami
But it was a very lovely movie
which was made for kids
And I really enjoyed my collaboration
with Mrs. Marzieh
Later, Jamshid worked with her in some
parts of “Tabeta Tales”
We are still very good friends
with Mrs. Marzieh up untill now
Part 11
When we were living at Niavaran,
there was a loction for “Our Home” series
Mr. Reza Babak was thare and
also Mr. Shapour Pouramin
Who played the role of “Count” in my thesis play, “Cavemen” by William Saroyan
He was the director of photography
in “Our Home” TV series
And Mr. Masoud Karamati who was
my university classmate was the director
And I had a difficult job there
They wanted a housewife
who behaves normally
As my master, Mr. Rokneddin, would say,
if you are going to cook eggs, you souldn’t show off
You should act like your ordinary life
If you could be an ordinary nurse
or an ordinary housewife, that’s when you win
Now I should’ve taken some distance
from the Gohar who’d act as rich or poor women
and act as an ordinary housewife
Very believable.
I tried to get close to the role
And thanks God,
everyone kinda believed it
And that series was a very sweet
and lovely one
Mr. Hossein Latifi was also
a part of our family
He was like a brother to me
And the first work we did together, “The Neighbors”,
was very interesting
That’s when my improvisations began
Sometimes we had a script and
sometimes we hadn’t
To quote Mr. oji, “Get to work to deserve
your earning. You haven’t done anything since the morning”
The script wasn’t ready
I’d ask them to give me a pan
and some potatos
And togeteher with Amin Hayai who
was playing as my son
We’d start to work in the kitchen and
talk about his life and our life
To connect it to the other parts
of the story
Or say some phrases like
“Stop it”, “Don’t eat it”…
And peel them potatos, cook them
and sit there
Jamshid Esmailkhani was playing the role of a realtor
who’d show our house to the potential buyers
And when he’d try to give me a hint
and peep at me
Amin Hayai would take my chador
and put it on my face saying “Cover your face”
And I’d say “I don’t want to”
It creates a funny situation as
the audience knows that he is my real husband
But in the story it’s the other way around
And in each episode there was
a new guest actor
Mr. Iraj Tahmasb, Mrs. Azita Hajian, Mr. Majid Mozaffari
In face, Mr. Oji would bring best actors of cinema
to the series as guest stars
I think the stories were very interesting
And Mr. Hossein Pakdel was the writer
Mrs. Flora Sam, Mr. Oji’s wife who acted in
the series too, was also the writer
Of course most of it was
written by Mr. Hossein Pakdel
And in each episode there was
a new guest actor
Mr. Iraj Tahmasb, Mrs. Azita Hajian, Mr. Majid Mozaffari
In face, Mr. Oji would bring best actors of cinema
to the series as guest stars
And his signed the best
for editing and music
Mr. Oji wouldn’t cut anything short
He had rented a house which was supposed
to be destroyed
They made decorations and repaired
the inside and outside of the building
If they had recorded the whole process
it would’ve been great for set designing students
To see how it’s possible to change a building
and use wonderful colors
The reality is that it would
have been such a great lesson for them
They’d close the pond and build
a new pavilion
And some passages which were brilliant
And a small garden that Mr. Oji had designed
They had planted vegetables in it
and they would harvest it for us to eat
And we had a chef in the location
And we just realized that we don’t see
the white disposable containers with bad plastics
which shouldn’t be used as food container
and other teams would have used them
It would’ve given its place to tables,
tablecloth,
china plates and spoons and forks
As Mr. Oji and his wife both had studied
performing arts too
He’d respect the crew by having a chef,
buying fresh meat and providing warm food
We would go to the kitchen and eat
whatever we wanted
Or even order the next day food
They’d prepare the rice and stew
in platters and
everyone would take as much as suited for them
Therefore no rice would have been wasted
as may someone didn’t want to eat rice
Some might have wanted eat a little
or some wanted to eat a lot
That’s why no one would protest
if filming would take longer than usual
And even Mr. Oji, himself, would
protest that the food is getting spoiled
“Hossein!” he’d call Mr. Latifi,
telling him to give a cut to crew, as the food is ruined
While nowadays we are still working
at 4 pm and haven’t eaten lunch yet
I had finished my work at 2 pm
but didn’t provide the dinner
I wonder when you work till 2 pm,
don’t you need dinner?
Thses kinds of behavior are not
suited for a producer
This kind of dirty plays, making everyone work
till 2 pm and don’t even thank them
In fact, I got angry this time
saying that I won’t work with them again
Why should I care that they should
give back the location
At least say that you are sorry,
as we should give back the house
Show a little respect
In fact, it won’t do justice to him,
even if I talk hours about Mr. Oji’s work
Even the bank checks he’d give
us was like cash
I remember when others gave us checks
near the Eid, banks were close and would open at 5th of Farvardin
Or they’d say that they don’t have enough
money or say that you are late
But he’d get traveler’s check and put
them in beautiful envelopes
And he’d give us at the end of the work day
while saying goodbye before the holidays
At breakfast, they’d put china plates on the table,
and there were eggs, bacon and chips
for those who wanted
pickles and tomatos.
This was your breakfast
And each time a different one
He did such beautiful things
Now, he had to stay at home
for two years because of cancer
But national television didn’t
even ask about him
Two and a half years ago I played in
his work, “We are not Angels” for Eid specials
In face, Mr. Majid Oji was its producer
and it was an Eid special
What do you think happened?
He paid off all the cast and crew by selling his own house
As the TV gives the producers
their money with difficulty these days
He said that you know me
as I am your producer
What do want to do with the TV?
I’m your producer and I’d pay you
He’d always do this, always.
As our families were acquaintances,
I knew that he was selling his house and his land to pay the debts
I was at US and understood
that this dear man has no money
I called Mr. Faraji from US
“Mr. Faraji, what should I do?
Mr. Oji wants three billions from the TV
He’s sold his whole life
After many negotiattion, I heard that
they just gave him five hundred millions
Right now he has a film which he had spent
near three billions on but the TV wants it for two
But he says that he had spent three
billions and can’d give it for less
Anyway, no one has visited him
after he got sick and It really broke my heart
And I was sad
He would always sign the best
stars for his films and series
But the TV said that two or three is enough,
why are you gathering so many stars?
It was such a wonder?
The things that you’d hear.
Anyway, there is so much to say
But I wanna talk about Mr. Latifi
With whom we worked on many
brilliant jobs
“A Green Journey” was a TV series
in which he gathers many stars again
If you knew how much difficulty
we had on that work
I play the role of an old woman
who’s been a singer before
A singer in the past
Her husband, Mostafa Tari, has married
another woman who is Azita Hajian
He has the two of us and we are
so poor that we live in a cemetery
I remember that Mostafa Tari was
hitting his wives and Mr. Latifi would
turn the camera 360 degrees,
moving around us
and I’d sweared as much as
I wanted, without holding back
The qulity supervisor of the TV watches
the film and asks surprisingly if I am cursing
They’d deleted the sound but you
can read my lips swearing
Very funny
They tried to cut out the swearing parts
but found out in thet case they’d lose the acting too
It was very funny,
they’d muted my voice
While I was playing in “The Green Journey”
series, Esmailkhani passed away
In fact we both had worked on
“Nan va eshgh va motor 1000” in the middle of my work
And all of my friends, Mr. Amin Tarokh, everyone,
were waiting for me to get better to continue filming the series
As a matter of fact, they were filming the scenes
in the cemetry in which Azita Hajian, my sister-wife, gets killed
as she is a political activist and
we would find this out by seeing the flashbacks
And they had used real fertilizer and
soil to cover the grave
Now just imagine that I’m crying
for Azita and I’m also sad myself
At that day Mr. Afkhami was there too
and Mr. Sharifinia and Pirouzfar were walking toward us
And I am crying in there and
improvising as usual
It was the first scene we filmed after
the death of Jamshid and I’d tell you about the others too
We went there and they said
let her say whatever she wants
I’m talking and Asghar Shahverdi is sitting there
I’m talking about how good
we were to each other
And I talk how much we liked
each other
And I’m sad because you are dead,
even though she was her sister-wife
Suddenly Mrs. Khoeniha poked me
saying what should we say?
I said you can help me up
and tell me to stop crying over her grave
Mr. Tarokh said
what should I say?
I said that you should
just whisper some prayers
As I was acting, I talked
to
him with my character’s accent
And in his close up, he is
just whispering and praying
And Khoeniha is helping me stand up
Mr. Sharifinia and Parsa Pirouzfar
are coming
As Parsa Pirouzfar characterhad recently
come from abroad, he don’t say much and just observe
He just stood there but Sharifinia said that
you are going have all the dialogues
I said “No. you can have some too”
We reheard the dilogues as I couldn’t remember
exactly what I had said before to match the answers
We’d hear them and
select some for others
And we’d say our dialogues
and continue the scene
Now I wanted to cry but the stink of the real
fertilizer is killing me
I’d say that I’m suffocating because
of the stinking fertilizer
Mixing the acting and reality together
They all bursted into laughter.
We’d laugh again
and they’d say that she
is feeling better
in fact, I’d forget that I’m still mourning
and while the dirt and fertilizers are there
I go on saying that I’m dying
of the stink of the feces
We’d both laugh and shoot another take again
Hossein Latifi trusted me completely
As I was living the character
One they I heard that
they are working in a cafe at bazar
I asked Hossein to go there.
He asked what I wanted to say
I asked to to prepare some envelopes
with Hafez fortune telling poetry
And I’d get there and act as I know how
And as I got there, I started to beg from people
with that makeup, so no onw would recognize it’s me
and they’d give me money too
I bought many thing for the crew
from money I earned by begging
One day we went into a drugstore
with that makeup
First we filmed the scenes in the cafe
then we went to the drugstore and I said
“Do you have Butler
toothbrush?”
We that heavy makeup
showing my teeth
They had turned my teeth
completely yellow as I was a begger
“I wanna clean my teeth”
They said “No, Maam. The toothbrush
won’t be any good”
Then they got surprised when they
heard her asking for Butler toothbrush
Then I’d say if they had Oral-B
They were laughing out loud
that what is she saying by those teeth
They’d say that we should put these in the film
that you talk with real people and they’d believe you
In the end they said that we don’t have
anything, you should go outside
They wanted to throw me out
of the drugstore as I was so dirty
They’d say “Go out” and I’d say
“My head hurts, don’t you have any acetaminophen?”
They were wondering what I was
if I was a doctor or a dentist
In the end I’d laugh and
ask normally “Don’t you want to give me anything?”
They’d ask surprisingly if
I was acting
And I’d answer…
“Well, It’s obvious. What were
you thinking? That this begger wants a toothbrush?”
They’d give me some pills and
asked if I realy wanted a toothbrush
And I said that I was just kidding
It was just before Eid holidays
and there were lots of colorful jars full of golden fish
Calling them “Goldie! Goldie!”
I wanted to say that I want one
but he pushed me back
But suddenly he saw the camera
and said come here take this money
I mean when he saw the camera
he totally changed as he was hitting me before
Telling me to get away from the fish jars
calling me a dirty woman
Suddenly when he saw the camera he said
“Come here motherm take this money”
And gave me some money too
and I said that I want a fish
He said okay and took a fish
I said give me two,
one of them might die
He put two fish in a plastic bag
and gave it to me
Then we continued begging
and walking around
I could say that it was
a very beautiful series
Mr. Hossein Latifi was very creative himself
and his assistant was even more creative
Most of the time he’d let Mr. Bahram Bahramian
work on the scenes
And it was a very populr
series at that time
Part 12
I had a play in the City Theatre
named “Fire Cycle”, a southern woman
Mr. Habib Rezai who was Mr. Hatamikia’s
assistant introduced me to him
for the role of Nane Atieh
in “Low Heights”
I’d been seen in that play
and be introduced
When I’m offered to work with Mr. Hatamikia,
well, I preferred to work in a movie that wotking on series
I didn’t like the series very much too,
but Esmailkhani got really annoyed
And asked me why I want to work on this movie
These guys are from Intelligence service
and it’s better if you participate in it
I said that I don’t know
anything about intelligence service
And whoever the are, if from intelligence service
or some war veterans, I’d like very much to wotk with Mr. Hatamikia
I went there and as I knew
what the role was
I put on an arabic black scarf
And painted mascara on my eyes
And made myself look like
a southern woman
Mr. Hatamikia acceped and agreed
with it very soon
Then we agreed to start practicing
and we practiced over and over
And he’d record our practice with a small camera
and then he’d prepare the decoupage
and later at the scene he would
describe the mise en scène to us
I went to Shiraz to see my mom and as many people had immegrated
to Shiraz from Abadan because of the war
I saw a southern woman wearing a green dress
with Bella shoes with a high heel and black leather cover
and it’s open on the upside
like slippers
A gold ring with turquoise jewel
and a wooden rosary
putting on an arabic scarf
which is called Shele
because of its fabric, it stays
on the head after pulling it around the head
using a pin with turquoise jewel
to hold the scarf
I told her that I’d buy all of her dresses
all together
Would you give them to me?
She said yes.
I bought them and brought them to Tehran
and took them to Mr. Ghadirian who was our costume designer
And I brought Mr. Hatamikia to the room
and showed him the dress, saying I bought it from a southern woman
He applauded me and said put it in a cover,
Naneh Atieh’s costume is ready
I put hanna on my hands and]started practicing Abadani accent
The location was at Institute for the Intellectual Development
of Children and Young Adults, airplane replica was built in there
They’d use many arc lamps to lighten the inside
of the plane replica
Therefore it would get very hot in there
It would make me sweat a lot and getting out
after that into the cold weather made me catch cold
As I remember I got sick
two times in that work
And I remember while eating soup I’d keep
my character and would sit by the table
Even when Mr. Hatamikia told me to
come to the table, I refused and answered with the accent
“No, sir. I don’t sit behind the table,
it’s not for me”
I’d use a carton and put it on the ground and
sit in the corner and eat my food as Naneh Atieh
And I’d even use thread and needle
to sew tears on my bag
And I wouldn’t get out of the character
of Naneh Atieh
Even when I’d go to bazar for shopping,
I’d talk to the salesman with an accent
“How much are these fruits, Amoo?”
or I’d ask for something again
with the accent
Then he’d ask if it’s a hidden camera
show and that’s why I speak with an accent
And even when I went to my friends homes
or when I went to parties, I’d kept speaking with Abadani accent
And all the acts and body language that
I had prepared for the character
were selected from southern women
and even the tone of her voice too
I remember when we went to airport for shooting,
it was sunny and I had sunglasses
As they said that they are ready to start shooting,
my sunglasses were completely unrelated to the role
As they said they’re ready,
I started walking like Naneh Atieh to get on the plane
They have filmed it.
I have the behind the scene film
I would suddenly change into Naneh Atieh
by removing the glasses and get into the character
The day we went to shoot the first scene
of “Low Heights” on the plane
When Atieh gets on the plane, she looks at everywhere,
checks the ceiling as she had never got on a plane before
When they checked the dailies after the shooting
of that scene
Habib Rezai told me that when Mr. Hatamikia watched
the scene, he clapped his hands and said that “I have found my Naneh Atieh”
Later he came and applauded me
abou the way I got in the plane and looked around
“I told everyone to just get on the plane,
I didn’t ask you to be surprised and check everywhere”
I answered that I thought that when Naneh Atieh
gets on a plane for the first time, everything is new for her so shed be surprised
I like the script very much and
we worked very well on it
except my sickness and catching cold
which was because the hot inside the location
And little by little he would
accept my recommendations too
And it made Jamshid to change
his mind about Hatamikia
It was when we moved from Niavaran
to this house at Fereshteh street
He was remodeling the house and
he was changing everything
When he wanted to buy anything
or when he wanted to buy ceramics
He would come to the location and show
me the ceramics from far through the plane window
And Mr. Hatamikia would see him and ask him
what he’s trying to say and what those are
He said that I’m bringing these to her to choose
as you don’t let me to take her instead
Some shops put the ceramic samples on
a panel for customers to choose
One time I remember that he’d brought
the panel to the location for me to choose from
When I was supposed to win the award
for best actress at Fajr festival
Diploma for the best actress
Simorgh was won by Taraneh Alidoosti
for Sadr Ameli’s film
I’m Taraneh, 15
Esmailkhani got ver angry.
Mr. Hatamikia’s team were kinda sulky too
Thinking this film could win in many categories.
Its screeplay, set design,…
And many of its actors could win,
Mr. Farokh-Nejad, Leila Hatami and many more
The directing itself
I think it was a very beautiful movie
I don’t know what was the reason, it was because
of some disagreement in Khane Cinema or Fajr, don’t know
It couldn’t win any award,
except one
Just the one for Gohar Kheirandish
for the best actress
Indeed he first female role was Leila Hatami
but Mr. Hatamikia had introduced both of us as first role
Saying that my first roles are
Gohar Kheirandish and Leila Hatami
That year, when they gave me the award
I just went and took the award and came back
Later Mr. Majidi or Mr. Parastui asked
me why I didn’t say anything
For instance, thanking anyone
And I told Mr. Hatamikia and other crew that
why didn’t they get into the hall
They were informed about those who
get the award
I went there and found out that
none of our crew are in the hall as a protest
And I got upset, saying that I might had not come
either if I knew
And they said that it wasn’t they’re
choice to ask me that
And when I went to take the award,
I took it and walked down the stage
I didn’t say anything to protest because
they didn’t give any award to Mr. Hatamikia’s film
And when they announced all the winners
at the end of the night
and they were supposed to go have
dinner with the minister
Esmailkhani and me both refused
to go with them
And i told the press that I’m going to
have dinner with my children eating the food I coooked at noon
I won’t go
We came home
We came home and I was sitting
in my daughter’s room back there
And I was a little upset
Suddenly Mr. Hatamikia called me
And I put it on speaker to hear him all
and Jamshid said hi too
He said that you went home but
you took your award from people
He praised me very much
And Jamshid got very sad, saying that
I thouht they would give her the Simorgh
and they started to talk together
They talked more and got very friendly
Later Jamshid passed away
The next year I worked on “Tradition of Lover Killing”
with Mr. Khosro Masumi and when I won the award
I won the Simorgh for that film
and I gave my award to Jamshid’s soul
And many of my friends and the audience
in the hall were affected with it
Even one time that I was in a cab, someone told me
that I have the ceremony on tape and I still cry when you say
“Jamshid, at last I won the Simorgh”
And brought the Simorgh
and put it in front of Jamshid’s picture
I presented the award to him
We were classmates with Mr. Khosro Masumi,
I mean we were in the same year
He was studying cinema and we were
studying performing art, directing and acting
And at the time of cultural revolution, as we were
passionate student in the university, as we protested, they threw tear gas
I succeeded in saving him by putting a wet cloth
in front of his face and mine and get him into the amphitheater
The day that it got decided that I act
in Khosro’s film
He came and told me that I want you to play the role
of this chid in its childhood time
He brought me to Gorgan, Derazno, on the heights
where there were many villas
On top of th mountain, 2800 feet high,
TV towers were at 3800 feet high
there was a flat plain in there which was full
of summer houses. It was our filming location
My blood pressure droped in the heights
and I was about to die
In fact, I just had my third daugther, Anahita,
and she was with Jamshid at home
I told myself that I’m done for.
Now they want to take me down the mountain
in this darkness with no equipments or cars,
by a wagon or other means
to get me to the Gorgan hospital
On the way to the hospital, I may have passed out
a couple of times but they tell me that we are arriving
And when we got there, they injected me
with serum a couple of times to make me get better
Mr. Masumi would tell me that you saved my life
once in the university and now I did it too
so we’re even now
Anyway the film brought many awards for him
After that he asked me to act in
“Tradition of Lover Killing”
It is a very lovely and beautiful script
And when acting in that film, I tried my best
to get close to the role of northern women
Khosro told me that we don’t want you to have
northern accent but just sound like them
I understood that and did it very well
And it was very difficult for me there
Our condition there was very difficult,
taking bath was an issue there
I was a big help to Khosro there
Because people didn’t know his works
like “Par-e parvaz” in the north
I went with his production manager to the north
and tried to get help for making the film
I took blankets from Red Crescent Society,
heaters from education office
We took drivers and cars and sews from
Forest Management Organization
We got the electricity on top of that hill
by the help of power department
I went to the Department of Telecommunications
and using my position provided telephone cable to the top of the hill
Then we started to drive around
and check the location
When he was showing me the location
we saw a school on the hill with broken windows
There was a man there named, Zamen,
I had forty thousands in my purse
I gave to him and told him to fix the windows
and paint the building and we’d pay him later
I gave my own house in the north to the crew
to stay there while we were filming in Nowshahr prison
I really tried to be help them
in any way possible
The girl that was acting with us got sick,
I got sick too, she a sore eye
I’d call a doctor in the eye hospital at Tehran
telling him that we only have boiled water
we could provide some clean cloth
which we could boil too
He told me that her eye had caught cold
and you should keep it warm
Her eye would burn like hell
when she’d close her eye
Sometimes the road would get blocked
and we couldn’t get any food or water
And I’d get in the kitchen to find some
stuff to cook for the crew
We had to change the cook a few tims.
It was like we were a family
One day I said that my kid is sick
and I should go to Tehran
They that we’d film your forest scene
and after that we’d get a pickup with which you can go to Tehran
When I finished my scene, I got on
the pickup and rode with the driver toward Tehran
He drove on and I was very happy at first
singing nd looking at the snow on top of the trees
The trees were so long
they’d go up to the sky
There was a flower growing through a stone
which I picked and put in the car
I was enjoying myself till
we got to a river
And he says that he took the wrong road
It was getting dark and
I was wondering what to do
I said that I’d go find someone
as he sits in the car
I didn’t think of him going to find help
and me staying in the car
My curious warrior side got the best of me
again and I walked into the forest
No matter where I went to,
there were no way
I would shout
and the trees full of snow
and the snow which were on top of the trees
for a while and had gotten black by soot
would fall on me and make me black all over
my face got black and
I got muddy
mud was sprayed all over me
It’s no me anymore, It’s a sculpture full of
soot and mud all over
And I’d cry and shout “Jamshid! Jamshid!
I’m lost. You should take care of the kids”
And I would scream and cry
No matter how much I’d walk,
I’d find no road
Suddenly I saw a tractor and two men
who were working for road construcion office
I screamed and got happy finding them in there
They didn’t recognize me asking
who I was
I said that I am lost and the driver is at a riverside
and someone should go and rescue him
They said that “We won’t go. A bear has
eaten someone yesterday”
“If we go a bear might get us,
how come you are alive?”
I would say as crying that I’m
not a human anymore
Perhaps as I’m full of mud and soot,
I don’t smell like human that’s why it hasn’t eaten me
Anyway, they’ve lighten fire and after a while
one of them asked ed if I was on TV
I answered while crying that what if
I was, is it going to help me?
He asked what I was doing there
I said that we were filming in the woods and
I was going to Tehran to visit my sick daughter
And now I’m lost
Then they went and found the driver
and brought him back
Then we went and found the cabs which
were going to Tehran with such difficulty
I got so sick that I was about to die
I came to take care of my sick child and now
I was far worse than her, sick and burning with fever
They were waiting for me and thinking
that she is enjoying the warmth of her home and not coming
I guess so…
I can’t forget these bitter memories from a film
that brought me so many awards both in Iran and abroad
Wether in Iran in which I won the Simorgh
or in other countries
And even after many years when I got invited to US
by Dr. Pirnazar to University of California, Berkeley
I got invited because of this film,
“Tradition of Lover Killing”
One day I asked khosro himself
what is, the Tradition of Lover Killing
He said that it’s a long story
and it’s about people who smuggle woods
They have a habbit of moving together
And they smuggle together and if one of them betrays
them or if a cop finds them, they’d killing him by hitting him each by knife once
To just be an accessory to murder
And by lover they mean
someone who loves their work
So it a forest ranger
Now this Tradition of Lover Killing was
a wordplay in the script which was similar to
the love of my daughter’s fiance who wants to
marry my daughter sooner but I make him wait
as he had arrested my husband,
but he says that he was doing his duty
And this lover, is in love with my daughter and his work.
He is a forestry agent, an assistant ranger
and that’s the way he gets killed in the film
It’s a very bitter and beautiful film
I very much love that film
although I have many bitter memories
For Instance I’m putting thatch on the wall
As I’m putting my hand in the water in that cold weather
to put thatch on the wall
That photo of this sceneis is printed on the cover
of one of Film magazines issues
which was printed on billboards too
My hand which was in the water in that cold weather
got ice chandelier
It froze
My hand was so useless that the natives brought
a lamb’s rumen which was still warm and put my hand in it
to make it loosen up and get warm,
and after a while it unfroze
There were many harships and
joys in that work
One of the joys in that work was that I liked
the landscape there so much that I threw out
all the relaxing pills that I had to take
as a cosequence of Jamshid’s death
One day I woke up and told myself that
I’m not taking anymore pills and I’d be okay
And the surrounding there, really helped me a lot
And in fact mostly the lack of facilities
and the climate condition was troubling
Many interesting things happened
to me over there
Natives there very sweet
The first day that we went there, Mr. Masumi
asked them which one of the actors do you know?
They said that “We don’t have a cinema
to know anyone, we just listen to radio”
He asked “Who do you listen
to on the radio?”
He mentioned a couple of names then he said
that Mrs. Gohar Kheirandish talks instead of several roles
we know her voice but she think that
we don’t understand it is her
She talkes as the speaker, old woman, young girl and more
Saying how much they like her
He asked them if they like to meet her and
they said “Yes. I like to meet her very much”
He said that she is right here in front of you
And it was Ramezan then and he had nothing
but two boiled potatos with butter
and he gave them to us for supper
and I would never forget that
Dr. Pirnazar who is a Farsi Professor at
University of California, Berkeley
said that they screen Iranian films
for their students too
Onr of my friends called me on the phone asking
wether I’d go to US if I get invited
I said that it’s a pleasure
My friend Mr. Moeini said that there are some festivals here
and you can come for this film here
I got invited by the festival, which had invited Mrs. Simin Behbahani
before to have some panels in different universities
And my friends daughter was a student at Berkley university.
She said that we are screening Iranian films here
and I’ve said that Mrs. Gohar Kheirandish
is my mother’s friend
They responded tht it would be great
if we send her an invitation and she comes
I got invited to US, Berkeley
They screened “Tradition of Lover Killing” in there
Many of Iranians and foreigners came to watch it
as it had Engkish subtitle too
They watched the film and after that
there was a panel interview
This film was screened in many cultural centers in California
I went to Philadelphia, Roseman university
and had a speech there
and they screened the film there too
Then in Turlock, San Francisco, Sacramento
and many more places
And then UCLA film festival
t that time it wasn’t usual for our films
to participate in UCLA film festival
I gave its CD to Mr. Shannon
director of UCLA film festival
He liked it very much and
invited Khosro too
And Khosro was very busy so he went to US
only for ten days
I went to the radio too and talked about the film
all the Iranians came
and other foreign audience who’d
come to UCLA festival
Although people would’ve come and watch Iranian films
at the festival even before 2009
but there weren’t many, that year all the tickets
to the film were sold out
And after that we went to many universities,
I got invited to Stanford
We had a screening and a panel again
Then our tour began in many countries,
Germany, Canada,…
I would get invited for small and big workshops
or for screening and panel interviews
I’d launch the workshops and help them
to make their play and take it to stage
Because I thought if I participate myself
I might not be able to get back to Iran
I was busy with the workshops and classes
As I was thinking that they better take what they wanted
to stage in platforms they were supposed to
Its name is “Tradition of Lover Killing”,
the director has used an ambiguity
Because someone who is in love with his work
and is an agent, a soldior
You have seen Hossein Abedi in Mr. Majidi’s
film, “Baran”
In the film, he is in love with my daughter too
That’s why the name of the film is
“Tradition of Lover Killing”
Part 13
I worked in dubbing too,
of course I mostly dubbed my own works
I remember the first time I got invited to dub
Mrs. Masoumeh Taghipour
who was a dubbing artist herdelf
for the film “Bibi Chelcheleh”
to work with the late Davoud Rashidi
I don’t know what the issue was
wether a problem with her voice
or they’d planned to record it later
but she couldn’t come
I went and talked instead of her.
To quote Mr. Aghaloui, the late dubbing artist
“You dubbed so well and accurate
that it’s just her own voice”
“The voice tone, acting and mimics
were all kindda the same”
I started to work as a dubbing artist then
and I grew found of radio too
Ans sometimes that we had to dub our works like
“Roozi Roozegari by Mr. Amrollah Ahmadjou, I dubbed my role myself
Most of the time it wasn’t for the money but
to revoice my own roles
I was active in the radio
for seventeen years
I got to know Mrs. Turan Mehrzad and Mrs. Zhaleh Olov
and they were the professional team in the radio
They were at Arg near bazar, and there was another theatre
that we worked in, Jame Jam in Valiasr street
Later another door got open,
a new building, radio martyrs
All of the guys from music and theatre
department gathered here
Radio shows were the kind of shows
that were based on social issues
Experts would work on them
and they’d be broadcasted every Saturdays
The experts would turn people life stories
into plays
They were mostly about addiction
and social harms and they’d have explored addiction issue
And Mr. Kazem Barghamdi Sabzevari would
turn them into plays and we’d perform them
Between the shows, the experts would talk
and analyze the life of these subjects
An hour was dedicated to our shows
I have many interesting memories of
that time. For instance when I’d get on a cab
and wanted to say my destination,
people would turn around
and say that they recognized me
from my voice
or when I was walking on the street people
would show me saying they recognized me from my voice
Mr. Kazem Barghamdi had written more
than a thousand plays
Even more I think, something like two
or three thousands play in about 16 or 17 years
And one day wet sat down and wrote the names
and it was about one hundred voice actors who’d worked with us
I was the constant one most of the times and
I would invite friens from cinema, TV and theatre to work with us
They would come and work with us on the plays
and we were always kindda up-to-date
And mostly we would record it just before
it was supposed to get broadcasted
One time Mr. Gohari said “My Head”
instead of “Serum”
“My head is in your hand girl, don’t run”
It was broadcasted like that.
Instead of serum, he said my head
It safe to say that we didn’t do it
for the money
My salary, who was a number one actor from cinema,
didn’t reach one hundred tomans
We would sit in its cafe and drink somthing
and give some money to the waiter, therefor nothing remained
We were addicted to going to the radio every saturdays
As our cards would expire, sometimes
we couldn’t get pass the entrance
It was like they didn’t know
me anymore and hadn’t seen me in TV
When you wanted to enter the TV area, you should’ve
been allowed and sometimes had to come and introduce you
Not thinking that instead of the cards,
it’s the person who is important and should be known
What more important? Her image?
Her card? Or herself?
One day when I wanted to go to the radio but
I had forgoten me card
They annoyed me so much, I waited for twenty minutes
fir someone to call them, but they didn’t accept
And I wanted to record as soon as possiblr to
get back home as my duaghter was sick
Believe me when I say that I had such heartache
that when I got on the elevator
I fainted and collapsed and
an ambulence came and took me to the hospital
When I read the script of “The Fifth Reaction”,
I liked my role very much
There’s a part about this woman at Bushehr
“Zeire Madineh”, meaning a pilgrim of Medina
Someone eho goes on a pilgrimage
to Medina
She has a big ferry and some men
work for her and she is very masculine
I really liked that role. I practiced the accent and
as my mother was from Bushehr too
I learned the accent very soon
When we were on the ferry, there was
a huge height gap between the deck and water surface
And I was really scared
I was supposed to walk on a board without
looking down and pull my scarf and go to Mr. Jamshid Arya
And i should have started arguing with him
about his daughter in law
As he wanted to get take her and force her to
matty his other son as her husband had recently passed away
And if she didn’t accept you’d get
her children from her
And I play with all my heart the scenes in which
I defend her at the police station
I believed those scenes and cried and
I liked them very very much
And I had worked on my accent and on the script
both with Mrs.Moniro Ravanipour
And Mrs. Tahmineh Milani did a great job
with directing and creating the mise-en-scène
And it brought me the award for the best
supporting actress from Khane Cinema
It’s interesting that I wasn’t at Iran
for “Black, White, Gray”
I wrote a couple of notes when I was at Mecca
and read it for them over the phone
They said it’s good
It’s the story of a rich woman who wants to
distribute drugs in high schools
And the other is a poor woman
After “The Lady” got banned and
it didn’t get to be screened
I played a role in “Black, White, Gray”
with Shirazi accent
The role of “Aunt Rafat” whose name I selected
because of her kind heart meaning kind
Mr. Shayeghi agreed to listen to my story
and accepted it, saying it’s very good
It’s the story of a woman who gets divorce after getting married
and comes to Tehran but loses her child at Mehran alley and she keeps looking for her child
She has a cart with which
she sells snacks and plums
She is a homeless, wandering person
She stays by boarding school so that maybe
she’d be able her child in one of them
As she works there, city officials come and
beat her and take her stuff
For many times Mr. Shayeghi was crying and
couldn’t say “Cut” in the scenes that I played
And people there would say that they remember
a woman just like her from before
I remember one of the neighbours
said that “We thought it’s her again”
But was just a coincidence
and I hadn’t seen her before
After a while, she thinks some of the children
who come out of the orphanage are her own
In the end they will get her inside and wash her
and clean her and she stays there
And she begins to work in the kitchen and
becomes a worker in the orphanage
Mr. Shayeghi really liked that series and after that
he came for me to play in his new series, “Magic Island”
It was a series for children in which
I had five or six roles
And afain with great makeup of
Mrs. Mahin Navidi
Well, Gohar Kheirandish her self can’t
get this close enough to this kind of different roles
My octopus dress was made
by Adel Bezdoude
It was so hard to put on the dress
They wouldn’t geive me any water or
anything to drink, so that I won’t need toilet
Saying the work would be delayed
Just see how troublesome it was
And very different makeups.
I play the role of a pirate with moustache
Who if you see, you think is a man
There’s a landlord who is a man, an octopus
and a fairy
There were many different makeups for the fairy
and spectacular dresses
Very time cinsuming makeups
to finish painting on my face
And to change the color of the eyes to green
or blue or brown and even red for the pirate
I was very difficult, I should have come out of a well
supposedly full of hot water which instead we used dry ice
It was very hard too
And a part of it happens near the sea,
she gets out of the sea
I got very sick there too
And when Mrs. Banietemad invited me to
play in “Gilaneh”
I couldn’t accept it cause I was working
on “Magic Island” TV series
A lot of makeups and many roles
I was both a mermaid and an octopus
The mermaid had a husband who was a pirate
and I played it too
I would thinken my voice and say “Dead Papar”
and the mermaid would say “Yes dear”
I have different makeups there and I like that series vey much
even though I had many problems and difficulties there
And It cost me many diseases, eye sore,
kidney problem and catching severe cold
And I got hurt many times
But it was a popular series and
everyone liked it very much
As it was made very beautifully. I think there
weren’t any children film that beautiful untill this
Mr. Saman Moghadam is one those dears who
I really like and respect
We really love the period in which we worked
on “Maxx”, it was very fun
There were times we were in front of camera from
this noon to the next
One time at Aghvam Farhangsara, they made
lots of smoke using ice and stuff
Mr. Cyrus Ebrahimzadeh is a minister sitting in his room
and Mr. Aeesh and me are going to visit him
Now there are special effects all over the plce
showing her hallucination
And there’s smoke everywhere
I was tired of filming since morning
and I just fainted
They called emergency and they gave
me a serum and I got better and we continued
Again I fainted and I took another serum
and we continued again
Meaning since mornning 5 am that we woke up,
and they came for us at 6 am and we went to Aghvan Farhangsara
We ate our breakfast there and did the scenes
and in the afternoon I fainted
We repeated the scenes. They said can’t
create the set with the smokes again
We kept shooting the scene
Untill night. We ate launch and dinner,
and ate breakfast the next morning
and at last in the 11 am we finished filming and
got out of Farhangsaraye Aghvam
But nobody was protesting and no one
was feeling tired
And that film was really spectacular and interesting
and was very profitable
Mr. Pourahmad has always been one of
the directors that I wanted to work with
When I watched “The Tales of Madjid”, I was
fascinated by how simple and believable everything was
Specially her mother, how great his mother
was leading
I knew his wife from “The Grand Day”
Before they get married
She was the script supervisor there
and she did a bit of editing too
One day, they said we want to work”Gol-e yakh” together
And I played in “Gol-e yakh” and I had
a very good makeup in it
He would ask that we don’t utter the words
completely while speaking
You are in a situation, you see the girl
and there’s earthquake, you just need to say half of the word
“Miss… Where? Earthquake… Bleeding…”
No need to sat it completely
It was a very interesting experience,
this kindda acting and speaking
I was supposed to love Indian music
and even say Indian stuff
And he is a very intelligent man and if I recommended small
things that he liked, he would accept right away
And this film which was inspired by “King of the Hearts”
didn’t get the attention it deserved
But I really have a very sweat experience
working with him
I got introduced to Mr. Mohammad Ali Sajjadi
by Mr. Khoro Masumi and Mehdi Mayamei
I liked his works very much
The script that he gave me was completely different
than his other works. It was a comedy
I played the role of a ghost
I like that role very much that
I played with Mr. Shahram Haghighat Doost
It was very sweet
Mrs. Niusha Zeighami played her first film with me
When I was teaching at Young Cinematographers Association,
many of these youngsters were my students
She was one of its graduates too
Part 14
It was near the end of my prohibition of work
that I thought of working in theatre plays
When I started working in theatre, I saw
that they’re not very hard on me
Before that, when I wasn’t allowed to work in cinema,
I went to theatre office
Mr. Hamid Azarang had written a play named
“Once upon a time, Abadan”
Abd Mr. Hamid Ebrahimi played the role of my husband
although he was very younger than me
I lost a lot of weights for that role, of course I was sad
because of not being able to work which helped me getting thinner
I was kindda copping with my depression.
I was going to gym and began working on my recitation
Just like I was working the same
with my students
That play, “Once Upon a Time, Abadan”
was a very interesting one
On the set there was a missile hanging
from the ceiling
And in the end of the play we’d understand that
the role we were playing were all dead
And when we would call people,
I’d talk but no one heard me
Later we’d understand that they are people
who had died in the Abadan war
But when we see the set and when the audience
watched the play, they won’t understand that they are dead untill the end
and the missile had hit their home
I worked with Mr. Hassa Fathi on “The Forbidden Fruit”
and “Tears and Smiles”
I knew Mr. Fathi from many years ago
One time he came to our house because of
“Queens of France” play, I think
It was a play that Esmailkhani play in not me
When I went to his office and he told me that
I should play in it otherwise he’d die and I’d get sad
I told him “You die first” as a joke
He told me th story and it was very beautiful
I said that I like the story very much
and I have this recommendations
They said okay, it’s just the begining of the work
you should be in contact with the writers
I was playing the rol of Mr. Nasirian’s
wife, Ghodsi
A man who falls in love with a young girl
at that age
And he might divorce his wife
I wrote most of it based on my life,
especially the divorce part
For instance where they talk about
their marriage cerftification
A bowl of rock candy, salt, raw silk
A book of Hafez and a Quran
And five golden coins which was my dowery
that I used in the story too
When we go to the registry office to get divorce
I tell him that I’d give away my right to
all my dowery but them them that I wanted divorce
Don’t tell them that you are divorcing me
Let’s keep your reputation untouched
At that time, I felt that there was an order to advertise
polygomy and multiple wives for a man
I, myself, tried to show that when a woman
works outside, she can keep with her household too
And even when they’re seperating, she says that
she would stay for a while until their son passes the university entrance exam
And he won’t get anxious or stressed about our divorce
It’s the story of “The Forbidden Fruit”
And I’d stay untill his highschool is over and
after that I’ll go
And you can stay with the one you
want to live with
And I know that they want you for your money
I remember the scene where he said I want
to shoot it like “Paris, Texas” in the desert
The woman and the young girl
both come to meet each other
They walk from opposite sides of the road
and the train passes behing them
And when I wanted to write the scene in there
I had only one of script supervisor’s pages
And as there was one I couldn’t give it to everyone
I sat under a bridge which was a complete dumphole
It was the only place with shades
I wrote the scene
describing what his background is
He had been working in bazar as a carrier
But now he is a bussinessman himself
And as he came to riches, he wants
to change his wife too
She confront the girl and tells her that
she is the same age as her own daughter
And you don’t know about when I was
a contracted teacher
and I’d sit behind her bike and
we’d pass this road every day
I thought that what’s the point of coming here
to this road, we should say something related to it
I had many intense argues with Mr. Fathi
on this work again
In fact even about my makeup
Even though my skin is kindda dark,
but as I don’t smoke, my lips are red
And with the lights in shooting gets more red,
therefor because of TV restrictions
I had to cover it to have less color
just like I did for now
One they I didn’t cover it and it was red,
and Mr. Fathi started yelling
“Mrs. Navidi come see what’s
the reason of these red lips”
Although I don’t even like to be filmed with red lips
This is my heartly request that everyone
should be seen by their own makeup
If a woman is supposed to be a school principle
she shouldn’t have mascara, lipstick and red powder
She might were them when going to a party
But she won’y have a extreme makeup
when going to the school
He was confronted by someone who
wouldn’t behave like it herself
I’d get very angry and fight with him
And even the ugly dresses they made us wear
that were oversized
In fact Mr. Fathi was more strict that the ladies
who would come from TV as sipervisors
They’d say “Why should a principal wear these
uglu oversized dresses”
“Or put foun on her lips”
We said that they always tell us
TV has problem with red lips
I think his fightings were mostly about
showing everyone who’s the boss
We had a very good working period
as he is very intelligent and he is a professional
And he designs very interesting mise-en-scènes
and he is a very good leader
and everyone follow him
We often had to overwork on that series
We would go for shooting, from this morning,
we ate breakfast and keep shooting till night
then we go shoot at Darband
and come back home in th next morning
I mean most of the time it was like this
to meet our deadline for broadcasting
As we were shooting while broadcating, for instance
we were filming episode fourteen
and they were broadcasting episode thirteen that same night
We couldn’t say that they should give us
a break or have some days off
and we had to work like that a couple of times
Right at the moment they’d come from TV
and say that we should omit a sentence
We were wondering when they
had heard it
Meaning when we were filming the series,
it would had broudcasted everyday
As we should have check the updated censorship
and we couldn’t record it from before
We would go for shooting, from this morning,
we ate breakfast and keep shooting till night
then we go shoot at Darband
and come back home in th next morning
I mean most of the time it was like this
to meet our deadline for broadcasting
Mr. Hassan Fathi came and said “I want to
make a comedu in which you play the role of a truck driver”
“And you have a son who respects
even a hair on your head”
even though he is a hooligan himself
and his own idealogy of chivaliry
and has some hooligans having his back too
And i was a woman who was a truck driver
and was completely different from everyday women
Rotating the rosary by my finger
and wearing agate rings
And wearing overcoat and put on my shoes
like men
And I had some hooligan henchmen
by my side and I was totally different from Ghodsi
He said it’s a fantastic role,
but I said that I won’t work with him
“You have a temper and you’d fight
with me and I can’t”
“If it was Othello, I would be Desdemona
and you’d try to suffocate me so I won’t come”
He said it’s totally different now and it’s s comedy
and he was totally right
I was the last one to play in the series
after Mr. Mehdi Hashemi who played the role of my brither
And I wasn’t at Iran at that time
They’d say that TV ask about you saying that
you are not even here
You should talk to her first and see
if she’d accept
When I was the last one to sign my contract
and I started to work
It was a very enjoyable work to do
with a beautiful script
The dialogues were very rhythmic,
therefor noone could do improvisation
As it was like a poem
We went to Ghazali Cinema Town for
filming before the Eid holiday
We filmed most of the scenes there
But the TV stopped broadcasting it
in Eid holidays
I asked Mr. Fathi about it and he said
it’s all because of you
“What do you mean?”
Then I found out that they are kidding
You were Ghodsi then and now Shamsi Palang,
acted like a hooligan
You and Shohreh Lorestani
“Now they’ve stopped it”
which was a joke of course
The reason was that they said you are promoting hooliganism
The woman is a lumpen
Sayin that she should be married and
should be a housewife
Suddenly all of the cast and crew who were there
shouted “No! Please don’t make her get married”
And she should change her clothes and take off the overcoat
and should put on a proper dress
In the end, we kindda changed her, of course
she didn’t get married
but changed her style and my brother, Mehdi Hashemi,
would have a child and I hug his baby in the end
We spent our whole time in the Ghazali cinema town
before the Eid and even had the new year night in there
and we weren’t with our family for the new year night
To make it ready and broadcast it in Eid
But they said that it’s the holiday and everyone is off
and the managers are at their home
I asked if it’s possible, you mean they put it
on auto and lef?
For sure there is someone at the TV
who is responsible
But we didn’t succeed. After that we had some meeting
which led to broadcasting it after the Eid
I was at “Hamaseye Ard” when Mr. Mir-Bagheri
called me saying that he needs me
I always wanted to work with Mr. Mir-Bagheri and
was wondering why we haven’t worked before
As I’ve been good at working in historical projects
He said that Gohar come and join us as now that
we are watching the few first episodes of this series
it hac become very masculine
I said that you want to just use me to have a woman in there too,
what am I supposed to do?
He said it’s gonna be alright and
he created a role for me
I said that I haven’t read any part of this series
which you’ve been making for ten years
What’s its story?
He said that Omar is in love with your role
Maybe they were lying to make me accept it
and maybe she was only a maid
And you should come and play this role
And I was on a wheelchair after my diseases and
appendicitis which was from my work at “Hamaseye Ard”
I went to Ghazali Cinema Town
They did my makeup and put on very beatiful
headpieces which were historical
They made a pickle house and said that these
scenes will be divided between the five first episodes
You are gathering news and letters
of a love affair from here
I said that I want to shout a “Kel” for their wedding here
Mr. Mir-Bagheri got excited and said “Great”
“Get the camera up there and shoot Gohar spinning in here and shouting”
They got camera upstairs and I started to “Kel”
with those beautiful historical dresses
which were for the maid or Omar’s lover or whatever
with very beautiful colors
I spinned and shouted and acted like
I no longer have a backache
Like I didn’t have appendicitis and
like I’m completely healthy
When I got into my role it was like there’s nothing wrong
They had put some lumbers there and I’d look through them like this saying my dialogues
And camera would turn around me
I used that closed space in ways that
Mr. Mir-Bagheri was very much pleased with
I’d repeat his dalogues and play
In fact, I confess that I didn’t know anything
abou the story
They just gave me the dialogues and
told me what my role was
And when the first four episodes got aired
everyone was surprised that Gohar had played in “Mokhtarnameh”
In these four or five episodes that were broadcated,
these parts were so matched with the rest
that I can’t believe Mr. Mir-Bagheri had
added them later
Part 15
Mr. Hatamikia sai that he wants to conclude some
episodes into one film named “Invitation”
When he told me about the general concept
of the script, I recommended some stuff to do about the character
and even some recommendation about the scene.
He was very please with them
And we collaborated on the script and developed it together
And well, sometimes I interfered like always
even in mise-en-scène, acting and more
But I enjoyed this collaboration so much
Most of the times, the scenes we had designed
for this woman was very interesting and spectacular
Even the behinde the scene was great too
For instance, the first time that we are at Imamzadeh
and my children are around me at a friend’s grave
We are there and we want to start acting
Her cell phone starts ringing and her children
changed its ring tone to a “Tirum Tirum”
Well it was somehow wiered as we were on a grave
Mr. Hatamikia had changed the atmosphere of sadness
on the grave very good by putting that ring tone later
And I had always joke around while
we were on the set
I would say so many funny stuff as
I was crying in the scene
Even though I was crying, I’d say
funny things too
I am crying for my friend
“Come get the Halva otherwise the flies
would shit on them”
“Don’t be bothered”
Or telling my daughter “Don’t cry for it”
Then Mr. Hatamikia would say “Cut”
and asking what I am doing
I’d say that “Just saying something to have fun a bit,
you can edit it out later”
But the reality is that I’d say it’s just
the reality
The mother would ask them to get the Halva so
that the flies won’t sit on it
In fact we’d finish all the scenes in laughter
Specially the scene in which they’d give the news
of my pregnency
And everything would be very ambiguous and funny
The hardest part for me was in a scene
where the camera was in 40 or 50 centimeters of me
I’m on the bed while they inform me
that I am pregnant
I thought that now…
I had the design of my character from before,
defining that she is not very comfortable with her children
Her pregnancy is an issue
Now she has brought her daughter for examinations
in that scene of “Invitation”
Her daughter hears her baby’s heartbeat
Mr. Hatamikia had played a game
by this concept
She asks how old are you and I answer 25. Then she asks
if its your first baby and I say yes
But I sitting there am talking instead
of my daughter and it’s not about me
And there’s a playfulness in this scene that
makes everyone to think I’m 25 and it’s my first baby
And after my daughter is checked and the sex
of the baby is known by Mrs. Katayoun Riahi
After they see the baby on ultrasonography monitor,
her daughter goes out for a while
She tells the doctor that “I Think, I’m pregnant
please do some exams on me”
She puts her on bed as the daughter is out,
then when they hear the baby’s heartbeat
I get both embarressed and surprised
ans also very happy that I can still be a mother
in this age
It was such a strane feeling when I could express
these feelings together with such close camera distance
It was offhand for me too
and I didn’t have such experience before
It happened in a moment and got recorded
And I remember that Mr. Ahmad Talebinejad
wrote about this scene
And critics and the jury had all noticed
this scene particularly
and also the scene where I hug the tree
and say
When this tree is fruitful, everyone gets happy
but when I get pregnant, I should be embarrassed
How unfortunate you are
And the scenes where she has a craving
and eats pickles
And her life story got very interesting
with the help of Mr. Hatamikia
and also with the recommendations that I made
which didn’t existed in the script
And I got the award for best leading female actor
for this film at Khane Cinema Ceremony
The resault of this collaboration was a concept
that Mr. Hatamikia had as “The Lady of Our City”
He wrote the script of “The Lady of Our City”
and sent me the script to US
I’d talk with him over the phone
and I’d read the script and think abou it
I liked it very much
I came to Iran. We were supposed to work on the script together.
I gave him my recommendations and notes on the script to him
He accepted them very patiently saying that
we would do something about it together
He even suggested some actors to play in it
and I invited some
He asked me to give the script to Mr. Kianian and see
what he think about it, but if he doesn’t like it don’t tell him that I know
I gave it to Mr. Kianian but he said “No” and told me
not to act in either as it’s just a monotone story and not interesting
although my role was in center nothing iteresting happens
in the story, but I liked the role very much
I ask Mrs. Merila Zare’i to play the role
of my secretary too
And I even suggested to invite Mrs. Roya Teymourian
As if this woman wants to establish a place
to help youngsters to find spouses
and she establishes a marriage counseling office
I even went to a place which was for pre-marriage counsuling
and talked to some consultants there
I even had some sessions there to
learn about being a counsultant
And they tested a makeup design
which was a great job by Mrs. Mahin Navidi
A white skin and colored lenses,
a religious lady with white face like moon
and colored eyes, It was a very good mkeup
Mr. Hatamikia came and really got happy
by my makeup
We even filmed in a placed that Mr. Shah Ebrahimi
had selected as a location
After that we went to sign the contract
but I couldn’t deal with Mr. Pir Hadi, the producer
And somehow I quit the job
I like Mr. Samadi very much
We worked on “A Non-profit Police Station”
with Mr. Morteza Ahmadi and other guys
as a matter of fact my daughter, Azadeh, also played in it
It was a children movie
And Mr. Samadi would patiently accept the suggestions
tha I made about the work
and he agreed with them patiently
I only worked with Mr. Bijan Birang one time
and the name of the series was “Like a Cedar”
There was a part in it named “Mother”
It was “Maman Mahi”
It was at Ghazali Cinema Town which would
made me crazy again
I did “Mokhtarnameh”, “Pahlavi Hat”,
“White Forehead” as VervereJadoo
and even “Tears and Smiles” was
at Ghazali town too
I was sick of that lonf distance, hot and cold weather,
flies and lack of a proper toilet
It was very hard for me to go to Ghazali
Cinema Town again
They said that “We have created a place in there
just like behinde war frontline
“It’s a castle” of course its tower
and castle is still there and people use it
You go there looking for your son and
you’d go through a corridor of green cedars
And Mr. Birang has such a sweet and eloquent
talent for writting
I was one the guest actors who would
act in a particular episode
The series was stopped for a while and they said if you want to
continue making it you should prepare a good story
So the story of “Maman Mahi” got
into the series, “Like a Cedar”
Mrs. Laleh Eskandari is a nurse there and
her husband, played by Pejman Bazeghi, is a war commander
And Maman Mahi would go and help them there.
She starts farming in the houses there
To grow eggplants, tomatos and vegetables
in the middle of war
or she’d gather medicinal plants
to help the injured and sick soldiors
And she and a war commander fall in love
with eachother
And as they want to get married in there,
they get hit by a bomb and die
A mortar would hit them both
It was a very interesting series too
which got unkindly unnoticed by the TV
I played for Mr. Saeed Soltani in “Setayesh”
and “Rendezvous at Dawn”
“Rendezvous at Dawn” had a very interesting script
and there were many good actors in it
And Dr. Azizi played the role of my husband
And it’s about recolution days in which
students are politically active in the university
It was a very beautiful work and Mr. Saeed Soltani’s
morality was one of the thing that made me so eager to work with him again
Untill they came for me for the series, “Setayesh”
Zafroon Baji is a crazy woman
who is kind of a Bohlool
Although everyone thinks that she is crazy,
she understands everything
and she guides everyone by her words
She talks about basics of life when
she starts talking
I was playing along Mr. Mashayekhi and
I really liked that work
And many liked it too
I would sing some poems offhand
Mr. Motalebi had written the script
very very popular
Maneli Shojaei, a fine small girl knocks
the door of our house
Saying that “Miss. I am Maneli Shojaei.
And her husband is a very professional
director of photography
She said that me and husband want to
make a movie which I direct and he would film
I didn’t give her too much attention just
like all of the people who cometo my house
and want me to play in their films
and want to direct their own movies.
It wasn’t that serious for me
But when I read the script, I saw that
it’s a very deserving script
Then I asked her if they’d let her
direct this film
She said that they have told her
to omit a lot of parts
I asked her who she candidated to play in it
She started giving names one after another,
Hedieh Tehrani, Mr. Kianian and Modiri…
In fact when I decided that I like the script and accepted to
play in it, I started negotiating with people myself
I told him that if you don’t have a producer,
I’d try to find you one
I called Mr. Modiri and told him that he should come and play
He said “I swear to God, I don’t have any time as
I have accepted a night and day job at TV”
“And I don’t have any time left to
come and play anywhere else”
I said okay but what else can you
do to help this girl
He said that I can introduce her to one of the producers
from Golrang that are my sponsors now
The film got made by their little budget
And this girl showed how deserving she is
with that powerful script of hers
But Mrs. Tehrani couldn’t come
And one of the episodes of this story
is about my character
In which Mr. Afshin Hashemi, a great cinema and theatre actor plays too
and Mrs. Soheyla Razavi plays the role of my daughter
They were my playmates
And I’m a grandmother who lives with
her daughter in the home
ans she is kind of a comfortable person
And she has a kidney problem, therfore she goes
to toilet over and over to relieve herself
And she had shown these stuff
as it really is
“Oh! Oh! I should go to WC”
“I’m pissing myself”
That’s how real and comfortable this movie is
And such a great makeup
And I got in the spotlight of critics again
and they applauded me very much
As it turned out to be a very good script
Specially the episode that I play in
and I like it very much
And I feel that I did a very good job
playing a very believable role in it
And it turned as a very good comedy
Part 16
Mr. Hamdi Ebrahimi was an actor with whom
I played in “Once Upon a Time, Abadan” play
when I was banned to act in cinema and TV
After that he asked me if I’d play in
a film he’s about to make and I said yes
He made a comedy named, “Dear Uncle, Hitler”
Which is didtributed on disks for home video
Another one is “Made in Iran” directed by
Mr. Hossein Latifi
Which is again for home video distribution
We were supposed to shoot it at France but
dollar and euro got more expensive so we went to Lebanon
and we filmed it at Lebanon
I liked that role very much and tried to improvise
for that part as much as possible
and when I got very tired of the circumstance at Lebanon,
I wrote that the old lady goes to Iran with her grandchild
Mr. Latifi didn’t get sad over it as he invited a new writer
to continue writing with Mr. Hayai and Mr. Golzar
That was an dashing and popular series too
Me and Jamshid knew Hossein Soheili Zadeh
since he was an assistant director
Before inviting me for “Eve’s Daughters”,
we had been neighbours at Ekbatan for years
One day he called me and said that “I am the producer of a film
named “Eve’s Daughters” and I want you to play in it”
The story of the series is about some girls
wh had been changed when they were born
Now we want to tell them who their real parents are
What should we do? It totally wrong
The poor won’t go to the rich and the rich
won’t go back to the poor family, so what should we do?
I told them this is what I’m going to do
I’m gonna play a flashback scene for you
and it tells the story of the nurse
who is in love with a doctor but he won’t marry her,
and marries the daughter of hospital director, played by Iraj Rad
She changes the doctor’s daughter as
she is angry with him
But the nurses see her doing it through the glass
and they would return the babies after her
Therefore nothing has actually changed
He got so happy
and told Mr. Alizadeh “I got saved, Gohar has a solution,
but don’t tell anybody till we shoot it”
As I played the story and we got to the flashback
where she changes the babies
Another nurse sees her and returns
the babies
Later when she is hospitalized and wants to confess ,
she says that she had changed the babies
but the nurse comes to the court and
says that she had returned them
A sweet memory that I have from working on “Eve’s Daughters”
is that in the scene that she dies
I had many snacks around my bed
Now they have to cover her with the sheet
and she should be dead
Now, I’d offer them the snacks and as they’d say death,
I’d act like I’m dead
And sometimes there are remain of the snacks
inside my mouth
I could say that our behinde the scene is sometimes
more popular and interesting that what’s shown on the screen
As they’d say “Death”, I’d act like I’m dying
although there are remains of alamond or raisens
are inside my mouth
I played as a grandmother in Mr. Mohammad-Ali Talebi’s
work, “The Meadow”
I spoke Lurish so good at Malayer
I praise myself because they said
that you are a Lur but wouldn’t tell us the truth
I said okay, I am Lur but as I’d been to city for a long time,
you should help me to get better at speaking Lurish
I have chosen a very beautiful accent
and voice for the old woman
With a voice from my diphragm as they are
in the plains and not like Mahin Banoo
I used a little sharp voice, a little like “The Lady”
but not like “Nane Atieh”
In “Low Heights”, Nane Atieh had a bass and loud voice
But she goes like this
“Ghaem come here”
It’s a little sharper unlike Nane Atieh
who goes
“Ghaem you got addicted”
The way she says “Ghasem” is from the diaphragm
and kindda of a bass voice
But I added a sharpness to her voice, showing
she is an old woman whose voice has gotten scratchy
Meaning whose castle is it?
I succeeded in pronouncing the words correctly
so much that they’d thought I was a Lur
We went to bazr at Malayer for shopping as
the next morning I was coming back home
We didn’t sleep till we had night shift
We worked all night in the desert
We shivered till morning in the tents and
played in front of the camera
And in the morning I ate breakfast and gathered my stuff
and rode with a driver toward Ghazali Cinema Town
I took a short nap on the way and then I got to
the Ghazali Town for “Kolah-e Pahlavi”
A lady had worn my coat, hat and gloves sitting there
as the camera is on a crane till I get there
From night shift at Malayer to filming “Kolah-e Pahlavi” series
The moment I got there, now everyone is right there,
they said that we filmed the longshot and ready for the closeup
I went to have my makeup in a hurry
and sat ready for shooting
And the makeup by Mrs. Mahin Navidi
was a masterpiece
As I wanted to talk, Mr. Ziaeddin Dorri, the director said
Gohar’s light is not good, there’s a black thing on her tooth
They checked and found out the makeup from the old lady
at Malayer who had a bad tooth is left
They cleaned it by polish
It was around noon that I saw someone sent
by Mr. Mir-Bagheri and Mr. Eskandari
Suddenlt I remembered…
that I have shooting for “Mokhtarnameh” at night
Have you ever seen anything like this?
From Malayerian old woman to Mehr Afarin of “Kolah-e Pahlavi”
Ant then “Mokhtarnameh” with that difficult makeup
I said “God no! I had night shift and now I’m here..”
but there was no way out
I like “Azar, Shahdokht, Parviz And Other”
very much, Mr. Behrouz Afkhami was the director
and his wife, Mrs. Shirmohammadi, had written the story
and Mr. Afkhami turned it into a script
I have many interesting and bitter memories from this work
In fact, I had a very very troubling accident
in “Azar, Shahdokht”
We were riding on a chinese car which
was a sponsor of the film
Mr. Fakhimzadeh was playing the role of my husband
and I was supposed to play in two roles
My role’s sister too
I had played some of the scenes and now I was playing
the sister who was on the car, I wasn’t the wife of Mr. Fakhimzadeh
Mr. afkhami asked me to give him my coat as
they were going to shoot Mr. Fakhimzadeh and I wasn’t in the frame
The camera was on the hood and I was on the backseat
sitting beside the sound recordist saying my dialogues
A black fabric was on him, with one hand I had the fabric
and the other the dialogues and my head was down not wearing seatbelt
As Mr. Fakhimzadeh plays the role of and actor
and late on I become an actoress too
A pickup is supposed to pass by and the driver
should say hi to Mr. actor
The camera is recording Mr. Fakhimzadeh
and wants to film the driver too
They won’t block the road on the opposite direction
so a car comes from ahead of us
We hit it head to head and
I’d get thrown away
And my head tears open and
blood spills everywhere
And Mr. Sadatian’s son, the photographer,
takes a photo that distributes everywhere
And everyone hear about it
And my crown tears open and my
collarbone breaks
I’d get thrown away to the back of the car
and my shoulder breaks into five pieces
My knee gets hurt
My lung gets perforated and
my rib breaks
Then again when they want to put me on bed
at the hospital, the stretcher slips and I fall
and my spinal cord gets hurt like the rest
Al these injuries happened to me
at that work
I never wanted to magnify what happened to me,
I never wanted to talk about these stuff
I just though that it was an accident,
who should we blame and who shouldn’t
Should we blame production crew cause
they didn’t blocked the road? The accident has already happened
It’s the patience that I’ve discovered
in this age
I didn’t want to make a big deal of it.
We didn’t send any news to anyone
And miraculouslym Dr. Masoud Fakheri visited me
and told me a big lie
He ask why I was lying down and
I had been fastened
I couldn’t caugh or laugh , I could do nothing
My rib was broken and they would have
empty my lung water everyday
My head and my shoulder is bandaged
Every is bandaged except my hand and
this leg even though my knee was hurt
He said it impossible for you to be lied down,
he asked for a scissors and ripped open all the bandages
He said that it’s not the way it should be,
your broken hand should be here not there
ans you can’t do anything for your rib
He ripped open all the bandages
He hung something from my knech to
hold my hand
And said you should stand up and walk now
“How long you want to lie down
and let them empty your lung water
You should stand up, it’s enough
I aske if I won’t need anyone to help me walk
and he said “No”
In fact It was like I was dying when
I tried to stand up and took a step
And I was crying and
asking if it was for real
Later he told me that it was a lie.
The pain was too much
I think it made your blood circulation to start
and it made you believe that you can
And as I knew you I thought this
empathy could make you alive
I endured with tranquilizers and morphine
I didn’t accept to have a surgery on my collarbone
I stayed for twenty something days at home
which helped my rib to heal itself
Then I continued to act in the film
When we were shooting closeups I’d hang my arm
and in the longshots I’d slowly open my arm
And in the scene where I’m sitting on a chair
and my daughter who had came back from abroad wants to kiss me
I couldn’t move with the pillows there but…
I like you to see the scene in which my daughter
come and I talk to her
She loves her daughter and when her daughter
come and sees her sitiing there
I really hug her with difficulty not to ruin the act
It’s a very beautiful script
And I remember that year which the jury
consisted of Mr. Ayari and some other dears
This film won many awards like directing, screenplay and more
And later the critics gave me an award for this film
After “The Fifth Reaction”, I worked with Mrs. Milani
again on “Cease Fire 2”
One day she asked me to go to her and
I read the script and went there
I really liked this woman’s character
I said that I’d adopt a Shirazi accent for the role
And I’d make up a background for her in which
she had a husband who knew English
Therefore she had learn a little English
And in most scenes I relate the incidents
to things that had happened at Shiraz
One day I went to their office and suddenly
started to say my dialogues
I said that I like to change her name to Noghreh
And the way we deisigned her character was,
when she enters a room she’d be like
Mary Poppins, with her umbrella, dress and hat
suddenly appears behind their door
And she suddenly enters without saying “Hello”,
they’d open the door and she says
“I’m Noghreh. My mother had many babies
who all died at birth…”
She talks non-stop
“THey all died at birth and when I got born
my mother went to Bibi Zeynabieh
Now where is Bibi Zeynabieh?
It’s a small Imamzadeh nea my Mom’s house at Shiraz
And its finials are made of silver which
is the meaning og Noghreh, they are not golden
It’s small minarets are made of silver
When she enters the house she starts
talking non stop to the ladies and she talks a little English too
“Nice to meet you”
She says that she is Noghreh
Noghreh Shirazi
I somehow compiled Shiraz into Noghreh
and also named myself Noghreh
“I’m Noghreh Shirazi,
neci to meet you”
Talking to the gentlemen, Englesh, Farsi and Shirazi
“When all of my mother’s babies died,
she made a vow that if God gave her a child”
“She would make silver minarets for Bibi Zeynabieh”
“That’s how my name turned out to be Noghreh,
I’m Noghreh Shirazi”
In fact I talked non stop
Suddenly Mrs. Milani sat behine her typewritter
and started to type whatever
she liked among my suggestions and add it to the character
And also when we were on the set,
I’d make many suggestions
and I’d show my funny side to them
And all the crew and Mr. Kalari as director
of photography would laugh
Specially the part where I’d open the refrigerator and want the master to…
In fact Mrs. Milani said that they had a maid who
would serve the master but not the lady
Now the lady have had cold and they go to the refrigerator
and as they both go, they struggle along the way
Part 17
I always followed Mr. Jozani’s works
and I always admired him
Lately he asked me to play in “Iran Burger”
and said we have a Nane Nabat role which want you to play it
They were supposed to have a partnership with Mr. Shayesteh
but in the middle of the work, Mr. Jozani was forced to make it on his own
so they asked everyone to come and renew
their contracts as they wanted to make the movie
Mr. Nasirian and all of us stayed by Mr. Jozani’s side
and I tried to find a sponsor for them
Bartar food company became the sponsor
as I knew Mr. Ali Okhovat and we were close
And I talked to the company to bring some money
and also advertise your production in the film too
As we had lots of cooking and food in the scenes
The story was about election and everyone
was cooking food in their home and throw parties to get the votes
So we told them that you can bring in your productions
and I found a cook too
I found a cook who liked to act in a film
so I told him that I’d ask Mr. Jozani to give you a part
Of course they gave him a the part of a camera assistant,
and he;d bring his restaurants food for the crew
and I think they dealt very well with Mr. Jozani
When I went to US, I tried to provide screening
opportunity for the film with Mr. Okhovat
It was a very beautiful movie
I have many good memories from that work
and where we were shooting was in a Imamzadeh near Tehran
We had very good times with the natives
The set and decor design was very beautiful which
was done by Mr. Mirfakhraei
He had beautifully built half a village in there
And I was so happy to work with Mr. Nasirian
again, also everyone else in our crew
Specially Mohsen Tanabandeh who
is a very talented young man
I like that movie very much too
And I think it was a best selling film too
When Mr. Abolhassan Davoodi wanted to make
“Crazy Rook”, he told me it’s just a small role
I accepted and we gathered and talked
and I gave him a small suggestion that he liked
Saying that this character can’t tolerate light
very well and uses eye lenses
Then he mixed my suggestion with his thoughts
and wrote a very interesting scene
And I went and shoot the scene in one day and done
And it was after sometimes since his last work
and it brought him the best directing award
And it was a very well made movie
I knew Tina Pakravan from “Kolah-e Pahlavi”
and even before that, a very intelligent girl
And she was the programmer and assistant director
for Mr. Ziaeddin Dorri
During the ten years that making of “Kolah-e Pahlavi” took
we developed a family like relationship and Tina was like my daughter
The first film that Tina directed, “Khanoom”,
I liked it very much which Amin Hayai also played in it
Then another script that she wrote was “It Happened at Midnight”
She came to me and said that she wants me
to play the role of Hamed Behdad’s sister
who murdered women in his taxi
“Night Bat”
The story was somehow about him
and Mrs. Roya Nonahali is his wife
who now lives in a garden which is a kitchen
in which they cook for both funerals and weddings
And as my character doesn’t have a child,
Hamed Behdad is like the child she has raised
Long story short, he falls for that woman
and I won’t let him go for her as I know her history
I know her and she has a child
I tell him that you don’t know who she is
and why don’t you marry a girl, why this woman?
The woman worked at the kitchen too
This love affair continues untill her child kills
my brother and I don’t know
There’s a scen where they come to see me
I told Tina that when I read this part last night
I decided to play it this way
and if you didn’t like it you can edit it out
I’d do whatever you want.
I rehearsed it last night and I want to say
that I want to dance in his wedding
She said “No! Please don’t even mention dancing”
“It’s a tragic scene and if you say dancing
it might turn into a comedy”
I said that I’d perform it for you and if you
didn’t like it you can say “Cut” any time you want
It not like you record on negative,
we can always repeat it in another way
And when I played in the scene where Mrs. Nonahali
whose son had killed my brother who was like a son to me
And I’ve been opposing them to gt married untill now
Now he is dead.
And they have planted flowers all over the garden
Now I tell Mr. Atila that you have planted flowers
everywhere for Hossein
And in the end when Roya and her son
come to see me, I start crying
And when I see her son, I tell her that I wish
you have your son’s wedding ceremony and I come dance in it
When I say these dialogues and cry very hard
and talk about dancing and become bewitched and cry
Well, It was a very long dialogue
I talked for a long time, but Tina Pakravan wouldn’t say “Cut”
I keep crying and didn’t hear her saying “Cut”,
at last I stopped myself and saw
that she is cryng behind the monitor and can’t say “Cut
Then she came and kissed me and I told her that
if I suggest this I know with experience that it works
And that’s why I suggest her to say to the other woman
“I hope you celebrate your son’e wedding”
“I hope I come and dance in his wedding”
It’s not supposed to be rhythmic or happy,
she says it as she’s crying and filled with sadness
She make everyone cry so hard with her dialogue
and I also got affected by it very much
Mrs. Negar Azarbayjani told me that they are making
a film about organ recipients and there’s a role
It’s the story of people who had organ transplantation
and now have somebody’s organ in their body
Each story is about one of them
But I wasn’t a organ recipient and
I was a female cab driver
That was an interesting role too
I have worked with Flora Sam on a work she had written named,
“Naz o Niaz” and another film which is not distributed yet
I play the role of an asylum
She had written the script and
it was kind of a cinematic TV series
It was very beautiful
And “We are not angels” was an Eid special
and Family Conspiracy” was also written by her
“Family conspiracy” was very interesting.
I wasn’t in Iran
Mr. Oji had prepared my dress as decided before,
and put it on a couch
And he would send me the pictures
describing the work,saying that I should go to north
and as soon as I get there, they’d film
my part and I can go back very soon
I went there and it was like he said, I did it in the defined period
and it was a very sweet film, I played with Shirazi accent
As Mrs. Flora Sam is also from Shiraz and
we played the roles of Mother and daughter in laws
I had a very sweet experience with them
I called Mr. Kamal Tabrizi to participate in
“Khandevaneh” TV show
as he is someone who has directed lots of beautiful comedies
and he is lovly human being himself
I asked him and Mr. Atila Pesyani
I asked them to participate in this talent show,
as I’ve started from county myself
Some youngsters come in from of and perform
their standup comedy routine
And among one hundred person you might
even choose some for your films
Then Atila said that we won’t give score
at the moment and we secretly give the scores
We accepted and said we won’t have any audience too
We would sit there and let the kid do their routine
and we’d choose twenty between one hundred
Which we did and many of them are still working
and Mr. Kamal Tabrizi worked with some of them too
I wasn’t in Iran, I was at Vancouver
when I had a call from Mr. Varzi
Asking me to play the role of a lady in the Pahlavi periode
who doesn’t leave her house to keep her hijab as she is a believer
I got angry sayin why should this woman do this
Let’s say that this woman is familiar with
Hafez, Molana and Quran
She knows the art of handicrafts
like carpet weaving
She knows an art
Then he told me that we have chosen your daughter,
Azadeh Esmailkhani, to play the role of Mr. Vaziri’s daughter
and you should play her mother and
as I had played the role of mother for many of dears
I said to myself it’s very good to play the role
of my daughter mother too
My daughter didn’t finish her academic education in psychology
and changed her field to graphic design and graduated in it
And then studied acting with my master Mr. Samandarian
I had seen many good work from her in theatre
but she was very strict about acting in TV, she wouldn’t come
I don’t know what Mr. Sharifinia told her with
his magical tongue that made Azadeh to come and play
Then I went and played the role of her mother
They told me the story, it was about the family
of Mr. Vaziri who were in touch with all the artist before the revolution
They were very cultural people, they’s go to theatre.
He was a doctor who had a pharmacy
Their son had studied abroad
ANd the daughter would become a political fighter
besides them
And my role was a religous woman who is optimist
and wants to behave humanely together with her husband
I liked that story very much
The other part of that series was about
historical events of Pahlavi period
Well, whenever we want to make a historical film,
I think as we all have lived in that period
and had also heard about the period before that,
The first Pahlavi, Reza Shah
It would become very hard to work on
First of all I said that I won’t go to the Ghazali
cinema town anymore
I said if one of our religion priciples is purity,
you don’t even have a suitable place as toilet
They said that we have built a mansion for your family
which was very beautiful work by Mr. Peiro
A very big and round yard
A very beautiful mansion with
stairs on both sides
A cellar and a basement. They said that we have built
a clean toilet in that basement too
As Mr. Mashayekhi and many other great actors
were in that work, they’d use that toilet
We are not looking for a luxury toilet but
today everyone has backache or knee problem
Then I saw that the toilet is here and the water
is over there, I asked what was going on?
Anyway they showed me the place and it wasn’t very bad
We tried to have good time together
Although we worked for very long hours at the begining
It was so slow that it was 2 am but
we hadn’t shoot even two dialogues
I said that I can’t go on like this why are you so slow
They said that it’s how they work on historical films
they’d shoot one or two minutes of the film every day
Isaid that we have started early in the morning and
it’s midnight and you haven’t filmed much
But they told me that the director has asked you
no to make any disturbance
All the crew are waiting patiently
I said that everyone might be patient but it’s not
a professional and humane behavior
It’s very difficult to work like this and whenever
I change some dialogues we have problem
You can throw out the dialogues that I wrote
if they were bad
They read them and said it’s not very bad
We had many arguments and issues
so the next day I came and said I won’t continue ike this
Mr. Varzi talked for a long time saying they’d make
the conditions better but I asid that I don’t want to continue
and as you don’t have the script prepared beforehand
I’m afraid to continue like this
They said that they’d write it before hand and prepare it
Long story short, as I saw that even sometimes they’d give us
the script for the scenes right in front of the camera
And the quality supervisor would order us to add somethiing
and omit the other, I couldn’t do it
It was very hard for me
I’d say that, I know about the story
of this woman…
And at first when she is sitting by carpet weaving tool
and her husband comes…
My daughter’s role was from sixteen years oldto forty
But I get tuberculosis and die in the early part of the story
And I was very happy that I’m about to die
and not being forced to go there
Because I thought that it was a great series
in terms of directing, set designing and the rest
The best had gathered there and Mr. Varzi himseld did
a better job in directing that his previous works
It was going on very well except the script
They wanted to give us the scrirp daily
and were putting stuff in it that I wasn’t sure about their truth
Therefore I wasn’t very happy about it
Therefore when I finishe dmy work period,
I didn’t get sad at all
I was happy that I don’t need to go
to Ghazali cinema town anymore
And was happy that I won’t be stressed out by them
giving me the script daily and not knowing what I’m gonna say
As it was the only work that I hadn’t read beforehand
I didn’t know what it was? What we were going to say?
And how it would end?
And I didn’t know that what would happen to the historical story in the end?
The ending of our story was obvious,
I was a woman who would die
But what is the story about in the end?
But as my daughter continue working on it,
got very bad mental injuries
She would call me, Azadeh, telling that
she can’t tolerate it anymore
And would cry so hard
I’d tell her that it’s not professional to just leave
You saw that I got tuberculosishe and died
and that’s how I left
You should continue untill the end
Anyway, she got hurt so much in that work.
Then one day after some conflicts that they had over shooting days
She said that they are taking me to court
I called Mr. Seyfi Azad who is very dear
I said that we have worked ther for years
and my child has worked hard too
And now she she’s gone crazy because of
the circumstances in that work
And you are driving her mad as she is feeling very bad
And do you want to take her to court?
Come get anything that we have. She can’t go there anymore
And she couldn’t tolerate the conditions and
the way they handled the script anymore
For instance the way they had behaved
toward her which wasn’t suitable
And then Mr. Seyfi Azad said that of course
we wouldn’t put her in prison
Excuse me, we wouldn’t take her to court and
we won’t punish her
I said please, you even wanted to punish her?
You don’t even pay on time
You don’t pay for months and say that
TV hadn’t gave us any money
You don’t have a script and bring it daily
And the location is very far
And you have horrible circumstances
with hot and cold weather
My daughter had sty and was dying
She had many siknesses like skin disease
They had shave her eyebrows
She was frustrated
It was such horrible condition
and she’d keep going on
And she’d say that I don’t know what’s going on
in the story and they are bringing it daily
It is very bothersome
And that’s why I told myself that I’d never work
in TV ever again
As I think that playing in TV made us as famous as we are now
And when they asked me to play in “Divar Be Divar” series,
I said okay to Saman Moghadam
And I have such wonderful memory of working
with this dear man and also his crew
On the set of “Divar Be Divar”, my foot slipped
There was a spot where many had fallen from before,
like the producer’s wife and others
And as I have flat sole and they let go of my hand
as I was passing by that spot
I twisted my ankle and fell and I broke
both the bones of both sides of my ankle
I hel my foot up till we got to the hospital
The interns were telling me to stand up and walk
Meanwhile they got my x-ray image on the monitor
and said don’t stand up, her feet has shattered
Now think that they were just telling me
to stand up and walk
In the end they had operated on my foot and I like you
to see the images as the screws are very big
And there was a problem and my foot got infected
and my leg swelled up
I went to US and they checked and said
it was a very bad surgery
And they made a surgery on my ankle and removed
the screw and put new ones
And it’s been five monthes since which
made me very fat as I should sit down
And it’s been very difficult for me
And as I had to walk on my other leg, because of my weight
the other leg had got hurt too
and even though I had many physiotherapy sessions,
I still can’t walk properly when it gets tired
And they said that this pain and the gap can’t
be cured by any prosthesis
And it will be with you forever.
It still is with me and won’t makes me tired
When my leg got hurt and I couldn’t attend the filming sessions,
our crew had posted a video for me on Instagram
It was very interesting
And then when I got back, I invited them all to
have watermelon, cheese and fresh Sangak bread
And then Mr. Prjman Jamshidi started shouting my name
and there was another beautiful post…
Part 18
When I’m offered to work on a script,
if it’s similar to my other work, I won’t do it
They send me many TV script, plays and screenplays
but mostly similar to previous works
No matter how hard I try, it would a duplicate
of the previous one and it won’t be interesting for people
I try to select the different ones because
I don’t want to repeat myseld
Of course, sometimes I tell myself
that “Gohar! Number of the roles of a housewife…
…a teachers or a doctors
might be as much as the people on earth
There are specifications for female doctors,
female teachers and housewives
Then if you are supposed to play
the role of a housewife like in “Donya”
She is a woman who follows her husband
She washes her husbands feet,
she is always obedient
She is always obedient and religious
She has her own sense of religion
She is a mother and she is compassionate,
now…
In “Mive-ye Mamnooe”, Ghodsi
is a principal
She has her own sense of riligion
but she has authority
In a way she is a wife too
She is a woman, wife and mother too
Therefore…
That one is a common housewife and
the other one is an emplyed woman
In “Our Home”, she is a housewife again
but she is different than the woman
which was in “Donya”
The woman in “Donya” was a religious and obedient onew
But this one is a mother who
along her husband they work in education field
and as the husband is working in education
therefore the wife has more knowledge and culture
She wants to have a much more
democratic enviroment in the home
She talks and discuss her views
with her husband
She is not completely obedient
and give comments
So you see that even when they seem
the same, each have different characteristics
For instance, the southern woman
in Low Heights
I have a southern dress, makeup
and accent in “Low Heights”
and as Zeire Madine in Mrs. Milani’s
“The Fifth Reaction”
They are both southern women from
south of Iran
But with two different culture, two sets of body language
and two voice tones and character designs
They are completely different in terms
of point of views and performance
Then I start playing the role of poor women like
Jamileh Geda, Shamsi Palang
THey both might be poor and homeless
But they are not performed the same way
They both may have dirty and sloppy like makeups
but they are played in different ways
Now the rich ones, people who are like
Mrs. Mehr Afarin in “Kolah-e Pahlavi”
Who is the wife of an ambassedor and
her children study in France
This sits beside Mahin Banoo from “Nan va eshgh va motor 1000”
whi is rich too
but they are two completely different characters
Mahin Banoo is from a bourgeois culture which is fading
and she is struggling to preserve her lifestyle
Even though she has a big house and is rich.
It’s different again
I always tried when approaching the characters
don’t use a typical form
And I have tried my best even when my roles are a type,
perform them in a way which is not usual and repetitive
And I have tried to consider some differences in them
I have approached their essemce as a human
to see what color, wat views and characteristics it has
How would a person who is a teacher,
behave in her personal life
How would she behave in her home.
How would she act outside in the society.
Compared with a nurse…
Mostly I read the script several times at home,
then I decide how I would approach the character and think about her clothes
The reason I mention choosinf clothes is that nowadays
it’s become a fashion the producers won’t give any money to costume designers
except in historical projects
And sometimes they come and select some of
my oen clothes and use them
I think about what she would wear, how she would walk
and what she would do
I think about all of this in my mind and
I think about it
And suddenly I’d find the right one with a spark
and sometimes I perform it at home for my daughter
My only teacher is my daughter. My first audience
for each part is my daughter
Even when she is not in Iran, I’d record my performance
and senf it to her and she criticize it
and tells me if it’s a repeat of another role
They would correct me and I correct it myself
Then I go to set and perform it
Before acting a role, I never try to decide the way
I’m gonna perform it
I think about all of it’s dimensions
But acting in front of camera or while practising
I show what I want to perform
Suddenly and improvisation.
I decide if it’s good or bad
These are conclusion of my views and heard
When I observe people closely in the society
And when I pass by our house I count each tree
And I can say which shape they take in the fall and winter
I take a look at our alley and our yard and
observe these acacias to see what color they become in each season
And I even count stairs of our house
I always watch and observe and I always tell my students
in my classes that watching is important
Observing volumes and lines on face of a peddler
Observing its behavior and body language
Behavior of a salesman, a nurse,…
When I go to a hospital I observe very well
They all settle in my mind. I understand them.
I take notice to them
And when I want to play a character or I need
to choose a type of person
I perform them using those settled memories
whih is seen by me and known to me
And sometimes they are tangible and
exist in the our society
and sometimes they don’t cause some characters
are very imaginary and don’t exist in the world
In fact I perform these characters
and express them
Sometimes I perform a couple of types of characters
and ask them if these are good or bad
If they are close to the role they’d accept it
and if it’s not, they’d reject it
Somtimes they don’t know if you are acting
or it is the real you
Although I can honestly tell you that
it is always the real me
Really, sometimes the border between imaginary
and real life fades away for me
Like when I was playing in “Joan of Arc”
written by Mohammad Rahmanian
Late Mohammad Dilmaghani was my university professor
She is crazy woman, in Buchenwald concentration camp
She tells herself that I’m biting my nails…
She screams. She has gone mad.
They had hung her friend in front of her
The play is so bitter and horrible that was making
myself going crazy
Mr. Dilmaghani told me that it would drive
you mad in the end
You would become like Vivien Leigh
in “A Streetcar Named Desire”
that the actress goes mad and they’d take her to an asylum
You’d be like that
And I’ve always said that I can do it,
I won’t mix them up
But in reality…
Whether in the university when I was working on “The Visit” and
Mr. Samandarian gave me the part of Claire Zachanassian
that I was going crazy then and also while
playing in “Joan of Arc”
I was performin it at home and fell. My daughter came
to help me stand up but saw me saying my dialogues still
She said that “Are you still saying dialogue or have you fallen?”
I don’t know if we should help you or not
When you say “Don’t touch me”, we don’t know if it’s you who fell
or it’s Claire Zachanassian
I’d say that it’s real me and
I’m in pain, come help me
She said that I don’t understand anymore
As you are acting so naturally and expressing her anguish
and pain perfectly in our home
That we don’t know anymore
Suddenly she would come and
ask me what happened?
And I’d say that I’m practicing, don’t you
come here and ruin my concentration
But when I’d fall and ask for help,
no one would come to my help either
I remember when I was practicing for this role
and we were living at Ekbatan
Esmailkhani’s cousin was our guest
And I was practicing for the role of Claire Zachanassian
Believe me when I tell you that when I fell in the kitchen
and screamed for help, shouting “Why don’t you help me?”
They told me that you were just shouting to your assistant
why don’t you bring my artificial leg? Come and help me
“We thought that you are rehearsing your dialogues”
“I’m screaming and asking for help,
come help me”
And when we went to location for shooting Mr. Masumi’s film
and I was rehearsing the dialogues of Claire Zachanassian in the fog
suddenly the fog becam thinner and I saw the whole crew
is right there watching me
They said that we thought you were practicing the role
of that rural woman
We thought that you are playing it madly
As I was playing the role of a rural woman who
is the mother of a boy, wearing native head piece
but I was rehearsing the role of Claire Zachanassian
from “The Visit” written by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
which is in German and my master, Mr. Samandarian
have translated it
It was totally different that that rural woman
And I was speaking with Claire’s voice
“Here is Güllen” with a voice that so loud in the plains
so different than that rural woman
When the fog got thinner, I saw everuone’s
laughing out loud
I remember when I did an angiography as
there was a problem with my heart
They’d use a big vein in the leg for angiography
and I had to put a sand bag on my leg
I didn’t want my master to know that I did it
In fact I didn’t take much time off and
didn’t take care of myself very well
I should have had a limp for my role as most of Claire Zachanassian’s
body is artificial cause she had fallen from a plane
She a limp and has artificial parts
At that time because of the angiography
my limp was more than we intended
And I had to wear a shoe with a bit of heel
to make a knocking sound when walking
That’s how she enters and says
“Here is Güllen”
Using a roaring voice “Here’s Güllen “
When we were working on the play,
I had more limp than intended so he shouted at me “Gohar!”
“Why are you acting with so much exaggeration?
I asked for a bit of limping”
I quickly apologized
He burst into laughter and said
“Look at her. That’s how she is, what more can I say?”
Later when he found out that I had an angiography
and my leg was really in a lot of pain
And believe me that I’d prefered to die
but be able to limp less”
And I’d held the sand bag
You shouldn’t move at all after the surgery,
you rest at home
Many dangerous stuff
I remeber that he had heard about it and called me
“Are you crazy? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell me that you forgive me”
He asked for forgiveness several times
And I was wondering what to tell him
I said that please stop saying that
But then he asked for forgiveness again
I said “What are you talking about?”
He said that “I heard you had an angiography,
why didn’t you stay at home?”
And he cried on the phone and
made me cry too
I said that it about the past and it’s not important
“How much madness?” he said
“And I shout at you and
you appologize and continue to work?”
“You should have just told me that you had
an angiography and had an open wound”
He was very sad. I don’t forget it
When I would come back at the end of the play,
the audience would clap a lot for me
Maybe the reason was that they knew
me from somewhere else
And it was somehow new for them
with that makeup
with those red hairs
Mrs. Sara Eskandari, the sister of Laleh Eskandari
did a beauriful job on makeup for everyone
But Mr. Samandarian came and said
“Who are these clappers that you invite?”
“Are they your students? Where do you find them?”
“I swear, I didn’t. Even when one of my friends
wanted to see the play, I had to buy a ticket in black market”
I never invite anyone
Because my friend ask to come and watch the play
but I noticed that the tickets are all sold
Someone told me that they are selling tickets
at the door twice its price
I said okay, I’d even trade you another day ticket too,
just let them sit in front as they have brought a big flower basket too
“And who do I know to invite?”
I was so heart broken and cried a lot
And then he said that you won’t be the last one to come
You’d come right before Payam
When I start a job, I should go till the end
I won’t be able to undersell it and should do my best
I said to myself lots of time that I wish I could let
go of acting and sit on couch and watch TV like normal people
To have my normal holidays and fridays
To be able to watch sunshine by the window at my own home
When we go to work at 5 am, there’s no sun,
and I’d go back at night in the dark
And if I’m working on night shift,
I’d sleep in the morning and won’t see the morning sunshine
As I should sleep till noon
And the hardship of our work for me is both
refining and painful
Sometimes it’s so hard and painful that I decide
to leave it forever
But then again when I see people and they
say that it’s so lonf since they’d seen me on TV
Or say that they like to watch me on the screen
I’m not saying that I do it only for poeple, no
I, myself, think that the jon that I have pusuited,
the job that I have chosen instead of being a doctor or a teacher
Or instead of being a nurse that I was
certified to study it
Now that I have chosen this job, I want to leave
a work and a good name and ending
Therefore whenever I forget about my purpose
I’d be reminded by seeing our dear people
who are so kind to me
And after a while I’d be bored again and
work on films, series or radio again
I have proved that money was never my criteria in choosing a job
I’d sign a blank contract without haggling as I’ve always done
They say that when it’s blank, you’d make
our responsibility heavier
I’d say okay but I am saying that I’m
ready and I want this role
And I’d perform it with everything that I have
I have always said that, the mst valuable word for me
in my life is “Human”
I think that human and being human is a manifest
and if you are a human you won’t be able to bully
If you are a human, you won’t be able to steal
You won’t be able to undersell your part
You won’t be able to do extortion
If you are a human, you need to behave democratically
You won’t be a warmonger
You won’t be able to rob other’s property
This view on humanity would have lots
of subcategories which refines you
to become a mirror so that when you play
people be able to see themselves in it
And you would become those characters, materialized
But being a person who believes this humane view
Is something that I’ve been thinking about for years
and tried to adopt in life
Tried to have a humane point of view and
have tried to behave humanely
My conflict isbetween me as an actor
and me, myself
Gohar Kheirandish and the actor
Between me as Kheirandish
and me as an actor. It’s always there
That Gohar, what do you wanna do with these roles
Now, the script that they gave you, is it in accordance
with your believe and view?
Is it good enough or are you getting thick skin
like a rhino
And if you are forgetting who you are and
how you should behave
or if you have become like that frog who would
jump out of hot water
but if you warm it up slowly, it would remain
there and gets baked and won’t jump out
Gohar! What are you doing with yourself, your ideas, you life and your legacy?
As someone who had followed what she believed in
On one hand there is financial issues and life incidents
What is your choice?
Then the actor gets the upper hand and
wants to play the role
SAying what a wonderful role and it’s different
and the money is alo good
So this side gets out
And on the other hand there is the Gohar that is
supposed to have a clean essence of existence
And she should keep correcting her mistakes
and cleaning the stain till her crystalized existence become clean
I remeber that whenever I wanted to tell my kids
not to lie, I’d show them a clean crestal cup
Now dirty up your hand and touch it
or for each lie drop a black stone in it
You took your sister’s doll,
a yellow stone
You fought with your sibling,
a purple stone
I’d drop dirty thing in it one by one
Then I’d ask them when drinkin water
which cup do you use? this one or a clean one?
Now what should you do?
Throw out the stone which was for lying
Throw out the dirty paper which
was for pulling your sister’s hair
Now clean up the parts you have touched with your
dirty hands and polish it with a fabric
Now you see that you can compensate for
you mistakes
You can change
You can throw them out and go kiss your brother
or sister and tell them you are sorry
You can return their book
Doing this with kids even from their chilhood
And it was a reminder for me too,
to correct myself
Even your relationships in life. You may have problems
with you mother, sister or husband. You should fix them
Like a play or a movie
That you can rewind them, it’s all possible
except death
I have fixed my life many times like this
Esmailkhani and me never broke up once, you can
ask all our friends, not even for a minute
We would fight, a lot, but
we never broke up for even a minute
Either he was wrong or me,
we would have fixed it among ourselves
We would never stay angry at each other
and we would fix it
And there was only his death that I couldn’t rewind
Part 19
During our studies, there were many strictures
And the teacher’s methods
might have been a little old
But as the students of that period
have become the shining start of today
They have become knowledgable and wise
by means of study as Hānībāl Alkhās our great painter
whose some of beautiful
paintings are in my house
He said that artists should look for knowledge
everywhere and learn from everything
Learn a little about music
A little about painting
Learn about architecture
In addition to their own field
He’d say that they should have general knowledge
about these even if they won’t become pros in them
Don’t have just one side,
like a doctor who’s just a doctor
Be like Mr. Saedi who was a doctor
and also a playwriter
The last generation were disciplined
and had started their work
in a master and disciple relation
They have many spectacular
works in their records
And we also follow them
But today’s generation is
a generatiion that don’t study much
I think, they hardly sit and read
Hafez, Ferdowsi, Molana, Shakspear
Or I don’t know, review European, American
or Iranian playwriter’s works
I hardly see it
As for talent, because of the cultural and artistic
exchange between all countries
which has become easier by
movies, mobile and…
They’re very talented kids
But as for the intellectual support,
I think a big percentage of them
Are very low on studying
When we look around we find one or two
great actors now
But when I look back at the past, I see, we had lots of
great male and female actors
Our kids of today’s generation only follow one particular field
for example they only focus on computer softwares
They are not looking to experiece
different things of wide variety
An be armed with other knowledge
And acquire mant knowledge
I think creativity and imagination
are like twin brothers
Cause if you don’t let your imagination fly,
you won’t be able to be creative
Or maybe it’s just me
An artist, in my view,
is a person who is a few steps ahead of its society
And to change that essence inside which is
still unshaped and primitive
into something spectacular, creative
and aesthetics
An artist is someone whose
extract of all his imaginations and sublime views
To exclt his inner feeling and
turn it into
painting, architecture, sculpture,
acting, directing, writing or composing
To turn that into something that
its execution makes today’s people think
and immerse them enjoy
the aesthetic side
and be popular by common people,
not art for art
An artist has a great responsibility
This artistcan’t be bad even
if it wants itself
They can not run from being a role model,
They should try to be good role models
Both in their personal
and professional lives
This cultivation and correctness
comes from the artist itself
When you study,
when you observe the pain of your society
When you decide to be influencial,
that’s when your heavy responsibility has begun
Which defines how you’d act
so that they’d follow you
What kind of positive reaction you’d show
First of all they’d check your personal life
to see if you have a healthy relationship
Dicorce might happen in all over our society
and in different groups and types
But as we are under a magnifier and
we are the role models
We have a greater responsibility
Therefor artists can’t see the evil, filth, ignorance, injustice
and problems and close their eyes
There have been lots of speechs
about difference between acting in cinema and theatre for years
I think now it’s different.
In the past, I could say that…
because the tv has a smaller fram, many of
the acts and sound and expressions couldn’t be done in the TV and cinema
But I think the essence of acting
in both is the same
Acting is acting
When you are a good actor,
No matter it’s in TV, cinema or theatre, you are good
If you perform well and your character is Believable,
it doesn’t matter if it’s TV, cinema or theatre
Just technics and tools are different
In the TV, you need to use
a specific type of performance
If I, as an actor, on a set of the theatre
which is far from the audience
should act by moving my hands and shout
to reach my audience in a big hall
And sometimes acting in a small hall,
you might have to use slower smaller movements and lower voice
Even if you’re forced to shorten it.
I think it’s in distance, camera and tools of cinema
It’s the only difference
Close up and long shot
You should know about the distance to the camera,
know about the lens
So that if the frame is a close up,
you wouldn’t move your arms around to not go out of the frame
Don’t change your mimic a lot
and move your eyes and eyebrows too much
Don’t raise your voice
cause the mic is close
and the audience is watching you at a close
range and the frmae is a close up
The inly difference is in
technics and tools
Otherwise in essence an actor
should be a good actor
Either in cinema or theatre,
it’s just the same
In how many ways can you smile?
An evil smile?!
Evil smile!
La Joconde smile
Fake smile
Jealousy smile
I think theatre is working
better than some nowadays
It better than our TV and cinema
and it’s doing great
And youngsters are doing
very well in it
Even its advertising
is very different and awesome now
And many innovations.
A compilement of film and everything else
Music, film and play
We hardly had this much
compilation in the past
But I haven’t seen a one hundred percent
native Iranian play yet
I harrdly seen one…
Very very rarely
We are forced to perform the foreign plays
That Iranian writer’s mouth is sewed,
and its pen gets broken
If it wants to write about reality
So we’d go to foreign writtings which tell about
our pain and their pain on TV or cinema
Ib this way they can say that it’s no about us but them
They are the ones who wrote it
But we can balance it out
and perform it here
We can’t advertise stagnation and say
we won’t be affected by west and east and keep our “National Identity”
It’s not possible
It’s a very close interaction.
Give and take
The most intelligent ones who must defend
our national identity in art
Should be the ones who get good thing from west
and east and use them in our native and national works
And try to materialize it into sublime arts
to be a part of our national identity art form
It’s a wise and worthy thing to do
The highest risk in our cinema
is the risk of censorship
The risk of thinking with closed minds
To define a red line for everything and
say not to get close to it
These risks stops the growth
of our cinema and theatre
If we know the red lines but allow the artist
and trust them in the past forty years
And leave the job to the experienced artist,
they’d know what to do
If it’s allowed to talk about people’s pain
and address the issues to calm them
Along exalting people’s taste,
talking about their pain, sorrow and problems
and let them to criticize,
then people might believe us
And if they allow to lessen th censorship,
there won;t be any threat anymore
I mean, when they watch the TV,
they’d encounter beautiful talks and listen to music if there should be
Why is there so many binds and seals
so that people won’t watch Yald ceremony from our TV
and watch it on abroad TV channels to
see how happy and colorful they are while dancing
For example, the standards we have is different in our home, in society
and in our TV, therefor it’s kind of a lie
That’s why they watch channel of abroad TVs
If we adjust it a little.
We watch TV on satellite channels
We all look different but
in out TV we are just a round face
Well, this paradox creats
the distrust between TV authorities and people
This much censorship would distance us
from the principle of life
What’s wrong if an authority who has faults,
would be criticized by means of a play, music or a performance
Don’t we talk about
Enjoining good and forbidding wrong
This might end up as a correction process
and replace the faulty with an experienced one
If this one doesn’t want to hoard and oppress,
it can give its place to someone else
What’s wrong with it?
Fix the issues and put some else instead of it.
Develope procreation
If a young one wants to
get into this field
Ane to choose a field in the art,
no matter its acting, directing, music or anything else
No matter which one they choose,
they should know that studying is the main pillar of this job
Because they should arme themselves
with the knowledge of this job
It’s just about the acting in cinema and theatre
and directing but not writting
In which many might enter without
getting the proper education and licenses
I’m saying that you can arm yourself in this job
by studying in every field possible
Economy, sociology, cultural,
psychology and literature
Because these are a collection
that builds you up to perform strongly
And at last you should be
a righteous and honorable human being
After all if you are an omniscience person…
For example someone would press a button
and drop a bomb on people at Hiroshima
So they didn’t act humanly
Beside studying,
they should be honorable human beings
And by being human
there would be many neccessary condtions
Not doing extortion, or being cruel,
Not stealing and not lying
And even not hurting themselves
An artist should take care of itself
If they party all night and become addicted to anything,
that body can’t become a role model for the society
And they won’t be able to
Therefor they shouldn’t betray their own body
And act responsibly
and don’t betray its society
Move a few steps ahead
of its own people
To be justified in people’s eyes
Don’t say that I don’t care about people
and do my own thing. No…
You should be a person, actor or artist
who’s beloved by its people
A lesson that I learned in life
which I’m still paracticing is to judge
I was very hasty.
I’d judge very soon
Whenever I’d read a book,
I’d think there’s only one copy and I’d read that one
And I should give a speech about it in the crowd
and define everything for everyone
My dear, you should learn more,
many others have read the book
You are just at the begining of the road
And I’d think that I should listen and be quiet
and listen to others
As you might have read that someone else hasn’t
and they might’ve read something that you didn’t
How do you know?
You should keep your mouth shut
And I had my share of slaps,
and had my errors corrected, for example…
I wanted to act in “The Grand Day”
so we set out to go to Semnan with Mr. Nasirian
Mr. Kianoush Ayari was to direct the movie
And I was going to act in it
When we got there, he came to the guesthouse
and welcome me
He also welcomed Mr. Nasirian.
I said:”I was in captainship of Mr. Nasirian…”
Captainship is something else
and I didn’t know the correct word is companionship
All of a sudden Mr. Ayari
said:”Of course it’s companionship”
Corrected my error and
embarressed me
Then I said to myself that I should start studying
literature too and learn
Uncoditional love…
One day… Mr. Ghotbeddin Sadeghi was
our university professor
He was just back from France.
He asked us what is the most important word
in relationship between two human beings
After lots of stuff we got to “Sacrifice”
He said sacrifice is to love someone
wiout any expectation
And just want them
for what they are
It a kinf od sacrifice.
It can be sacrifice for your country
without anything in return from the country
and they go and become martyrs
It might be for their ideology
or It could be an earthly love too
They would love withou any condition
and without wantinf anythine in return
because they are in love with someone
And they are not looking to demand
something in return of their love
And gain something from it
One day I saw a film in which
someone was asking…
“You are going to work in a job
that doesn’t pay
The other one said: “okay”
“Give a service but
don’t get any money”
“And don’t sleep”
“Well then what should I do?”
“We are offering you a job that doesn’t pay,
you won’t be able to sleep and you won’t be promoted”
“You won’t be given any position”
“You won’t have any off day
and have no holidays”
“There is no sleep”
The other one stood up saying
that they are mad and he doesn’t want the job
Then It would reveal that it’s a mother’s job
It’s the kind od love
without any condition or expectation
Part 20
What was the effect of artistic activities
on your personal life?
It a very difficault question
to answer
Beacause you want to separate them.
For a long time Esmailkhani and me were saying
let the work be for outside
and when we come home we live our life
But in reality you can’t do it
When you are struggling with director
about a script
Or when you have a delayed payment
When you need to use your own clothes for a movie,
which is something new
and it’s such a pain that for costume design or decor
they’d get everything they want from our house
What I want to say is that
it’s not possible to seperate them
When you get home very tired.
When you have no more energy
When they call you to work at 7 am
and you get back at 2 am
It would affect your life.Your daughter wants to
go out but doesn’t know if you have the key
Are you feeling well or not?
Could they go or not?
When you are whining as you come home
and ask for help cause you are tired
Automatically they’d be affected
by my condition
It was the same with Esmailkhani
and while having a little kid
In the past when I was going to the set,
I had a infant that I couldn’t take with me
And to make up for that
you are either showing too much affection to the kid
Or as you are very tired
you might misbehave
All of these could have
negative effects
And it’s really difficault
I think when you use so much energy,
feeling and time for the role
when you get home, you want to relax
and go to park and go out
or go to cinem or resaurant,
but you are not in the mood for even those
It’s easy to say that
it’s a difficault life
Esmailkhani died but I couldn’t stay by the grave
with my children as there were a huge crowd
When you visit his grave,
everyone wants to take a picture with you
You can’t have moment alone
Your personal life and work get mixed up
no matter how you manage it
You tell yourself to manage work stuff
on the outside and be for yourself in the home
But you see that it’s not possible
<i>Then how do you balance these two?</i>
With such difficaulty.
It’s very hard
It’s very painful for both yourself
and your children
That’s why our lives are shorter
That’s why there’s more
heart attack cases among us
That’s why we get get hurt
much more
I can write a book about
the times that I got hurt on the work
When you start a new work and you put make up on,
you find out that the materil which is used makes your skin blister
You break your collarbone and
the pain stays with you for a long time
Your kidneys get a cold
so bad that you might die
And you get hospitalized and would go
under a threatment with lots of powerful antibiotics
I’d tell the doctors to test a little of it on someone else
to see how powerful it is like a bomb in the vein
And your eyes get weak and you should wear
glasses to see the nurse coming to chane the serum
Your blood vessels dry up, this hand shows the vessels
but this one doesn’t, it all dried up
And your veins would rupture one by one,
in your leg, head or forehead
You end up with no vein
after a month in the hospital
And after enduring all this pain
no one would come ask about your wellness
Now that you are hurt because of the big fan
we used to create a snowfall andgave you a kidney injury
And…
You get sick and go on the set of
“The epic of Aart” with Behzad Farahani
My appendix would be infected
and my abdomen would swollen up this big
I’d get a fever and
they’d take me to hospital
They’d put a tube in my throat
And would punctre my lung
Saying that we want to vacum
the infections out of your stomach
Is it possible to do in a village?
This make my appendicitis worse
with much higher fever and I couldn’t move
They say that she is simulating the sickness
so that she’d be able to get out of this village sooner
Tell her to come and say her dialogue
then she can go
About forty degrees fever and about to faint,
I’d punch the wall very hard
So that they’d come and call my children
so that they’d get an ambulence from Tehran
and come and get me
And they would come with an ambulence to a village in Zanjan
but none of the crew and director would come to see what’s happened
The producer would come and say that
she wants to relax here
As there was no bath there and
it was a small room
So we would put some empty coca bottles
under the sun while being in the village for filming
When I’d get back to my at night,
I had about ten bottles for myself with warm water
And we would wash ourselves
in a very small place with four walls
And there were fleas there,
It was very hard, I know
They’d say that she might wants to
get away from these, but they didn’t know…
The truth is I really liked that villagae
We had a bed outside and
we’d relax at afternoon with Fahime, Mr. Farahani’s wife
We had a good time, I was feeling very good
as I was away from the city
I’d buy anything that I want and cook
in the yard myself
I’m living there but…
They were thinking that it’s very hard for me
and I want to leave there under the pretext of appendicitis
And they really wouldn’t believe me
And they took me to a hospital
which has a detailed story
An isolated room which belonged
to HIV patients before and now was empty and dirty
They put me there so that supposedly
people won’t bother me
And when I was in the emergency room
a doctor and his students were standing aound me
He hung a rosary on my belly and said
if it goes this way its appendicitis otherwise it’s not
I was shocked.
Is it possible for a doctor to trust a rosary?
I didn’t know, my children told me later,
I was in a coma
I had a 41 or maybe 42 degrees fever
I didn’t understand what
was going on
My daughter was shouting at them to get me somewhere and injet a serum,
instead of standing there and teaching to his students
They put me in a room
but my daughter gets lost
When she found me, she said that old man wanted
to inject you with air to kill you to be free of the pain
As she is in a very bad condition
And he wanted to kill me to help me relax
Saying that is dying either way
so let me free her
Suddenly my daughter gets there
and asks him what he is doing
My hand was turning into a pillow because of the serum
and me in a coma
She calls them right away telling them
she is taking me to another hospital but they say it’s not allowed
In the end she takes me to another hospital
Suddenly I open my eyes and think that
I’m dead and I’m in heaven
A couple of beautiful nurses, a clean bed,
a TV, I was thinking that I’m in another world
In short, I was in a coma for a few days
And Mrs. Fahimeh was beside my bed
all of those days
I had severe swelling. My intestines would fracture
and infection gets out
It swells and the swelling would stop the infection
My docotr comes and say
that your intstines saved you
Otherwise you would have died
After ten days my infection won’t heal
My fever won’t go away
Just serum. I couldn’t eat anything
Mrs, Fahimeh took a honey pot from a vegeterian friend
and gave it to me little by little from the corner of my mouth
But my stomach started to brawl.
They said that her stomach shouldn’t have peristalsis movements
Nothing should go into her stomach,
what did you give her?
In short…
I don’t know. A woman comes by the door saying
that Mrs. Kheiandish I had a dream about your husband, Esmailkhani
She gives me a green fabric
I’m in the next room.
He gave me this fabric and told me to cover your belly with it
And us… We thought that it’s what she
believes in and we should respect her and let her do it
And use the fabric that she says
They tied it aruond my belly and I don’t know if it was because of
empathy or the energy but my fever went away after 10 days
A nurse across my room would fall sleep
and sees Jamshid in her dream too
It very curious that when I’m hospitalized
Mrs. Kamand calls me
I tell her that I’m in the hospital, and she says “Dear Gohar”
and starts to cry
And I cry too.
She says that
“My mother had a dream about Esmailkhani, nad
he was sitting behind surgery room doors, saying my wife is dying
For the love of God help me
My mother helps him stand up
saying that you shouldn’t cry here in front of people, you are an actor
Please stand up
But he cries out that
“My wife. My wife is dying”
And untill today I don’t know what it was
that made everyone dream about Jamshid
Whatever it was, empathy or anything else,
I’d have a spiritual transformation and …
It makes me think that someone is looking after me
and they should be worried about me
And thanks to God,
I get better
After my fever went away, they said
that it’s not possible to operate on you
and you should go home
So that your appendix crust
would become thicker then we’d operate
Now, I had fallen and my back is broken
And lying down would help me a little
When they take me to hospital, they wouldn’t
check a little higher to find my 12th vertebra is broken
Saying that the tailbone had broken before
None of them would check
my back
And my back gets hurt
And having a lot of pain,
I’d go to a doctor
They say that your back is
severely hurt
And you should be hospitalized
and we should rip open under your chest
And a heart specialist and
a lung specialist put these aside
So that the spine specialist
put a platinum implant on your spine
And then after ten days we would
rip open your waist
Anyway they said that you should go to
the upper floor and be hospitalized right away
Mr. Anvar, I haven’t done it yet
and didn’t take care of myself
One they I decided to fast just
like my children, from dawn
I wouldn’t eat anything until night that
we would all eat together
And I’d cook for your and
I don’t want to eat untill then
Then I went to take my MRI at Fereshteh street
I said that I want to take an MRI of my back.
they asked who my doctor was
I gave them a fake name
and said that I don’t know his department
Told them that I don’t have the prescription
I went into the MRI as
I was thirsty and starving
Everything is working around me
then he said that excuse me
It’s finished but
we should do it one more time
But I said that I’d starve to death
if I go in one more time
He asked me to be patient
as it looks like that one vertebral is not seen
It had broken and
is in your spinal cord
How do you walk?
I was working on “Tears and Smiles” with
Mr. Hassan Fathi, the director
He witnessed while working i go lie down
and saying that my back hurts
Even the kids would put an Iron
and some fabrics on my back
I was thinking that is it possible to endure
that much pain just like now that I’m really in pain
I went to many doctors and
they all told me there should be an operation on my back
I went to Dr. Masoud Fakheri
He said that I won’t do a surgery
on you
This operation is really hard but if you could…
I would make a metal torso
for you
He made two kinds, one was like an armor
and the other was lighter
And I was going to go to US
I went and lived with it
for three months
So that the bone would heal
and becomes flatter
And I’m still struggling with my backache and
my appendicities problem up to today
My next injuries are a lot
The worst one was at “Azar, Shahdokht, Parviz And Others”
Directed by Mr. Behrouz Afkhami that
I really like its script
Of course it’s like whenever I get hurt
it brings me an award
All of these happiness and unhappiness comes from
my body injuries in my works
<i>How do you describe yourself?</i>
<i>Crazy</i>
<i>A crazy person who has no strategy in her behavior </i>
<i>and her words to keep her position</i>
<i>Whenever possible I’d say</i>
<i>what’s on my mind</i>
<i>Sometimes I behave in a way</i>
<i>that people blame me for them afterwards</i>
<i>And I’d say I don’t know why I did it and</i>
<i>now what’s done is done</i>
<i>I’m an unstoppable crazy person</i>
<i>And I have a very very kind heart</i>
<i>I love my people,</i>
<i>I love my children</i>
<i>Most of my injuries happened because</i>
<i>I can’t think and strategize before takling</i>
<i>Or say something to please someone</i>
<i>or to strengthen my position</i>
<i>I talk as I please</i>
<i>and my position might be pyt in danger</i>
<i>I might put my family and</i>
<i>children position in danger too</i>
<i>But it doesn’t matter,</i>
<i>All that matters is to be myself</i>
<i>And do the right thing</i>
<i>And thinking about what people would say,</i>
<i>I don’t care about those yellow talks</i>
<i>Say that what a righteous person she was,</i>
<i>How morale she was</i>
<i>What an honorable woman she was,</i>
<i>what good things she did in her life</i>
<i>I believe in leaving a good name</i>
<i>of yourself very firmly</i>
<i>I really wish that people around the world</i>
<i>to find peace and experice the human connection</i>
<i>As Saadi says</i>
<i>Human beings are members of a whole</i>
<i>In creation of one essence and soul</i>
<i>If one member is afflicted with pain</i>
<i>Other members uneasy will remain </i>
<i>I want them all to become one,</i>
<i>which might be an impossible wish</i>
<i>I might seem very idealistic</i>
Ane there would be no war
in the world
And people live while havine
peaceful interactions
There would be reconciliation
And even if people could talk to their
worst enemy and reach an understanding
As today we are living in the age of communication
and those who have stronger arguments win
People would follow those, od course
their argues should be humanitarian too
Because someone might be bullying
and force their words
But are their words in service
of humankind?
There should be interaction, consensus
and
communication
to have a rather relative
tranquility
<i>What kind of world did you live in as a child?</i>
<i>Is it still with you?</i>
I think my behavior untill now, like when I
kiss a boy on the chick at Yazd
when giving him his award on the stage,
who could be Esmailkhani’s student
And I get into trouble for it
I was shocked saying I didn’t do anything
I was just happy
people were applauding
and I was sending kisses to them
And when the boy came to take his award
and I kissed him
I totally forgot that I’m in a position
that shouldn’t kiss anyone or shake their hand
My inner child who is uncontrollable,
acts on its own and gets me into trouble
It was the truth and I didn’t mean
to insult someone or act in oppisition of Islam teachings
I was just being myself and
my mind is clear of any negative thought
I think when he says the last year
I got my award from Mr. Esmailkhani
and this year you are giving the award to me,
I’d get excited and kisses him and said…
by the way the video exists
They could read my lips cause they said
they have seen the tape a thousand times
I said you are like my son
and my son is not here in Iran
And I might have shed a tear too
But they came and arrested everyone
and said you should go on a trial
And I was in so much trouble
A very long period of trouble
And Mr. Maleki who is a very good close to us
and his mom and family are my great fans
He was guilty of being the presenter
and saying to the audience
He had introduced everyone
Then he’d said that is this hall strong enough
to withstand the sound of you applauding our guests
He’d made them excited
and saying
A goldsmith can appreciate gold
and only Esmailkhani can appreciate Gohar(gem)
And an earthquake in the hall
And showing a video clip
edited from my works
Well it’s obvious that
people are excited then
When I get the micophone
no one makes a sound
I say “Hello”
“Hellooo”
Wow
After making noises they would
calm down again and I…
And I read a couple of Hafez’s verses aloud
And I continue by saying that how welcome they are
and I say that I kiss their hands
After saying all these
And he says that Esmailkhani came here
last year while he was still alive
and Esmailkhani’s photo is there
with light candles in front
It was such a ceremony and
I was mourning
When did I wanted to
make fun of anything
I was in a bad condition,
they’re helping me to walk
A boy comes that had taken his award in
Haghighat festival from Jamshid the last year
And this year I was giving him
and award for his short film
Well, I was under influence
When gave the awrd…
let me tell you this one first
But my trial story is much more interesting
I suddenly saw a woman from the audience
came and said “Ma’am, they arrested my brother”
I said who? She said he’s the one
who won the award and now is in the back
They told him that when she kissed
you, why did you let her?
He said that I didn’t kiss anyone
They said why let her?
He said I didn’t know
She said what should we do now?
They said to the boy that we know
what to do with you
You want to make your next film
by you are not allowed to anymore
I asked her if they told him this
right away
Mrs. Shamsai was sitting beside me
and Mr. Beyzai on the other seat
Mozhdah told me go tell them
that my hair is colored
And I’m an old lady, please let him
go and he is just like my own son
She said go tell them that
I’m old and sick
and I’m a mother myself
and let boy go
They told me to take thi microphone,
I went but didn’t talk about colored hair…
I said that you were really kind to me and so
welcomed me and clapped for me that I…
And with this feeling that I wasn’t myself
I had kissed this dear child and gave him the award
I’m sure that no one would makesomething out of it and it’s not an issue
and hopefully nothing will happen to him…
I went and said something right away
which I don’t remember completely
cause I was very nervous then
I might remember the whole incident
but I don’t remember that exact speech
I went to somehow say that
you were kind and welcoming and…
I have shown my motherly feeling toward this child
and I hope that they would release him
Then when I came back to Tehran
and wanted to live my life
And for “The Fifth Reaction”, I went to
Mrs. Moniro Ravanipour to practice my Bushehri accent
Someone called me asking where I was,
saying it’s from intelligence service of Ministry of Interior
Some friends told me to leave Tehran
cause it might trouble you
They told me to go to Ministry of Intelligence
but I said that I’ve done nothing
But they wouldn’t let it go
Khane cinema interceded,
Mr. Davoodi was there
And for several times we talked
abou this asking what we should do now?
They said that she shoul go into a court
My daughters griefed a lot as
I was their only guardian after Esmailkhani died
They would cry and grab my leg
so that they wouldn’t take me
It was only forty days since
Esmailkhani was gone
And I was sick myself, so sick that
I was going to use an ambulence
When I sent there I was sincerely
giving the award to that child
And then they didn’t arrest us.
Mr. Pezeshk kindly sent us to our guesthouse
And I went to my own room
They brought a car to the back of the room
Saying that we won’t take
you with a police car
“Get in to the car” they said
But then my dear Leila Hatami and Mr. Kianian
came and said that she is our friend’s wife
I had played in “Low Heights” with Leila
before in role of his mother
“I should go” she said, “I should go with my mom”
with an Abadani accent as we played in the film
And they came with us. we were in three cars
and my daughter was with us too
They escoeted us all the way
There were a motorcyclist crowd
who were protesting against me
Although just before they were taking
pictures with me in a pomegranate garden
I clearly remember the pomegranates as they were so big
and I was wondering how they were hung from the tree
We stood and took pictures there
for them and their mothers
They, themselves, wanted to take
me to prison
My kids were crying but Mr. Pezeshk was
very kind and said he’d keep them with his wife
Even Mr.Davoodi talked to her and
said that everything’s allright
They all tried to calm down the child
And I went and I don’t know what
the two of my children did
They were euther stayed with Mr. Davoodi
or stayed at home
Or if my friends stayed with them,
I don’t know
But they took me away
They took me along with
my friend, Homa
While we were going,
Intelligence agents were siting in front
The driver and a man in front
They were such informed and
educated people
And they spoke very well
And my fried had got totally involved
with them and they were talking
And as I had sedatives,
I put my head on the side and was sleeping
Jamshid’s death
was such a huge shock for me
Cause he died in front of our eyes
in the room and the ambulence arrived late
In that morning, my daughter had tole him
to buy her a book from Enghelab street
He went there and at every place that he’d arrived
he had a tea and a cigarette
And I remember that the air pollution
was so high those days
that people who had heart
diseases were supposed to stay home
And he had a pain in his chest
He was caughing in the room,
I made starch and water for him
We had guests.
He said that he is okay
And I checked on him a few times
After coughing severely
we decided to take him to hospital
But he said no and
he is okay
And I was busy with the guest,
I washed my dishes and it was abou 2 am
A few of my friends were there
and my child’s babysitter had stayed
And he was sleep
My friend said now tht he is sleep
give him a pillow
and as it;s hot now put a sheet on him
don’t wake him up,
he is tired after all the coughings
Don’t take him to bed,
let him sleep there
I went to sleep but woke up
hearing weired snorting sound
Suddenly saw his eyes popping out
and he had heartache
I quickly called the emergency
and shouted for help
But they were so late that he died
right in front of our eyes
It was very difficault
for us. Very difficault
I think there’s nothing worse than
watching someone die right in front of you
Particularly if that person is your husband,
the father of your children
It’s safe to say that this incident
threw me from a childish happines
to a huge sorrow
Which is always with me.
With all my smiles
With all my jokes
With all my laughters
His emty spot is never filled,
and something is damaged
As I was going along with Homa,
I’d sleep and wake up continuously
It was a time before Ramezan month,
and she was fasting ahead
Fasting before Ramezan
We we went at 10pm,
she hadn’t had her dinner but she had broken her fast
She said that she is hungry
We stopped at a place before Yazd,
which had cement seats with a carpet on
We sat there on the carpet.
The gentlement were sitting around with Homa ans me
As they were eating, I just started
to joke again.
That childish feeling again
I asked them if I tell a joke
Suddenly Homa hit me
I said now that they are
taking me to court whta’s the harm in telling a joke?
She said don’t pay attention to her,
she is taking pills all the time. She is not okay
If you could hear what she’s said
on Esmailkhani’s funeral
I told her to let me tell my Joke,
and I told them that I’d tell it
“A turkish girl tell a boy if he
wants to see where she got injected”
But she put her hand on my mouth
She said please stop,
don’t say stuff like this
She asked for their forgiveness
and started to cry
She begged me to stop
saying anything
Stop with the joking,
can’t you see they’re taking you to a court?
I said just let me tell my joke,
you don’t know what happen
While they were keeping themselves busy
by eating, they told her to let me tell my joke
Then I said that just like you
that boy got embarrassed and put his down
Then the girl said put your head up and
take a look at that window on the thirs floor
where the light is on.
That’s where I got my injection
When she said that she wanted to show
where she got the injection, you tought of something else.
I shooted them all the way
on that trip
Criticized their thoughts and believes
and why they had thought wrong about me
All of my stories, jokes and stuff
that I said were based on that
they are not aware of
people’s intentions
You can’t convict someone like this
You don’t know what’s
happened in my heart
So that now you wanna
take me to the court
Therefor their smile was
freeze on their face
Said that’s how you judge
When we got to Naein,
I couldn’t open my eyes cause of all the pills
I said that I want to sleep here,
they said “No, we should get to Yazd before the morning”
When they disagreed,
I said that I should use the toilet
We stopped at a guesthouse
to use the restroom
I went there and said I have enough money
and I want to take a room for the nigh to sleep
And everyone can get one for themselves
“Don’t you wanna take me to the court,
add this crime too
I wanna go to sleep,
I’m dying
If you don’t want me to kiss the judge too,
my brain should have its rest to be ready
One thing that is reall interesting is,
before we got to the guesthouse…
My friend said that I should
go to a restroom
They searched and found a restroom
A ruin of a restroom, in arestaurant
which is abandoned but has a toilet
And a door…
We both went into the restroom
As she didn’t want her clothes get dirty
or anything in there so I offered to help her
to hang on to her clothes and
I told her it’s allright
She said that I’m
dying of stomach ache
“I have intestinal colitis” she said
At first she sat there herself and
I waited but she didn’t come
I called her but she said
that I should help her
And still she couldn’t stand up,
I’d grab her waist to so her legs wouldn’t tire
He was feeling bad
for a while
It took quite a long time
and I helped her o stand
I tidied her up and
apologized to her saying “I’m sorry to bother you”
She said that “I’m dying of the stomach ache,
I’m dying”
We came out and saw a guy
running around
His coat moved and
I saw his gun. I got very frightened
“Oh, they had gun with them
and I didn’t know?”
When we were in the restroom,
they thought that we’d ran away
They were all looking for us
in the dessert
They didn’t think that we’ve been
in the restroom for that long
So I told them that “You got scared?
you thought that we ran away?”
“Are we crazy? We won’t let you go
till you take us to the court”
Anyway, I jokes like this
In Gohar Kheirandish style
Well, I went to the bath and
saw there’s a shower
My friend was in the restroom
at the lower level again and wouldn’t come out
I went to bath and founf a bulb just like this one
with electrical lamp inside
Not oily type,
a light bulb was inside
I thought that “It’s good. I would use the wires and
the shower and I would kill myself”
I don’t know why after all the talks
about me wanting to go the courtroom
I told myself that I’d kill myself
and would blem it on them
And say that they are to blame for my death
and to find out that they’re killers
A kind of craziness, a madness
In which I thought immortality is in death
And I told myself that I’d be
immortal this way. How great
While I was checking the bath,
she went into the restroom and didn’t came out
There was a bench outside…
Her stomach ache, Intestinal colitis
and going to the toilet, saved me from a childish plan to kill myself
Instead of going back to my room and
sleeping on the bed, I fell asleep on a sofa
On a beutiful coloful sofa in the lobby down there,
as the design was colorful and traditional
I had fallen asleep without
any pillow and sheet
And in the morning when we wanted to go
and eat breakfast, we saw the gentlemen having breakfast
I told them “you see how good it is,
you are having fun, eating scambled eggs”
“you see how great it
is to sleep well”
Suddenly I felt like calling my mom
Whenever I take a role in a play,
I tell my mom, I call her Maman Joon
Pray for me using those
prayers that you know
My mom would say that you are
the most divine one
God loves you more that anyone
If it didn’t love you,
you wouldn’t become the popular actor you are now
Then when I called her at the early morning,
my mom is always awake early in the morning for her prayer
I asked her if she is awake and\
she tole me that she’s been awake for a while
And I’m listening to the radio
Then she asken if I’m at wirk
and I told her “Yes, I’m at work”
She asked if it’s a new movie and
I said “Yes, this one is really difficault”
I begged her to pray for me.
She said that I always pray for you
And I shed a tear
for myself
I cried a bit behinde the phone,
but I didn’t let her notice
And whenever my mom says goodbye,
she sends kisses by the phone
And It made me cry even more
And i said this job is
a difficault one in particular
And please pray for me so that
this one turns out fine
“All of your roles are good and
it always turns out fine” she said
She said that it’s just the begining and
it would be allright but I said that this one is very difficault
“It’s so difficaul that I think
I might die in this role”
Suddenly my my said
“Be safe! Dear, what are you talking about?”
“To hell with them,
you don’t have to go on this job at all”
How many times should I tell
you to let it go?”
“You are killing yourself.
Think about your kids”
A while ago, there was a ceremony
at Susangerd in my respect
because of a role I had in a play
It’s an interesting one
In there, they told me that
Karbala is very close
And I wanted to go to Karbala
with a bike and when I told my mom about it
She said “I won’t bless you,
I don’t let you go, what about your children”
You shouldn’t go with a bike.
There’s a war going on over there
They imprison people,
they take women
Then she said you are acting just like
your chilhood, you are being crazy again
why did you accept that role? So that
you die? Is it that difficault?
Then I told her that let it go,
I just said some nonesense
In the end, I told her that I was kidding
but please pray for me to make it fine
And the kids say “Hi”. She asked where I was…
I told her that we are
filming at the counties
She asked about the kids and
I said that they are at home
She said “Why didn’t you ask you sister
to come and help you?”
They call sister, sis at Shiraz
I said it’s allright, I have help,
It’s for a short time
Anyway, she said some kind words and
i cried silently and would laugh without any reason
But my tears would fall Involuntary,
without my control
I’d pitty myself and cry without a reason
And they came and asked me
who I was calling and did I say anything about this to anyony
I said “No. I was just talking to my mom
and I said nothing about this incident”
We continue are trip and they
talk on the radio all the time
They go as they are in check
with eachother via mirrors
We very near Yazd when
my phone suddenly started to ring
It was my son from Germany, “Mom!”
“What’s it dear?”
“Are you going to courtroom?”
“You have been sentenced to 74 lashes
an amount of fine and now going to prison?”
All of a sudden they
took away my phone
They turned it off
And asked “Who did you inform?”
I said no one, “My son had gone to a turkish bakery
at Germany and had seen a newspaper”
And It was written there that
“Mutter…”, mother is mutter in german
they wrote that “A mother…” no,
“A maternal kiss”
“Kiss mutter…” something like this
He asked who was kissed and
who is being taken to the court?
And the news has been leaked
before I reached the courtroom
And they knew that they were going
to let me go, so I was relieved
Because he told me about the news,
he was aware of everything
That I will be sentenced to
and cash fine
They looked at each other
thinking who was in the room that thursday
For example who knows about taking me friday
to be at the courtroom at saturday
So it turned out that they themselves
know about my sentence too
It was very interesting
I found out that because we stayed the night,
now the news has been burnt
Do you get it?
While we stayed there sleeping,
the news had been published that she is sentenced to…
The news was published faster than
us, as we were still on the road
In the end we got there,
of course I was a bit relax but again it’s frightening
In the courtroom, the judge
talked about me and…
I have asked him if he
had watched my films
He said that “I’m so busy and
should take cases with me to home
that I don’t have enough time
fot watching TV
But my son has talked
highly of you
And It was my golden time as
many of my films were braodcasting on TV
And my court story is so sweet
that I’d make it into a movie if I have only a day before I die
To see how funny it looks today
And I was a victim of such
intolerance and bigotry
And thank to God, I was able
to overcome my trial
They offered me the help
of Khane Cinema attotney
and color some part of my hair white
and put a pair of glasses on my eyes
and use make up to
make me older, just like a play
To say that he was like my son
Well, Esmailkhani had died
recently so my hair was black
They thought that I
had dyed it
Later when the verdict was in
That I’m sentenced to 74 lashes
and cash fine
Then I told him “Mr. Mokhtari,
if you kiss a bright child of this country on the head
who was successful which
is a famous director now
while giving him an award
If tomorrow they ask you
to say that you were wrong
Would you say it?
If you do, i’d do it too.
What I did was because of kindness
and really it was maternal love
It’s up to you if
you don’t want to believe me
And it’s up to you if
you want to punish me by lashing
He said with a sweet accent
tht “It’s not possible”
“People kiss eachother and
say it wsa maternal or as a son
“Whenever you wanted to do this,
tell them that I kiss your face distantly”
“Or I kiss your hand distantly,
but never actually do it”
I told him that I understan but I’d
never write down in that court that I was wrong
He mixed up two rules set
and gave me a law book
He told me that he should
mix two laws together
And with such intelligence
We would write down lashes
and cash penalty
and we’d prohibit you from working
for two or three years
But suspended
In condition that if you repeat
your mistake, it would add up to that
It would be my trial sentence
Which the rest of its story
is more detailed
After that I was unemployed
for a long time and it was really hard for me
And then…
I started to teach in
different universities and schools
Now I like jump
to my next crime
Khane Cinema invited me to present
the award for Mrs. Sepah Mansour for “Mum’s Guest”
And go on the stage.
Ir was a very good ceremony
And then a…
They had made an artificial hand
befor and they had told me…
It is an untold story too
Which told me I should
never repeat it
They were supposed to make a wheelchair
at Khane Cinema so that I sit on it
They said as she had kissed someone
at Yazd, like Lecter from “The Silence of The Lambs”
To put a mouthpiece on my face just like
Dr. Lecter, made of iron
and sit on a wheelchair
and to tie my hands to not be able to shake hads
And the stage had stairs
They couldn’t take the wheelchair
And they created an artificial
hand made of plastic
to use that for hand shaking
We were thinking that it’s a show,
we didn’t want to make fun of anyone
A show was being made
which was supposed to be funny
To teach people not to shake hands
Well, people can relate anything
they want to each other
It was our real intention
I did my speech and
presented the award. Everything was fine
Then they gave me an artificial hand,
which I was told that was Mr. Kianian threw for Mr. Shrifinia
Mr. Sharifinia wsa standing there and
put out the artificial hand and shook my hand
The audience’s voice went to the sky,
and everyone in the distance said
that Gohar shook a hand again
Just look at me…
And I was presented
with a fait accompli
And in the moment you wont analyze it
and you inner child would do what it wants
Just before that
Before that I wanted to go
to Mr. Oji’s work, Majid Oji
He told me “Gohar be careful on the stage,
your inner such is very active”
“Don’t you do anything unnatual,
don’t you start kissing the minister or his associates
Mr. Heidarian was sitting
right in the front row
He actually should be the one
who got angry at me
This is the sentenced
people at Khane Cinema conveyed to me
We should shoot her in the head
to make her act right
She won’t become normal
Cause she do this everytime
At the City theatre, Actor’s ceremony,
a small boy is playin the piano
And I’m kissing him
from the distance and said
“As said by the respectful judge
of Yazd, I kiss your face from a distance”
“I kiss your hand from the distance,
I would never act on it”
They had it all on tape,
played it for me and said, she’s done it again
Just look what my inner child
does to me
Why should I insult anyone?
I’m just…
But just take a look at
the shows around the world
They took me to
the court again
And not just for
a couple of times
Aren’t you recording the laughter
behind the camera?
I wasn’t permitted to work for
about three and half years
i remember arounf the end of that period
I went to Hedayat street…
Mr. Hossein Latifi wanted to make
a series for Nowruz and I even did my makeup tests
Then I found out that they’ve
been told that she is not permitted to work
I understood that I can’t
still work
Once more I went to participate
in Mr. Sajjadi’s work
I did my make up and hey even
photographed me but once again I wasn’t allowed
Then I told the what was
I supposed to do
I was supposed to earn the living
for my family
What was I supposed to do?
How is it possible to prohibit
someone from working?
How should they eat?
Then when you say that Imam Ali
was the protector of the widows
What should I do?
You don’t even follow your own religous teachings
What should I do?
Where should I find money from?
I tried my best.
I would go to Isfehan.
There was a school in which
Mr. Moayyerian were teaching Make up too
I teached acting there
I would’ve gotten
very tired then
I would have woken up
early in the morning at 4 am
I would go teach my classes
four hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon
And in between when I was
having my launch, I’d ask God for my death
that’s how tired I was
I was such a welcoming
but strict teacher
As I’d started my acting job
the hard way
I didn’t want them to easily
call themselves actor
And think that they could become
an actor by taking a course
Of all the lessons teaching in my class,
first of all I’d tell them that “You are miserable now”
You have entered a field in which
you can’t call your boyfriend or girlfriend and talk for hours
You won’t be able to shout
at your mother or sister
You won’t be able to cheat
in a queue
You won’t be able to break the law
You won’t be able to go out wearing
strange colors and make ups or french you nails
If so they’d say that if they’re actors
then they are not healthy kids
Especially kids who werre acting
in theatre, I wanted them to know…
They should basically know to strenghten
their knowledge and education by studying
And should have sensory and
physical practices
to be ready to act
in the cinema too
And next was their study,
telling them that they can’t dodge it anymore
You can’t be indifferent anymore,
not knowing about poetry, music…
Not knowing about art history
Art history is includes architecture, music,
caligraphy and many more
You should know about all of them
You want to take one
play to the stage
If it’s an Iranian play
you know about its background
But when it’s “The Cherry Orchard”
by Chekhov, Then you should know abou Tsardom of Russia
When did Chekhov wrote it?
In which period Chekhov was living?
You should know about dramatic
literature
and Rusiian literature
And just when you start
perform the play
You should define the geography,
where is its geography?
Why did he wrote it?
and what is the theme of the play?
When we say that “Cherry Orchard”
is about moving from feudalism to capitalism…
You should know about political,
econimical, social and artistic circumstance of that country
In what frame of the set do
you want to perform your play?
What is the shape of your background?
So you should know about architecture of that time
What clothes would they use?
So you should know about history of clothes
The psychology of the role and the character.
You should analyze the characters individually
So you should study psychology
and know about it
As we had some course of psychology
in the university too
And by the way, everyone has
a particular color
What is the general color?
What color is the scene?
What’s the color of character?
And then these colors
create your character
So you should know them
Even know colorology
Know a little about painting
Know makeup and how the makeup
style has been in that time
It might be about Meds or Sasanian
but what did they do?
How would they dress
their hair
Which dresses woul
they wear?
It’s just the makeup
Now how would they walk?
How would they speak?
What social and political background does the character
has in that country?
It’s not going to have the feel and
circumstances of today Iran
What is the physical condition the character needs?
How does it walk?
What does it do?
How does it move its hands?
It’s all about teaching that I could say
I went to the Center of Young Filmmakers for a longer time
When I had a very low blood pressure
after the death of Jamshid
beside my very difficaul surgeries
I suddenly fely very bad.
Had such a pain in my chest
Su ch a pain that I begged
God to take my life and free me of the pain
I went to the sky just like
superman, holding my arm like this
I went there and how light
I felt that I was
And I was looking for Jamshid
in the sky and was calling him
Later they said that my blood pressure
was very low and I had a serum
For instance my pressure was
about five or six even lower
And I wasn’t conscious.
I told them what I’d experienced
They said “Yes. You nearly had
no pulse and you were nearly dead”
And I really felt Lightweighted
and was relaxed
I’m not scared of
death anymore
It doesn’t mean that
I don’t like living
I love living but I’m
not stuck to it
If they tell me that you’re going
to die now, I’d close my eyes a let go