Khosrow Sinai
Audio of the Entire Interview
Interview Transcript
Part 01
I came from a family that I can safely say were doctors for generations
I mean, when I look at my father’s family, I see that my father, his father, my uncle, and all the father’s family from Ardestan, where my father was born, they were all doctors.
Therapists, therapists, etc, they were all doctors
As a child, I can say that my father was sent to Tehran with his brother and cousin to study
All three of them became doctors, one became Dr. Alaj, who was my father’s cousin, and my cousin also became Dr. Alaj
My father himself was a doctor at first, then I do not know why, maybe because of his interest in Ibn Sina, he became a Sinai
My father left Ardestan when he was 7 years old, and in fact he was 80 years old. I remember he went to Ardestan to see his family and those who remained
He was a good student and at that time he finished his 4-year medical course at Darolfonoon
And it’s interesting to me that he also went to St. Louis school because he knew French well and was actually like his mother tongue, this is his father’s side
My maternal side was again my grandfather was a doctor, my maternal grandfather was an ophthalmologist who specialized in St. Petersburg
And their name was Hussein Kahal, which at that time was as far as I know, because he died before I was born
He was the same age as Hakim al-Molk, etc., but he had a stroke and died when he was 46 years old
But when I go back, I see that on my mother’s side, his grandfather, Dr. Baqer Khan, was also a doctor
I said this because you know how much family shock the cinema caused
My father before that series of students that Reza Shah sent abroad like a merchant and so on and so forth
My father spent a few years in Qasr Shirin after finishing his studies at Darolfonoon, and he worked as a doctor there
And the story of his marriage to my mother was apparently in the same way that my mother’s uncle, who died after the death of my grandfather, that is, my parents
He was the head of the family and the ruler of Qasr Shirin, and he, my father, was the special doctor of the ruler
he went there and saw the girl and proposed and got married
His father was able to raise funds for himself as a doctor, which he went to France at his own expense in 1305
The major he completes is tropical medicine
The year 1308 returns to Iran, which also happens to bring a number of tools
One of them is what is now in the Bushehr Museum and I was very happy to be able to save it.
So he came as a doctor and for the first time, as far as I know, the mission he was given was to head the Bushehr Hospital and Quarantine
After that, in 1313, he changed his mission and became the head of Sari Health
And he was in Sari for 47 years, which was one of the most decisive points in our lives
Because his mother and family wanted him to come to Tehran, but he said that Tehran has many doctors, they need me and he stayed in Sari
Thus, in 1319, I emphasize that I came to Sari on the 29th of Dey because it is written on the 9th of Dey in many places
My family was very interesting, because you said that financially, it is certain that my father could have been very, very rich, but that was not the case.
He was a doctor and his life was from cities like Babylon, the current Ghaemshahr or the then royal, Amol, etc., and they came from the villages and lined up in front of his office
His office never had a sign, there were 2 or 3 doctors, one of whom was my father, who everyone knew and came to visit
And he was a tenant until the last day of his life, not that he did not, he did not think about these things at all
It was my mother who actually came to Tehran by the the money that my father earned, bought 3 houses for her 3 sons
So that the boys won’t be homeless, otherwise he himself was a tenant
But a very strange memory for me, my father was alone in Sari and my mother was in Tehran with my brothers
I came from Europe and went to my father’s side, so I was at home and my father
He also had an assistant who was a servant at first and gradually became my father’s assistant, and he also had a wife and children and went to his own house at night.
One morning, at maybe six-thirty, seven in the morning, I saw them knocking on our door
I jumped up and went and opened the door, I saw a young couple with a boy and a child in their arms
I asked what happened, they said we want to go to the sea but our little kid has a pimple on his back
And he cries and bothers us, we wanted to show him to the doctor
I got angry, I said you want to go to the beach, your child has a pimple, which is not a bad thing
This morning you come, pick up the heel of the door so that the doctor visits the baby? go and come at 9, 10
When I returned, I saw my father standing on the porch and he said, “Who was it?”
I said that there was someone whose child had a pimple, he came to see you so you give him something so that this child would not cry
He looked at me for a while and said that he had been in that city for about 40 years
گHe said, “Look, I have been practicing medicine in this city for 40 years. If I wanted to do this, people would not trust me.”
People would come to this house with some hope. He was such a man anyway
I was born in Sari, what I remember from Sari is a very beautiful life, which is by the sea and springs, etc., let alone these.
What is important is that I was sent to Rushdieh Kindergarten in Sari
Rushdieh Kindergarten in Sari was very, very good, but what remained in my mind because you told me to tell the farthest memories
Later, when I went to the cinema, I told him how it happened and how the cinema came into my life
I remember that at that time, among all the children, they chose me to go on stage at the kindergarten end-of-year celebration
They also dressed me as a sailor and taught me a poem in French
Which means I’m eating all the chocolates, it’s still on my mind with the same look on stage and in a sailor dress
Well, this was a kindergarten, of course, there were also years when the Russians were in Sari and marched in front of our house
I remember that I often went to watch and I also had a wooden gun that I would give to these Russian soldiers and tell them to break it down and fix it.
I also went to the first grade of elementary school in Sari, my two older brothers went to the school of Sirus and then to the high school in Sari.
Then, like his older brother, who was supposed to study medicine, he actually had to come to the University of Tehran
And the second brother had to go to high school, and I actually read the first grade of elementary school
My mother brought us to Tehran, hoping that my father would come too
In fact, with a lot of love and pride, he built a house and two floors were built
He wanted us to live upstairs and my dad’s office downstairs, which never happened
By the way, this was my father’s house. Between Nejatollahi and Hafez
And now there is a building from the Prime Minister that closed both sides, Shirin Street, I have nothing to do, so we came to Tehran
Part 02
This is how we came to Tehran, I was a good student, that is, I could not be bad
Not because I was very smart myself, well my father used to say we smoked lights, we became first students and we became doctors
My brothers were good students, once I became a fourth year student, my older brother told me that now you are a fourth year student, what do you want to be later?
There is a reason why I tell you this, these will all be connected to the cinema later
And 6 years of Manouchehri school passed and I was successfully accepted and again about what is related to cinema
Now I ask myself why I was taken away whenever there was a theater, a speech or something like that
I entered Alborz High School in 1331 or 1332, which is the exact time of those adventures of 28 August
And that was one of the issues that made me unconscious again about politics, and the fact that I was never drawn to politics.
Without being indifferent but I had no interest in this issue, I saw a lot of these spaces
Now an interesting point that I later found out in my life that was very influential was that my two brothers were two completely different types.
My older brother was an athlete, he was a musician, I remember that time, where the city theater is, there was a Shahrdari cafe
They would go there, there was an orchestra and they would dance, they would do these things and they would take me everywhere
My second brother was very thoughtful, that is, not that he was not one, this one was in the world of politics and these things, and he was also a leftist
Each of them tried, not tried, to actually pull themselves naturally
Because my mother was moving between us and my father, it was always good to be in charge of the house with my older brother
My father told us to do whatever we want, but not in his house, none of these political adventures
I was in the seventh or eighth grade, and without wanting to, my family, despite what I said about my parents and brothers, was actually a very democratic family
I mean, we were not imposed, for example, I do not remember my father ever beating me
My mother may have had a sting, but I remember that neither my brothers nor my father behaved in this way
As I said, I was a good student, but I was in the seventh or eighth grade, and I was sitting in the classroom with a teacher.
I wrote a bit of poetry for myself, remember that at that time I also read a lot of books suitable for my age
Friends sitting next to me would see these poems and tell me to recite them for Mr. Motaman
Zayn al-‘Abidin Motamen was one of the good writers of his time, he had written the book The Eagle’s Nest and Saeb’s anthology and so on
مHe was a very good literature teacher, these friends went and told Motaman, they said that Sinai recites poetry
I remember one of those first poems to see how childish he is, I want to say he was at this level but he had good weight and rhyme
That the son should have a passion for science and art, that he should hear advice from the father, for example, from such verses as this
I showed the poems that I showed to Mr. Moatman, and he said that from now on, Sinai should bring everything new that you write once a week
And from there, the story of the young poet began, which went well
At that time, like the guitar, which is now very popular among young people, the accordion was very popular.
And I, like one of my relatives, plays the accordion, and he also plays very rudimentary and monotonous songs, but I was very fascinated by him
My parents were very worried that I would not study if I played the accordion
My older brother, we were very close to each other, that is, because my father wasn’t in Tehran, he was both a father and a brother for me
“Look, I guarantee they will buy the accordion as long as you study” I promised
In this way, an accordion was bought for me, the first of which I remember was that Mr. Pourtorab, who recently passed away, was supposed to be my teacher
But I do not know and I do not remember why we did not reach an agreement, and a Chekoslovakian man named Valogia
Who came to Iran to be a double bass player in the symphony orchestra
He taught piano and accordion privately after the symphony orchestra did not continue at that time
I was in tenth or eleventh grade or maybe ninth or tenth, I do not remember exactly but I had a classmate named Mehrdad Samimi
He was the son of one of the best naturalist painters, a realist of his time named Reza Samimi
And through Mehrdad, I also went to Reza Samimi’s painting class for two years, where Reza Samimi later went to Monaco and maybe Liechtenstein or I do not know where.
And he was very successful, but I do not know why, I have been talking about him with different friends over the years.
I was saying he was one of the best and maybe the best of his time, why not talk about him
Anyway, so here poetry, music and painting began to move
But all this was a hobby for me, my family was not a family that wanted to take life with art seriously
Little by little in the Alborz high school, we formed an extracurricular association that had an orchestra
And this orchestra, I think, is the first non-professional youth orchestra in Iran
Because I remember if there was an event at the university, we were invited to go and play there
Slowly I was one of the three or four accordionists who played the accordion
I mean someone who actually said these are good and I remember that time when Sabet Pasal TV started
He invited us to play live music, sometimes once a week
Well, then these were, but all of these were on the side, I remember that my average point was 17 for my diploma, which was a good grade
And it was the year that many started going to Europe, I remember that something happened in the middle that was very important
In an exhibition at a time when I was Mr. Samimi’s painting student who painted very realistically
Behrouz Golzari, who died a few years ago and was one of the good designers of that time, in the Iranian-American Association, which was at the Shah’s three ways at that time.
They used to say Shah three ways but in fact it was a crossroads, the intersection of Jomhouri and Valiasr, it was there
It was a two-story brick building, and Behrouz Golzari had set up a painting-drawing exhibition
But those paintings were actually more modern than what we learned in Reza Samimi’s class
When we left, the designs seemed very strange to us, why they are like this
And I remember suddenly we saw two young people who were older than us, that is, if we were about 16 years old, they were, say, 30 years old
And some gathered around them and were arguing with them, we went, we listened and there was a heated discussion
And we found out that one of them was Jazeh Tabatabai and one of them was Nasser Oveysi.
This gallery was not built at that time, it was a courtyard with 2 small rooms behind Jazeh’s father’s house
hich I later found out that Jazeh had a problem with his father and had come from there and lived in those rooms
Jazeh and Oveysi said that if painting is so interesting to you, come once and see our works in this gallery, which was not a gallery yet and had only 2 rooms
As I said, I read a lot of books and poems at that time, and listened to the western novels that a gentleman named Houshang Mostofi read in the radio at that time
Some nights a week I was listening to the radio, these atmosphere was too much in my mind
I also wrote essays well, there were a few of us in high school who were high school essayists
I mean, sometimes the kids would come and say they would buy me a sandwich, write me an essay about it, I mean I was in this literary atmosphere
The atmosphere of Jazeh and Oveyssi that I saw suddenly formed in my mind a atmosphere such as Modigliani or Picasso
At the beginning of the twentieth century in France, for example, in Saint-Germain or Montparnasse, which I read in these stories, were in it
I would also like to say that it might be interesting for today’s youth, at that time it was mostly French literature that was being translated
It was later that English became more prominent, and then suddenly it occurred to me that Jazeh had also written a book
For example, it was a piece of iron, chess of life, etc., his life was also very artistic
Maybe the spark that struck in my brain, which can then be lived with art, this transformation may have formed from there
Those were the fields, but I realized that you can live with art as well, it was very different from seeing the life that used to be the life of a doctor for me or the life of a series of army officers
I was fascinated by it, I have no doubt about it, and Jazeh was a man who gave a lot of energy in the way of art, he was really a very special person
Anyway, in 1337, I got a diploma, again from the same relatives, some of whom were professors at the medical school.
I was told that you should take the medical entrance exam now, then we will have an idea, I realized that we have an idea, that is, finally you will be accepted somehow
But I remember I went to the entrance exam, but I intentionally started painting on a piece of paper, I did not want to be accepted
And so as not to shock the family, I said that I wanted to study architecture in Austria and music next door, but architecture was important
Part 03
In 1337, I was not yet 18 years old when my parents took me to Austria
I remember on October 8, 1958, I arrived in Vienna
I had a letter from one of the Vienna Schools of Architecture that you were accepted to enter the school
Now I did not know German at all and it was very funny that a classmate friends
First of all, when we arrived in Vienna that year, there were 30 Iranians in all of Austria
It had become two thousands just two years later, that is, this movement had happened
Because Austria was a small country, now Germany, Britain and France are in their place
Now that I think my friend and I were naive, we thought he had been there for 2 weeks, now he speaks German.
I do not forget telling him, let’s go to college, Parviz, this is my letter and I was accepted
We went and saw a man with white hair, but he must have been 10 years younger than me now, and he was a teacher
He took us and everyone explained to me, I pretend that this friend of ours knows German after 2 weeks
I told him what he was saying, he said it did not matter, it did not matter, the saying went on until it finally came out after half an hour, three quarters of an hour.
Later I went to the Vienna College of Technology, where I showed the letter, these were one of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Schillerplatz in Vienna, which is still there, and one
Both had architectural disciplines, he was more focused on architectural art discussions, this one was more focused on technical issues and so on
When I came here, and in fact almost crying to the kids who were in the technical college and were ironic
I did not know them very well, I told them what this letter was written, they said that this letter should be written by you, now see what the translation of the judiciary was like, the translation of the official translator
After graduating, you must have worked in an architectural studio for 2 years, and then come here and take the entrance exam, and if you pass, you can study here.
Based on this, I got a visa and all this turned out to be your acceptance
So the first year I could not enroll in that college, I used that one year
In order to sing a harmony with Mr. Parviz Mansouri, who was one of the best music teachers, so that I could be accepted in the music academy as well.
Another thing that happened that was very crucial in my life was that the room I rented
The housewife who was when she saw that I had an accordion with me, now this housewife had two sons
These two boys, named Helmut and Hairy, one of whom was one year older than me, had been killed in World War II bombings
And he was a little bit mentally retarded, another was Haieri, who was actually a mechanic apprentice.
But the father of these two children was a professor at the Academy of Music who was killed in World War II
Thus, in the room that I rented, it is interesting for you to know that at that time, if we wanted to convert the shilling into Tomans, it was 50 to one Tomans that I had to rent
A smaller but more royal piano, meaning a piano that has a shape, not a wall, and a very good desk
And shelves full of music, from operas and concerts and symphonies, everything I wanted was there
Of these two boys, one of whom had become a postal worker, the other a mechanic, had nothing to do with them at all
In this way, all this was given to me, I also became a son of the family who lived in that house for 6 years
After 1 year, I enrolled in the technical college in the field of architecture and the same year I took the entrance exam in the music academy.
And in this entrance exam, anyone could choose their professor, and I chose the same professor who
arviz Mansouri, who was my teacher and taught me harmony and I was his student, was also his student, and also Mr. Alireza Mashayekhi, who now teaches at the university, Professor Hans Yelink
Hans Yelink was one of the greatest modern composers of his time, and at the 1958 Brussels International Exposition his music was actually presented as the music of the time
I forgot to say that when the landlady saw that accordion in my hand, she said that you play the accordion?
I said yes, he said do you want to continue here? I said yes, said my late husband’s friend is the director of accodion department of Vienna conservatory
If you want to introduce him to accept you, I remember a cold winter day
I took this heavy accordion that this waist is the result of those stories and I thought I was playing it on TV at that time and so on
Now that I think I’m laughing, I was a little German and I told him I’m a teacher.
“I came to you to polish my talent a little”, he asked me to play
At that time, whoever beat the Khachaturian sword dance or the Rimsky-Korsakov bee, for example, was very Avesta
I also thought that when I start playing he would be so surprised that he’d fall off his chair. He said, I have a little girl who also plays
Do you want to listen to her work, I said okay, my accordion was the biggest accordion that was in Iran and still is
I mean, there were no 120 bigger bass in Iran at all, this girl came and was my own age
And I saw that I had never seen such an accordion at all, it was 148 bass
When he put his hand on the instrument, I realized that I had lost myself badly
I later found out that she had won the first European prize twice and the second world prize once
When it was over, the teacher told me to look. I usually do not accept my students who are more than 7 or 8 years old.
But well, you came from Iran and with this interest, you can come to me for 5, 6 months
If I see that you are working seriously, we will continue and I became his student from that moment until the last moment when I returned to Iran
And I was his student for 9 years, and now I had studied in Iran before
I made this some time ago, an Austrian accordionist from the Vienna Conservatory came to Tehran, I said that this is a souvenir for you
This is exactly November 6, 1965, and I performed solo at the Vienna Concert Hall in Mozart.
I mean, when I was reading the lesson, the accordion tutor was by his side and continued.
And the interesting thing is that he actually told me, he said that you have to start from the first note, you have the foundation of failure
And I will not let him go on stage for 4, 5 years and he did the same until after 4, 5 years I was allowed to be a member of this group
You see, and we gave a good concert, and in the end, in fact, I say solo on November 6 at the Vienna Concert Hall.
I do not think other irons have done this with the accordion, I do not know but I do not think, until it was not, but I do not know later
In fact, after 7 years before that professor, he said to me, “Well, you came to my side privately.”
Why do not you want to take a course at the conservatory to be able to teach in Austria?
Thus I became an official student of the conservatory and the course of music education was 2 years
I was taking a course for accordion and after 2 years we had this concert, which I was accepted with an excellent grade.
Then I thought that well, because I was also a student and I did not have much money, I had announced in the newspaper that I was teaching accordion.
The Austrians called me and when they talked to me, they knew very well from my accent that I was not Austrian.
One or two people said that Ironi had come to Vienna and wanted to teach accordion, you know?
I mean, it was like this, but in the end I had one or two good students, which was very sad when I came to Iran and I did not continue
At that time, we had an old professor in cinema, which I will now tell you about
He said that you will finally have to choose either the accordion or the cinema, the two will not go together.
I actually finished my accordion, but when I returned to Iran, I saw that there was no customer at all for the way I played
I played the classical accordion, and concerts and large pieces, etc., and well in Iran, I did not know the accordion at all.
I also got some students who in fact say in 2 months that we should play a Caucasian rythem, sir.
Not that it’s bad, but it’s not my job, so I set aside the accordion to close its file.
It is sad that when 2, 3 years later, 4 years later, I became a filmmaker and continued working in cinema.
I went to Austria and called my accordion teacher, I said I have come to Austria and I want to see you
His first question was what did you do with the accordion, I said I put it aside, he said then why do we need to see each other
And he refused to see me, which means he was so emotionally disturbed, well this was the accordion story
Part 04
I was officially studying architecture and composition at the same time
In other words, in the academy that I attended, the professors who were sitting said, “Which professor do you want to work with?”
I showed Professor Elyenk and he told me to sit at the piano and modulate some pieces and other stuff
I did these things but I did not think I would be accepted and I was surprised
I was accepted in a class that had 10 or 12 students
For almost 3 years, I do not remember if it was 5 semesters or 6 semesters, I continued architecture and composing together
I was accepted and I do not remember that Professor Ilyenk was one of the people from whom I learned a lot, I learned art and not just music
And he always told me to increase your knowledge, but always make your shoulders so strong that in the moment of creating the work, you never feel the burden of your knowledge, let go of yourself.
I remember from the first meeting Professor Yilink told me that he was young, well, I was 18, 19 years old, let me sit behind the piano and see what he does
You were so confused about the exam that I did not understand what you know and what you do not know
I was his composing student for 5 or 6 semesters and we had other classes like form class and so on
And I went to architecture classes at the same time, and I always remember that fortunately the classes were close to each other.
I mean, it was about a 10-minute walk from the Music Academy to the School of Architecture
The days when we had important lessons and I had to be in the architecture class, I used to say that professor, if you allow me, I have a lesson or an exam today and I have to go.
His word was always that he would say, “Mr. Engineer, please, this Mr. Engineer, please.” He was teasing me about wether I’m a musician or an engineer
I decided to continue the architecture so as not to shock the family too much
I also talked to the professor and said, “Do you think that my talent is to be a composer?”
He said, “Look, you never put all your energy into composing during this time.”
Based on that, I can not tell you that you must continue composing because there has always been half of you there.
Well there I decided to pursue architecture
As for architecture, the architecture of Vienna’s technical college was not what I wanted
He was the first to have the most artistic aspect and the aspect of fine art and artistic construction.
Here we had to calculate the strength of the bridge and know the materials and do the things that were there, but not so much.
Well, how did I become a filmmaker, I should talk about cinema, the story became very detailed
A year after I left composing, I continued my architecture
Something happened at that time, cinema was always a hobby for me, it was never very serious
Theater was much more serious for me, and in Austria there were a lot of theaters and operas, and I went there a lot
Even though we had money as a student, we would go to the fourth floor and stood up there
I remember that the bad weather was coming from below, sometimes we were feeling bad because of the weather, but I was interested
This year is 1963, 64, Mr. Manouchehr Tayab, who you know was my friend from Alborz High School
He was a year or two ahead of me, but in the same years he came to Austria, where he had previously worked in the film press and cinema.
In our first year, we started architecture together at the same technical college in Vienna
But he went to the cinema because he had actually been to and interested in cinema before
In the same year, Tayab told me, Khosrow, I want to make a student film, you come and play
I said I’m not doing this, now that I think about it I see why, this story was also in high school
And then once in Vienna for a play where one could actually have an accent in English because a director came from the Austro-American Association
They chose me again, apparently there was a termite in it anyway
I said very well, I went and played the movie, well it was a simple student movie but what I found interesting was the behind the scenes
It was very interesting for me to make decor, to illuminate from night to morning.
Another thing that happened was that in the early ’60s,
The films, they were no longer acting films, they were films that were, in a way, the atmosphere of the novels I liked to read.
Suppose, for example, that I read the works of Turgenev or the works of Dostoevsky or Gidomopasan or Andre Gide.
I saw that it was actually translated into an image in the cinema, so it was interesting to me there as well
But I still hadn’t decided, it was actually a shock that after 4 years of studying architecture, I had 1 exam left to get a bachelor’s degree, not a master’s degree, from architecture to cinema.
And what was that shock? One of the lessons we had was the drawing geometry exam
The drawing geometry there were 5 projects, 3 of which were actually 4 sections each on A4 paper
And 2 of these projects were on bigger papers, one was perspective and one was circular objects and how they were shaded
There was a lot of work to be done to complete these, the ironic children had discovered, and this was the rubbish of the Iranian children
That our professor, whose name was Krams, was a very, very well-built man, and he was also a strict and good professor.
The children had discovered that the questions were written by this columnist, meaning that if the first question came up, the rest of the questions would be the same
The second question of this memory, the rest is this, you know, that way we all knew this and we went and kept these columns
Anyone who was accepted in writing did not have to take the oral exam anymore, well, but first we had to deliver the projects
When I submitted my projects, the assistant professor took over, instead of a dot in my perspective, it was 3 mm wrong.
He drew a red line and said this is the wrong point and go and change it
I said, “Look, I drew this and it ‘s over, now give us a point and let it go.”
He said, “Look, don’t change. The professor will bother you. I said no, I’m taking a risk.”
So he accepted the projects and we went to the written exam, the written exam score based on the same memorization of the column was very good and I got A
Anyone who took A should not take the oral exam anymore, we were happy that we were accepted, sir, that if I had been accepted, I would have received my bachelor’s degree.
But 2 days later, the children came and said in the professor’s room and in front of his office, they called your name and said that you should take an oral exam
I said why, well, Mr. Anvar, this is the biggest, most cinematic and most heartbreaking memory of my studies.
One day it was about ten-thirty in the morning, in the nineteenth-century building, the great hall, new windows, a strong professor
He was old but very strong, his assistant was sitting behind him, he took me to the board
With 3 or 4 questions, he realized that I memorized them, he said, “Look, you went and memorized them, but you did not understand the grounds
Accordingly, you have to repeat all the projects, re-register, try again, and that means everything, that is, dragging those projects again for 1 year.
Well for me who has already emphasized that I was never rejected or renewed, and I was a good student.
It was so shocking and I was so humilated that I could not think at all
When Destiny Wants to Play, it was at the same time as the entrance exam for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where I had previously studied composing
This year was 1342, the year 1342 now I have to go back again, I came to Iran
You know, in the loneliness and cold and student life of Vienna, poetry is very much boiling
And Jazeh, RIP, when he saw my poems, he said, “I will publish these from the gallery.”
Thus, my first collection of poems was published in Tehran in 1342 under the name of sludge blisters
Now the name itself says what world I was traveling in at that time, that is, in a very radical kind of modernism of that time.
The late Nader Naderpour came that night and inaugurated it. I remember that Mr. Braheni also said at that time that if you send a poem from abroad, we will publish it here in Arash magazine
But I was far from the literary atmosphere of Iran and although I wrote, I did not send it
The shock that came, the game I played in the movie and watching the movies of the 60’s New Wave and Neorealism in Italy and Eastern Europe and so on
It aroused in me a feeling that, well, I could do all these things I had learned in the cinema
From visual arts to poetry and literature and so on
Thus, I participated in the entrance exam of the film school
It is interesting for you to know that in the same year, 120 people participated with me, and 8 of these 120 people were accepted
I was easily accepted because I was told what a work of art you did
I said that this poem of mine, which came out this year, I read so much architecture, I also composed so much composition
Well, it was very natural that my support was strong in this regard and I was easily accepted
In the same year, Sohrab Shahid Sales tried with me that his German language was not good and he had not settled down yet, and in fact he was accepted as a free listener.
Listen to the class in such a way that you come to class and after one or two semesters, if you can come to class, you will become official.
But unfortunately, after a few months, because he had a lung disease, he had a lung disease and he had relatives in Paris and he went to them in France
And I did not see him until later, when we talk about him
There was a gentleman named Mansour Mahdavi who later became one of the good filmmakers in Europe, but he never came to Iran, and in fact he was not accepted that year, and he was accepted the following year
Of those 8, 5 graduated in directing as a major.
Excuse me for saying this, there is a reason, I want to address our social issues
Both in the major in directing and the minor in screenwriting both got me an excellent grade and I became the first student.
Why do I say this? Because I had a Swiss competitor, I had an Austrian and a German competitor
That the Swiss rival who was most arrogant could not believe at all that he was doing well and I was privileged
And when they announced the results, even though he was my tough competitor, he came and said, “Well, you have studied art before but I studied politics.”
He had studied political law, the information in his dictionary was strange, the professors were afraid of him because he kept everything but he was not a good artist
In this way, I finished school with 2 excellent degrees for directing and screenwriting
And I had finished the conservatory 1 year before that
What year was it?
– It was1967, the year 1346
Part 05
My final work, which I actually made for college, was a film called Gargoor bardari
Gargoor are nets in the south, which we saw become very complicated, I translated it into fishing.
Incidentally, this fishing movie was recently graced by friends and they had a birthday party for me at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
I said exactly 50 years have passed since then and I would like you to see this film that I made 50 years ago as a student.
I subtitled it with my friends and they screened it, and it was interesting to me that in the next days
Some of my friends who are filmmakers asked me why I did not continue that way
I said maybe I was wrong because I always believed we had to make some kind of cinema.
Which at the same time establishes good cultural relations with people and it actually promotes cultural taste
At the same time, it can be valid outside of Iran, either this or that was a bit strange for me.
My first films that I made in Iran, such as biography and cold iron, etc., which have recently been shown again to the younger generations
It shows that I was very modern at the time, as one said, I followed your work and all your films were newly discovered after 30, 40 years.
I want to talk about our social issues, a person thinks he is the first student, you know what I mean, a situation like this
I also got married the same year and my wife and I came to Iran
There was no other place, the atmosphere of the famous Farsi films did not welcome me at all
The national television had not started yet, it was just starting, and the intellectual development center, which did not exist at all, the only place where it could work was the Ministry of Culture and Arts.
Thus, in 1946, when I came, I went to the Ministry of Culture and Arts, where Mr. Tayab had come two years before me.
And through that, I remember that when I left, those who were in the Ministry of Culture and Arts before me were Hajir Dariush.
It was Kamran Shirdel, Manouchehr Tayab, well, these were the people who are now known
The director general of the Ministry of Culture and Arts was a man named Dr. Heshmati, who said that not all the documents you have are useful to us.
Go up the stairs and make a video of these employees arriving in the morning
Well, I was very upset, I said I went there and after all this, now they say go to the stairs and make a movie
I said let me think for a moment, I’ll make a 5 to 10 minute movie anyway so I can actually get in here
He said, “Think about it”. There were still traveling quilts at the time, and I thought I would make a film about one of them.
And so it turned out to be an 8-minute film that I remember a lot called The Voice That Gets Antique
Luckily or not, I do not know which one made this film, well now an interesting thing has happened here that I still still have to repeat.
People like me were rare in the culture that was prevalent in the popular cinema at that time, or some people, like Golestan, who came at once and made bricks and mirrors
But if you wanted to enter the cinema profession, the culture that we had learned, I meant a generation that came back to Iran, The culture wasn’t useful, It had nothing to do with the atmosphere
On the one hand, they could not say that these people do not know how to make films, and on the other hand, they should be loved, which means that they do not benefit us
Now that I have been invited again, I can see that about young people who are interested in cinema, about the films of 45, 46 years ago, they tell me how modern they are.
Well I think that was a mistake, now to speak culturally that we unfortunately do not discover ourselves from what we have to cultivate it.
We wait that if others discover it, then we say that we are in, it will not happen from within.
I now know the fate of a young man, a young filmmaker who, in order to be able to actually stand on his own two feet.
In the end, he could not let go of what was his real mentality as he wanted to go.
Luckily for me, he made that film, and then I made another film that is still missing, and about the Iranian artists that he lost.
Later I made a film called Beyond the Noise, which was about deaf children. They were educated in the gardener’s school
In that movie, Sohrab Shahid Sales entered Iranian cinema as my assistant. This movie still exists and Sohrab can be seen in the bus line.
That film also won two awards when Iranian cinema did not win any awards at all and no one knew.
One from the international judges at the Children and Adolescents Festival and one from the Iranian film archive by Farrokh Ghaffari
In this way, they stamped the documentary maker on us. I had no problem with the documentary, but if the documentary was supposed to prevent the scripts that I was showing you all from being made now
I say that it does not matter, if I make a documentary in my place, but I came to the cinema through literature
Thus, in the Ministry of Culture and Arts, I tried for several years to make a film if I could
But I may have said before that it really didn’t, and it’s very simple
There is talk now that a film will be made about Cyrus, right after the 2,500-year-old festivities that took place at that time.
I went to the Minister of Culture and Arts and said, “Look, if we make a film about Cyrus now, all the equipment is ready.”
There are flags and horses and clothes and chariots and all that, the cost of the film is one-fifth that of all that is supposed to be made.
I also wrote a story from the book of Cyrus’ training by Xenophon called Panthea
Panthea, the wife of the king of Susa, named Araspus, Araspus defeats Cyrus and escapes.
And the whole shrine and in fact everything it has will be given to Cyrus
The first time I wrote, they said it was great, but what happened again that I always experienced these things
They made a very ridiculous excuse that which actor do you think deserves to play the role of Cyrus?
This was written that way, it wasn’t made, another movie that I wanted to make before the revolution and could not be opened was the legendary movie of the White City
The story of the Daryakenar town which was newly built and the trees were all short, so the town was completely white.
There was another film called Love in a Sunny Alley, which, when I wanted to make it, coincided with the year that Mr. Beizai made the film Storm.
Then I saw that there are similarities between the two, I also have a morality that if my work is like someone else’s work, I immediately distance myself from it, that was it
In this way, even before the revolution, it was not that I was not trying, although I had told the third martyr that I would make my first film when I was 40, but it did not work out.
In the meantime, I was making various films for the Parent-Teacher Association, such as Boy, Parent, Children Wandering Between God’s Commands and Our Behavior.
The film, The Unknown Verb, the film of escape, the film of scratching, the film of colorful silence and why my child, these were a series of films
The important thing about these films is what I want to say, they were one of the first films to work with non-professional actors in real time
The only reason was that the head of the Parents and Teachers Association, Dr. Asefi, said that we want these to be the shape of the same people who watch the films
In fact, they should not think that the artist is playing this, these are ordinary people
That’s why I learned a lot from those films, it was very important and I said they are not mentioned anywhere and they were rarely seen.
Because no one in these films has a hijab and after the revolution, the story was completely abandoned
On the one hand, documentary cinema was moving, and on the other hand, these feature films were made in real spaces with non-actors
And in all of this, in fact, our plan was to raise the capital so that we could make films independently
Plato 16 is written on most of these feature films, because we were shooting 16mm films
nd there were 4 of us, it was me, it was the late Qavanloo who was the director of photography, Mr. Abbas Mohammadi was the director of production and Mr. Ali Asghar Eskandari who was doing the technical and lighting work.
We worked together a lot and well these movies were from 3, 4 minutes to 55, 56 minutes.
They showed 3 or 4 minutes in the training sessions for the first university professors, which raised the issue of what the issue was.
Based on the issue that was being raised, then they would come and comment
On the other hand, those louder films like the movie, Escape, played by Mr. Mohammad Ali Keshavarz at that time
I remember that the subject of the film was that the father told his son that if you fail your exam again, do not leave your foot in the house
And well the boy goes to the exam and does not know anything and runs away from home, and now the adventures that happen to him
When I made some of these films, Dr. Asefi, who was the managing director, told me that you have become a specialist yourself
Go get the material and make a film for us, where I said give me your letters and I will set the script based on those letters.
One of which remained in my mind was a letter that I love football and whenever I see the nation playing football, I get sad because I can not play
Because I have to put up a tent, because I put on a veil, I can not play football, from the contradictions in the minds of the children, I learned a lot from those movies
Part 06
It was in 1951 that I went to Mr. Pahlabad and told him that I was very grateful to you and that if you would allow me, I would go to TV
He said: What? Who bothered you? He even said then that if you want me to give you a British scholarship and go there for 1 year
I said no, I have nothing to do there, It’s just that my way is another one
Anyway, I resigned and came to TV, at that time Mr. Gorgin was not there yet, Mr. Assadollah Peyman was the head of TV production
I was supposed to make a series based on the stories of the late Sabkatkin Salwar on your name on the TV screen
This was you on the TV screen of people’s stories, family and ordinary people stories that he wrote for magazines
He was a very respectable man and his stories were good for magazines, but there was a fundamental problem that later I did not go to at all.
I made a story of it, which I happened to write the music myself at the time, and Mr. Peyman also gave the radio orchestra, and I still have this music caption
The one I made, I saw that I am not this, someone who makes a series, wants to move forward quickly and go and go quickly, is problematic in terms of budget
And that time for me was a time when one’s different mindsets, a time when Antonioni and Fellini and Eastern European cinema were at stake
I was thinking of traveling technic a lot, suppose I wanted to do a 15 meters traveling
This is not suitable for serialization at all, now that you see these Turkish serials, they make the first scene very nicely.
They take a couple of long shots and then medium shot and close-up and that’s it, at that time I could not think of making a film like this at all.
Then there was one thing, the stories he wrote were for paper (magazines), that is, at once there were three pages of dialogue in which two people sat down and talked
And he did not want them to be cut off, I said, look, I really respect you and I know that you are also kind to me
But our collaboration to make the series is not in your favor as a producer, nor am I very happy, I’m sorry and did not continue
But there is an important point here, again, for the friends who work, to know that a generation has stood by some set of criteria anywa
About 2 years ago, a gentleman from TV came to me and wanted to interview me
Well, when I did not allow myself to be involved in the work of my friends, I remember not being allowed here, and he himself was standing on the steps
I looked and saw that the camera was completely tilted, meaning that it was so tilted that I could see from here, and the tripod was loosening in the same way
I told him I’m so sorry, you want to interview but you do not think the box is crooked
He said yes, I know, but it can’t be corrected, this tripod of ours is loose, I said, why did you take the loose tripod?
He said that store said we have nothing else, I said but in the end you are responsible for what you get
Not that I have any objections, but taking over the tripod and with these conditions, it is you who can actually see the resault here
I was talking about the same thing we were doing then suddenly the tripod fell. The camera was about 15 or 16 billions worth
Then I told him this story, told him how it was that I did not continue that series
I said that once I was going to make a series called You on the TV screen, there was a market passage that had to be made.
But those times on your TV if you watched when they wanted to show a brick wall
They threw a sack on a frame and drew bricks on it
Now, at the bottom of this 13-story building, there was a valley that was going down, and that was where it was supposed to be built.
Ms. Negar Javadan was also the stage designer and responsible for making this
I told Mr. Peyman, who was the production manager, that I would make this film, but not with those lines and brick paintings
He said, “Oh, everyone is making a film like that.” I said, “but I will not make a film like this. We should feel the boldness of bricks”
He said, “What are you talking about, Sinaei?” I said, “Look, there is a point, film and television means believing in that framework.”
Any factor that damages that belief will cause the viewer to have no connection with the work
He said, “I say do something that you are satisfied with.
I said then we make an appointment
I spoke to God bless Mr. Qawanloo, I said Fereydoun, I work with actors, as it should be
I ask you, to film a movie that wants to go to the Oscars, to pay attention to the light, the frames and the movements of the camera and all that, so that there won’t be any problem
I told Mr. Peyman that I would take a sequence from the film, and if you had any objections, it would be my fault.
But if there was no problem and only those walls were not acceptable, then you have to accept that I will not continue like this
We worked on it and I Edited it and showed it to Mr. Peyman. He was a professional. He laughed
He said, “Excuse me.” He teased me a little then said that I was right
Stand up for these issues, not because you want to fight, but because of the dignity of your profession
And believe me, the movies of the time I’re watching now really make me enjoy the faces (makeup) sometimes.
At that time, they said, “Sir, we want to make a film. We need 20 bearded people.” They would go to Arbab Jamshid.
And they brought 20 people and wore some black or white wool with thick eyebrows and brought them in front of the camera.
People used to say that it was a good movie, but some people stood up for these issues in order for them to be corrected
Not that you still come here with a tripod and the camera falls and then you say that it is
I went to the TV and started my work with that series, which remained half-time and immediately interfered with the film of the Lost Lament
Next to him, I made short films like Hossein Yavari, like One Day on TV
It was like a movie where we put these old clocks on the pedestals of Persepolis for the first time and worked in Persepolis for a few nights because there is no day in Persepolis
That means only one or two hours you have shade and the rest of the hour everything is flat (shadowless) and well, we worked at night
The year 54 is the year when we got to the point where we are not given daily chores. There three people with me that you know but I won’t mention their name
We decided to go to Mr. Mashouf, who was the head of television production at the time, and make an offer
To make a section for making documentaries or a story or anything else for sale to foreign channels
He said that we should write a letter to Mr. Ghotbi and make an offer, but I do not think he will accept
I said oh there is no reason, we can do a good deed, what’s wrong but he said I do not think he will accept
Thus, we wrote a letter and gave it to Mr. Mashouf to take to Mr. Ghotbi
And 10 days later, he called us and said that Qutbi had answered and that we should sit down and talk
We went to the meeting and told other friends that if we left and Qutbi did not accept, we would resign, everyone said yes
Mr. Mashouf told me, “What are you doing, Sinai?” I said, “Did Mr. Ghotbi accept or not?” He said no, Mr. Ghotbi did not accept
I said I was resigning, He face the next one and said, “What are you doing?” He said that he would also resign, but first this film, which I am in the middle of, would be finished, and then I would resign
One of them also said that he would work with Mr. So-and-so and that neither of them resigned.
I said that I was resigning and I resigned, I came out and in the meantime my occupation was that I had brought the film of the elegy as a side job and I was working at home.
And I signed 3 contracts with the international television department, which were 3 contracts with Mr. Sirus Ramti
Someone told me, Khosrow make two for your heart and one for our heart
I said very well, as long as I can make those two for my own heart
One of the three documentaries of modern Iranian painting that still exists was in English
It starts with Ziapour. In this film, many prominent artists of that time such as Marco Grigorian and Sadegh Berirani are filmed
Another of these 3 films that has recently received a lot of attention is a film about Tehran
Which is 85 minutes and this is the last film that Tehran presents before the revolution
And that red-haired woman who came up a lot later, in fact can be seen in this movie
Let me talk a little bit about culture, I found out that one of the men who also got a doctorate abroad and had a videoteque at the time
He came and removed the full title of the film, which revealed who made it, and rented the first sticky leader of the film, with the memory of Tehran written on it, to friends abroad.
And the third film was made just for them, as they said, make a film for us, which was good before the revolution and the adventures of that time
I do not have this in my archives and a friend happened to see it in the TV archive and said what a good movie it is, called Woman of Yesterday, Woman of Today
Part 07
I really did not have a problem with anyone, but I had only one point, I said that I can only work independently
By working independently, I have no intention of clash with someone, no, but I have to make the movie I like, I have to love it, I have to feel it.
We wanted to do film work with the money we raised with the films we made for the Parent-Teacher Association.
That’s why my biggest mistake happened, God bless Shahid Sales, he always said, Khosrow, why don’t you make your movie sooner?
I was saying, Sohrab, look, I think for a movie, one should be at least 40 years old, to see the world a little more mature.
I used to say that I would gain experience with these short films, well, when I was cooked, I would make my first film in 40 years.
And he was 37 years old when the revolution took place, that is, I really started in 45, when none of my friends had made a film at that time.
But then they make a feature film, the feature film stays in the mind or is raised, the films are lost for a short time.
This coincided with the beginning of the revolution. My father’s house was between Hafez and Nejatullahi, almost near the college crossroads
And well, every day there were chants and in the alleys the young people who were chanting ran away, the people who left the door open for the young people to go there.
The tires were on fire and that’s every day, and it was in that situation that I thought it was the best time for us to make a film about it.
Well, we, who were at Plato 16, knew that we did not want any money for this.
The ones we invited all cooperated at the height of goodwill, with amounts that were insignificant at all, but nothing.
It was the first film that Mr. Mehdi Hashemi, who fortunately is now a very famous and very good actor, entered the cinema with.
Ms. Soraya Ghasemi, who I heard last night won the award for best actress in a supporting role, she also collaborated
The late Ismail Mohammadi, whose acting I have always loved and seen in Mina’s circle
And the late Gholamreza Tabatabai, who was in fact a very honorable man and a very responsible, talented and literate man, was also present.
Due to the budget we had, out of 105 minutes of the film, I decoupage maybe 85 minutes in the same father’s house and we got it.
We had little money and were looking for someone who could provide at least a third of our budget
The late Qawanloo told me that there is a gentleman named Engineer Houshang Kabir who has just started a company
He should read the script, maybe it will help, that he read and he had a good counselor, to whom I do not talk much.
He said that he was ready to help one-third of the budget, and he helped, and a film was made, and this was 1979.
The film was made and I do not remember that Mr. Mohammad Ali Najafi was the director general of guidance. He said that the film made by Sinai should go to any festival he wanted.
The film went to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in 1980 and became the first film to win an award at an A festival after the revolution.
Its award was not one of the main awards, but this award is also very interesting because it was the award of the Anti-Fascist Association that was given to the film
I went to Karlovy Vary with Mr. Mehdi Hashemi, Mr. Qavanloo and Mr. Mohandes Kabir in 1980 when I received this award
I came to Vienna from Karlovy Vary because I hoped I could actually sell the black-and-white film to Vienna TV.
This must be the year 1360, because the film was made in 1358, went in 1980 and was in Karlovy Vary, now I came to Vienna
Maybe if you ask me when was the most beautiful moment of your filmmaking era, I could point it out.
In Vienna, the Austrian-Iranian Students’ Association decided to screen the film in the large amphitheater of the Vienna Technical University
This coincided with the time when various groups had it for each other
Monarch lovers, Mujahids and Toudeh like this
I had a terrible memory and that was when I was a student and Majid Mohseni, did you know him?
Yes, he was a movie actor
Who later became a lawyer, had made a film called Swallows Return to the Nest
The film was brought to Vienna to actually tell students to come back and talk about this
And the students started yelling, they yelled so hard
I do not remember that the late Majid Mohseni hit the ground with his foot
He said that my father planted these Gilavand trees with his own hands, we worked hard in this country and now you want to say that we are from the government
But I do not forget the scene of booing, well in those sensitive circumstances I was really scared of what would happen to this film
And these groups, waiting for each one to see how they would react, the amphitheater was big, too, with over a thousand spectators.
When I entered the cinema that day, I saw that they were all groups with a special look, I was really told how these people would react now.
What happens, in the middle of the movie all the halls suddenly collapse, I did only one thing, the one I believed in
Mr. Anvar, whoever wants to listen to this or not, I say that a healthy nation, a nation that first of all respects its own identity, now whatever it is, does not fight among itself
Rather, It tries to act in an atmosphere of understanding to build the country, you see
In this way, I did not use any political slogans in that sense, neither death to this, nor long live it, nothing
For this reason, long live with a few points is not one more slogan in the film
I kill, I kill who my brother killed, in the sense of why do you kill a brother? Why kill a brother?
That was the slogan, and that’s what made me die of panic because of it.
What are they going to do now, tear the curtain apart, etc. About 20-25 minutes after the movie, I was sitting there, and my tears flowed.
The hall was so empathetic with the film, one could feel it again, where you should have laughed, laughed or where you should have gotten excited, which I did not believe at all
And finally, all of a sudden, all these groups that were actually standing in front of each other all came to my side to thank me.
What happened? First, the film was offered in Vienna itself by two newspapers as a weekly order.
I remember very well, one of his films was Kagoshmusha from Kurosawa, one of them was Louis Mall’s beautiful child, and one was Long Live
Long live was invited to the city of Graz. In Graz, the student leader had invited the mayor of the area where the cinema was located.
I do not forget, said the mayor. “You know, we never show a film that is not dubbed in German or has German subtitles.”
But if you had seen the reaction of the crowd in the Vienna cinema, you would have accepted that it is worthwhile for us to show it this way, and Sinai himself would have dubbed it with a microphone
And I stood there and dubbed the sentences one by one in German, and the film in Grance also encountered this reaction, the same film came to Iran.
– Didn’t you sell the movie?
– Didn’t buy it, they said we do not buy black and white movies, they went to color movies
The film came to Iran, a film that everyone really worked on without any expectations
Mr. Anvar, I am not in an age to add or subtract anything
But the fate of a film shows what I often say, I say do not think that the person sitting at that table is the government and the culprit, let’s fix it.
We all have a culture, let’s not do these things, well, this was the history of Long Live the film that came to Iran
Ms. Osuli had made a banner that we just had to print
First, four days before the film was released, a gentleman who was the head of the filmmakers’ union came and held a meeting.
He said that the officials who were crossing the street said that these cinema entrances are obscene, no cinema should have banners.
I said, “Our banner is a series of fist shadows and a bloddy hand print, how come it’s obscene”
He said no, when we are not going to have banners, means none, have this up to here
Secondly, the contract that was signed with me for the film to be shown in cinemas, which I think was 7 cinemas.
It was so that if 2 or 3 of these cinemas had 3 rows left empty in one period, I would not have reached that amount.
Third, when the film was released in cinemas, it coincided with the time when grenades were placed in cinemas for a short time and things like this happened.
The film was not advertised in newspapers or television, all our advertisements were like this
Long live was written on a small piece of paper … and below it with the participation of actors who were not even stars
Fourth, the children who had gone to different cinemas came and told me that there was a cinema near the railway that you do not know what the film was become
I said what happened? They said they stuck the first ring to the fifth ring, for example, they stuck the fifth to the third, they stuck the third to the eighth, something strange and confusing
I got up and went there and said, “Sir, how did you show this movie?” They said, “Sir, your movie does not have a star, what do you want? I swear to God.”
Fifth: I did not know 2 students who were students who came to me.
At that time, I said, guys, I would give you 100 tomans a day and go in front of the cinemas and see if anyone goes to the cinema or not.
Believe me, Mr. Anvar, after 3 days theycame and said that Mr. Sinaei, we will not go anymore
I said why? They said some people came and threatened to stab us if you came again.
Look, these are the things I want to say from the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry, but do not think that I did not understand what happened
And do not think that you are blaming everything on the governments that the government did not want, this culture must be corrected, the foundation must be corrected.
This kind of behavior and this kind of submergence must be corrected
What was our guilt except that we wanted to have an independent cinema, an independent cinema that serves this country?
I will talk to you about these scripts later when I went bankrupt and nothing came of it.
یI mean, we who really wanted to make a film with nothing, I first said the preliminaries of the film that the film was not a failure
There was a film that won the first prize after the revolution, but when we wanted to show it in Iran, we encountered these issues.
Still, those who watch the film still say, “Sir, what a good film this was, why did it happen then?” I say what I can say, I could not do it
What goes back to Farabi is very funny, I’m very sorry that it will take a long time
At that time, if you remember, the films that received the premiums were awarded 4 coupons.
I was afraid to go and get these coupons, I said, well, the film was in this situation, what should I say?
I was told that no, sir, what does this have to do with it, go get the coupons, I went and said that this movie, Long Live, gets any coupons?
They said yes, how was it? Premium? 4 coupons you can enter the movie, I was happy
My lady Gizella was from Hungary, we called her immediately to go and find some good movies and see what movies are there if we want to import a movie.
The day they told me this and gave me 4 coupons, I remember going down the stairs to the second floor where I wanted to go downstairs
A gentleman whose face I knew and he knew me well, but I can not say who he was just that he was not in charge
He came and said, “Sir, congratulations, I said why?” what has happened? He said you have 4 coupons, I said yes
He said that each of them would buy 2 million from you, no less, 2 million each would be 8 million, at that time the cost of a movie was not more than 2 million
I was happy to come home to Ms. Osuli, we also had a guest, I called her and said come and see what happened
I got 4 coupons and they told me that each of them buys 2 million from me
Because I think I have no economic wisdom at all, I brought in one or two friends I thought they knew
I was told that you should not miss the value of these, they are at least 2 million each.
I said very well, at least some friends who found out I had these coupons called me and said we would buy
I said how much do you buy? They said 70,000 Tomans, 80,000 Tomans, the highest if I remember, was 100,000 Tomans or something like that.
I also did not trust my intellect because they had warned me and I told myself that you are wearing a hat again, do not do this and from these words
Whoever offered, I said I was in no hurry to sell and I would not sell so easily
And 2-3 months had not passed since this incident when they suddenly said that the Farabi Cinema Foundation had been established and that he would take over the matter from now on and those coupons were no longer valid
This story was alive, both Materially and spiritually
Part 08
I made the Lost Elegy all by myself
-in what year?
Now I say
This story is very detailed, in 1349, that is, 3 years after I came to Iran
One of my friends, who was Assyrian (Christian), had lost his father
He was to be buried in a Christian cemetery in Dolab, so I went to the ceremony out of respect for my friend.
When the ceremony was over, I began to walk, and suddenly I saw a series of very similar tombstones lined up next to each other.
When I read them, they are strange names, that is, the names of Western Europe are more familiar to us, those names were strange names.
nd then when I read their age, I saw that, for example, one is a 1-year-old child, one is an 80-year-old man, it was very strange to me.
I started asking what was going on, the priest told me that these were Poles who had taken refuge in Iran during the war.
And they were in Iran until 1945, when his story is detailed, but the subject became interesting to me
But in the same year, everything I said to this and that, sir, something like this happened in our country, it was something like this, and let’s make a film about this
Everyone was saying that World War II was over and over, you know, nobody really followed it.
It was the beginning of this year 1349, in the meantime I met one or two families who were Polish women who had Iranian husbands.
I got to know their kids who were my age and I was really a little more connected, but it was not possible to make a movie.
It was interesting to me because from my childhood I had one thing in mind that the elders used to say that these Polish women were in nightclubs and places like that.
One thing was on my mind but I had no knowledge, that was where I started researching
I do not remember how I found that clue now, this is now 1349
In fact, I am now working with the Parents and Teachers Association and I am also working at the Ministery of Culture and Arts.
There I met a family whose mother was a Polish refugee and who was an Iranian father and an engineer, about whom I now speak more.
And their daughter is studying sociology and gave her thesis on this Polish refugee story
That family was the Afkhami family, and the mother, who was a refugee, was Yanina Afkhami, the father of Mr. Gholam Hossein Afkhami, and their daughter, Ms. Mitra Afkhami.
That he had gone to the National University at the time and had actually researched on the subject, this clue began
And from this clue, we came to the next clue, which is the current one of Ms. Yanina, the wife of Engineer Afkhami, who was a police officer.
She was one of those Poles, Mrs. Anna Burkowska, the details of these contacts were formed.
It was 1975, the last year I was on TV, and Mr. Gorgin asked me to be the head of TV production
Sinai said that once upon a time there was a project that you were talking about the Poles, do not you want to build it?
— I said how do you say?
– He said that the king and queen went to New Zealand
Now you see, this is where the heart burns again, such a good project, the king and queen must go to remember it again
اThese are the places where I say we get hurt, the king and queen went to New Zealand
As they descended from the plane, they saw a group of teenage children in Polish folk costumes standing.
And they were reading a deaf song, and they wondered what these Polish children were doing in New Zealand.
And they asked who they were, they said they were the children of the Polish orphans you received in Iran.
And now this chores is to thank you as a representative of the Iranian people.
Well, from here, this got interesting for the organizations that had money
It was 1975 and they had left Iran in 1945, Gorgin told me that they were celebrating the 30th anniversary of their arrival in New Zealand.
If you want, you can make a video of that, I said I will do it on one condition, he said on what condition?
I said that on condition that when I returned, I could follow all the ways of these people in Iran and where they were and what they were, in which cities and how it happened.
He said that there was no problem, Me and the late Mohammad Wali Karimi Ghavanloo, who was called Fereydoun Ghavanloo, who was a cameraman, we went to New Zealand
I myself recorded and he filmed, a love that in New Zealand these children of that time who were now men and women who were very prominent in society after 30 years
It was really unique and it was clear from that love that they did not call me Sinai or Qawlanlo, it was a thank you to the people of Iran.
Well, we filmed and came back, in Iran, I followed in’s Isfahan, Ahvaz, Bandar Anzali, Qazvin, etc.
For example, there was a large cemetery in Qazvin, where I later heard that an apartment had been built there and that it had been destroyed.
And the filming was over, that was the year I wanted to be on TV
I just wrote a letter to Mr. Ghotbi saying that I want to resign on the condition that we can sign a free contract and I will not be an employee.
اBut if you allow me, I will take these rushes, assemble them in my personal studio and deliver the prepared film to you.
He agreed, so I brought the 16mm audio and video tapes, which were 19 hours long.
I had a good montage table when it was no longer useful and left, and in my own studio I watched this movie over and over again.
The rushes, what can I do but I could not finish the movie and there was a reason
And the reason goes back to politics and such adventures, this year was 1975 and the year 57 was the year of revolution.
The social movement was quite an anti-king atmosphere, if I wanted to finish the film, it was the scene of the king entering New Zealand that he had taken on TV and given to me
Put it in the movie, it could be a custom movie that I did not want it to be
If I hadn’t put it in a good TV movie, he would have said, “Sir, that’s why we told you to go and get a movie, so where are those scenes?”
I was left with no idea what to do, so whenever they called, I would say, “Sir, I have to find some new documents so that this film can be finally edited.”
The story went on like this and I had seen so many of these movies that I was really dreaming about them, they were all in my mind
There was a revolution and well, now to whom should I refer and I do not know at all to whom I should tell what is going on
I had to hold hands, I held hands until the situation of television stabilized a little and Mr. Beheshti became the director of films and series.
And now it happened that my film, Biography, was made at the 1974 Cracow Film Festival in Poland.
There I talked to a few filmmakers that I want to work on such a project and I’m involved with it.
They said hey, don’t talk to him, I said why? Well, because in this film it is quite clear that the Russians were involved in the partition of Poland
Do not talk about it at all for now, but they said that if you can bring rushes and sound tapes, we will buy them abroad.
I said, well, these are not mine, and also some of his things are in TV archive
When I went to Mr. Beheshti, I said that Mr. Beheshti has such an issue. I started this project in 1954, when the filming took place.
But it’s been like this until today and it’s a pity this project, I want to buy this
I talked to 2 Badie brothers who owned a film service company and I said that you have money and this subject is a pity to get rid of it.
Is it a pity that it is destroyed, are you ready to buy this? They had also made a tacit agreement
Mr. Beheshti is a smart person, he said that 2 people will come and see the rushes and then we will announce our decision to you.
Whether we will sell the film to you or not, I said yes
Who were those 2 people? One was Mr. Abdullah Esfandiari and the other was Mr. Davood Mirbagheri
They came and saw maybe 2-3 hours of rush on my assembly table, 19 hours of that rush
When I called, Mr. Beheshti said no, we will not sell, but we will invest to finish the film.
Provided that the negatives of the film are still there, then Mr. Akbar Alemi was the head of the television laboratory
They were very kind to me and I asked them and they told one of their employees to go and see if there were any negatives of the Polish film or not.
There were women who left and in less than 5 minutes they came and said yes, there are negatives of Poles.
Well, he also gave a letter, which I was lucky with. Of course, we took the letter that the gentlemen are negatives, so a contract was signed.
I made the film and it was finished, the film is unique because there was no one but Ms. Farideh Askari who actually did the editing based on my form and decoupage.
I wrote the music for the film myself and performed it in many places myself, I even spoke the Persian language of the film myself
I had seen so many 19 hours of rush that the day the film was supposed to be made, I told my family that I would not be here for 10 days from today.
Everyone who called said no, I just come for lunch and have lunch and I leave and I leave at 5 or 6 o’clock, I go to my room at 8 o’clock in the morning, no one has anything to do with me
I wanted to line up these plans that were in my mind, believe me, what I am saying is not an exaggeration.
We accepted and I went to my room at 8 o’clock on the first day and came out at 11-11 / 5 just before lunch.
They asked me what happened? You said you would not leave your room? We have not yet called for lunch
I said it was over, over the years I had seen so many of these rushes and played so much in my mind
When I started writing, it was also coming fast, meaning I had nothing to do at all, it was coming by itself.
This is where the young people who say today, sir, we do not know, we filmed one and gave it to another for editing.
I say, how can such a thing happen, how many times have you seen these rushes
I also wrote the music for the film based on two themes. Incidentally, the music is interesting, a Polish theme that says that it had a bush tree and many leaves, and it was autumn.
It became a storm and scattered the leaves all over the world, referring to the expulsion of the Poles.
One is based on Bafghi’s wild poem, listen to my friends’ description of my distress, I took these two themes and weaved them together.
I made a mistake myself and I still grieve for it because I thought I had a feeling about it.
He will not have a speaker, he may be a better speaker than me, but that will not be my feeling about it.
I remember the Persian version of the movie when I pulled a blanket around my room in the house we were in at night
I put on a blanket and recorded it from 9 pm to 4 am with a microphone on the Nagra device, which is not good quality
The film was made well, now it had to go to cut the negatives, they had said before that the negatives exist
I went to the TV lab, a week, 10 days, 15 days passed and I saw that there was no news
Once or twice I called but did not get any results, one day I went to the lab, I saw the kids in the lab see me even though we had a very close relationship
One goes this way and the other that way, they all had a unique moods
I remember one of them came to me and said, “Mr. Sinaei, are the negatives of this film here?” What do I mean?
First they said that the negative is the Poles, he said how much was your negative? I said about 19 hours
He said that the negative was 5 minutes, as it was related to the king’s trip to Poland, that lady mistakenly thought that it was your negative.
I said, well, what happened to my negatives? They said that everything we look for will not be found
Fortunately, Mr. Alemi was always kind to me, and I said, “Sir, what happened?” Oh, I made the film based on the negatives
Vala said that during the revolution, a number of films were lost and it is not at all known where they are
There is only one warehouse at the bottom, if it is in the warehouse, its castes have been found, otherwise it is gone and finished
You can imagine me now that the music has been written and performed, the speech has been said, the film has been mixed, everything is done and it is the stage of cutting off the negative
Mr. Anvar, I do not know exactly how much, but I think for about 3 weeks I was looking for the negatives in that warehouse with a flashlight
Because no one else knew my plans, fortunately in a land I will never forget
I said I went to the cinema because I saw that Mr. Alfred Hitchcock had a director’s chair, two secretaries on one side, and three other on the other
I said well this is so chic, I did not think to look for negatives in the warehouse with a flashlight
Luckily all the negatives and cassettes were found except one cassette, these were 400 feet each.
There were 2 plans in that cassette that they could not find and we were forced to have duplicates
Which is still in its duplicate film, and so the film was made and went to the TV archive, and went and went and went and nothing!
One day I was called from the Italian church when 40-50 Poles came to visit their relatives.
Who were in Iran at the time and died, we want to give each of them a cassette of your film as a souvenir
I said, “Well, I have a VivaCass cassette that is not of good quality, but I have it and nothing else. Call the TV.”
They said that no one answered our call whenever we called the TV, I said, well, what should I do? I said, well, I can give you this cassette
If you wanted to make a copy of it, I gave it and I don’t know, they took 30-40 copies and gave it to the Poles and the film was gone.
It was 2008, I suddenly saw that everyone on the internet congratulates me from here and there, now what was going on
Mr. Lech Kaczynski, President of Poland I do not know how they got a copy of this film and saw the film
And therefore gave me the Order of the Knight of the Republic of Poland, and on the basis of which those who were informed congratulated me.
Now they write a special emblem, but exactly its name is the Knight of the Republic of Poland
And so they invited me to Poland to give me this badge
And it was there that a woman named Dorothy Latour made a film about my presence in Poland, of which I have a film director.
And the name of this movie is called Found Lament, you know, and there he asked me to actually have a TV meeting with Andrzej Wajda
There is, in fact, a quote from a Polish philosopher who says that the tragedies of human societies are repeated because every generation forgets the tragedies of the previous generation
And how important it is for such films to be made so that they remember what happened.
Part 09
I wrote 3 scenarios, one of which I really liked to make, which was: one life, one way, one city
This is the first screenplay I ever wrote for Farabi, with all its dialogues and everything that was not ready.
And I had 2 other scenarios, one of which happened to be the third scenario, a scenario called Akram Khanoum
That Akram Khanum was the story of that time when there was a war, and in fact the children who were killed were congratulated and offered condolences.
It was the third screenplay of The Inner Monster, which was produced by Mr. Jalayer of the Foundation for the Underprivileged at the time.
The monster inside was actually a matter of human conscience, which is a monster when it judges man.
The story of a man who was Savaki and escaped after the revolution and went to a village
And in that village alone, on the one hand, it arouses the suspicion of the villagers that this is here and at this time of year, which is not the time of summer at all, and who has come here.
And second, he confronts his wife, who has committed suicide, alone, and through his wife, his life is actually reviewed.
How he was able to sludge himself in order to reach position and power
Personally, I have always believed that the filmmaker must first believe the scene himself in order to be accepted by the viewer.
It is that a mother, for example, is at home with her 2 small children and has kept her hijab so tightly there.
Still not digestible to me, I am always looking for a solution that can be done to make me believe at least myself
The late Davood Rashidi played the role of Savaki and Ms. Shahla Mirbakhtiar played the role of her husband.
Well, these were pre-revolutionary people, I was left with no idea how to show this woman.
Well, a scene where they sat in a restaurant before the revolution with a hat, etc. I solved this problem
I thought that in the script I would take the story to a point where the husband would actually lead it so far into perversion and corruption that he would rise to higher positions himself.
That she eventually becomes intolerant and commits suicide, by committing suicide when her husband, who has now fled, is alone.
Appears in front of him, shrouded and well, it actually formed a logical veil
Another thing happened to the monster inside, which in fact I still grieve for.
I like some parts of the film very much, but almost 2 months before I started working for Mr. Jalal Meyarian, who was one of the best make-up artists of his time.
Maybe I still do not know if it works or not, I said look, I can] and when this person appears in front of him, he can be seen inside his rotten
He said I could do this if I had plastic
We told the Foundation for the Oppressed, I said that we want plastic materials for this makeup
Mr. Meyarian said that these materials should arrive sooner so that we can actually do a few different makeups, take photos and see which one is most suitable.
The foundation said that you should start working on the materials, we said that we wanted these before starting the work
They said, “Well, do this test in the middle of work now.” We started working and went to my village, near Gilavand.
We had a nice little cottage that we really liked and it was made of stone and it fits into the movie space.
We said we had to make the decor because we had to set this cottage on fire, they said there was no budget
I said, oh, with one fire, maybe the work was not done, well, we have to get the plan again, now what should we do, nothing
It was going well, I usually set up a 45-day filming schedule for regular, medium-sized movies that don’t require much
And we were doing very well, the middle of the work suddenly said that a gentleman came from Qom and wanted to control the scenarios again
We said, well, oh, we’re filming, they said no, stop working, this gentleman has to read the scripts again.
There were three of them, I remember, I do not remember who the other two were
The film director of the Foundation for the Oppressed at the time was Mr. Davood Malapour, who was also a filmmaker
He also told me to do your job in peace of mind
The film went on until the gentlemen came and we stopped working for a week, and in fact, the filming of the movie “Monster” took 52 days.
In the film, there are 2 teenage girls that this man has ordered the murder of their father
This time, while walking in that forest and those spaces, he constantly sees 2 girls who are actually looking for a white sheep.
And he does not know what is coming and everything appears before him
I remember one day we were working, it was just an alley and there was a mosque at the bottom of that alley
In that alley, this white sheep, which was also fat, was coming when we were washing, and these two girls also appear for a moment and disappear again.
Only the weather was constantly cloudy and sunny, we waited for the weather to be good for us to work
It was Friday and I remember it was Friday prayer, we suddenly saw from the bottom of the alley that the Hajj who were actually holding Friday prayers and giving speeches were coming with the people.
Well, at that moment we stopped working and he came and asked what you were doing
We said we were making a movie, and with an interrogation mood he asked for whom
Well, because we had no contact with him at all, we said we were just making a movie
I do not know what happened that he did not like the story so much, he went upstairs, it was a building, and after 2 minutes someone came and ask us if we have any license for filming
We said yes, he said let me see, we said it is in the cottage, now we are waiting for the weather to be sunny and the clouds to go away so we can take this scene
You stay here, when we film the scene then our colleagues will bring you the license
He said no, no, and I got a little confused and went next to Haj Agha, I saw that he was sitting up and he was well treated at that moment.
I said, Hajj, sir, look, we are all waiting for this cloud to leave this scene, they are now saying that right now
If the crew leave, the weather will deteriorate again and one day of our work will be for nothing
He was very kind there, but 3-4 days later he had apparently gone somewhere and asked what the gentleman was sitting on
Now a bunch of filmmakers usually have, for example, a viewfinder, put a hat on their head and stuff.
A group of people who are not known who came in the ten and these are dangerous and such things
After that, I saw that 2 people are constantly watching us on scene and they were also standing on the scene for themselves.
There are two interesting points here in the story, one of which is that I had a nightmare scene in my film.
But the cost of that scene was very high, a flock of sheep wanted at least 300-400 sheep and so on
In fact, I was always thinking about how to fix this, this is what I have from the documentary, which means that one can quickly decide what to do with the current situation.
I remember one day that we had a scene with the late Rashidi on the porch of that villa
It was noon and we once saw that the speaker of Deh Mosque said that someone had died and that he should come to the house of the deceased for the funeral and washing
I immediately thought that well someone has died here and there is a ceremony, I can put Davood in this ceremony
A ceremony that can usually be a nightmare that is a dead man and a ceremony
I told my friends to pack up immediately and go there
We put a woolen hat on David’s head and we went, we went and I saw that they put a corpse on 2 large trays the size of this corpse table.
They put a crank on his waist and this was how his mouth was open and hot water was poured on him and it went up with steam
It was a terrible atmosphere at all, I told you Davood to get busy, he also started pouring water with the others and it became an atmosphere that I had never dreamed of.
I always say do not write your scenario in the corner of the room, the corner of the room is a fantasy
But when we are in the actual space, we can find many other things that are much more interesting
Incidentally, this is the issue that I have always had with auditing in guidance, I say that Mr. Film is not a dead thing
One step is a scenario, but to get better, better ideas may come, better things may happen.
If they are not a problem in terms of politics of the day, etc., let the filmmaker have a fluid mind and be creative, not because it is in a framework, then that’s it.
Anyway, we took the stage and it was very good, which means I did not really think we could do it without any cost, I mean without a flock of sheep and etc
We brought the film and gave it to the Iran Film Service Center. There was a man named Pishdad, he was tall and he was very friendly with the filmmakers.
Excited, I went 2-3 days later to see the movie, I saw the movies and those scenes were not there
I said, Mr. Pishdad, what happened to those scenes? A scene that is a dead man. He said that Mr. Malapour came with 2 people last night
And when they saw the rashes, they took away both their positives and their negatives.
What do I mean? As the director of this film, I did not see them at all, he said we are the producers and we gave them away.
That way I never saw those scenes, from then on I told you that 2 people always came to film and were watching us
I remember that one day they got bored because the late Farhoshi, whose wire was in the building, but he loved to play movies.
And I gave him a role, he was a very good man, he had to cut the chicken off
They also stood up in the morning and saw that he was going to get a chicken and cut off its head and we say no, cut, again, it did not work.
And they got bored and left, the chance they brought while they were there again the mosque announced that another was dead
And we went back and there were 2 big trays of Messi and his body on it, but we didn’t film anymore because we knew it was forbidden.
This is why Mara village that has a bathhouse in Gilavand, that is, they came and built a bathhouse so that these people would not be in the yard.
This is another memory that is left, the film continued until we got to where they said you should return by tomorrow
And what scene have we not shot yet? That scene of rotten face
Of course, they also sent a gentleman in charge of the effect, which in fact he had never done before.
Then he would say, “Tonight, that I’ve come, take it. Tomorrow night is the wedding of my niece. I do not know if I will be there.”
I said, “Sir, you have nieces and nephews. The children worked until 9-10 tonight. They are tired and these scenes are difficult.
He agreed to stay, but that night the next day we had to go back and work until 9-10 pm and say that well, now there is a plan left.
The plan that this rotten inside must come and knock on the door, and Davood actually fights with it, and the arrow that he fires at him actually empties into himself, that is, he kills himself.
I said, well, what should we do? Plastic materials had not arrived yet, these are the places where I emphasize that we have to pay attention to these details in our own cinema.
If we are claiming to be at the international level, we need these
God bless Davood Rashidi, I sai Jalal, what should we do? Said I said 2 months before the start of filming that I want this plastic material, what can I do?
I was left there and if I didn’t take it, the movie would not have an ending at all, if I did, it would not be what I wanted at all.
And Davood Rashidi, a good actor and director, said, “Do not forget that we are working in Iran.”
I said right, but how can I do this at the end of the film?
Believe me, it was around 10 / 10-11 pm when Jalal Moayerian and Davood Rashidi went to the makeup room.
Because we had to take it before it was morning and the weather was clear because it was a plan that we could take at once because we do not have a decor budget.
They came out of the make-up room at about 2 o’clock and I saw that the original had no resemblance to rot
This is a face with blue colors and lines in it and a strange face that has nothing to do with who I am.
I told Moaearian what is the glory of this, he said look, I can not do anything else with pencils and these things, I do not have plastic materials
We had to take it and where? In the main building, what does it mean? That is, Mr. Ismail Emami, who was behind the camera
He had put his head on Davood to shoot the one who was actually eating himself, you know
And the smoke filled the room when I told Mr. Emami what happened. Because they only took it once, he said I did not see anything
I set up my frame first, but the room was so smoky that I did not see anything, so the film was finished and made.
And when I saw the rashes, I saw that gentleman who did not do that and wanted to go to a wedding, had brought up the pipes with the flame so much
You still see the flames beautifully, I still really like the film in terms of subject matter, in terms of acting, in terms of some scenes
But the last one that comes, either I close my eyes or go out of the hall, I can not see
The film The Inner Monster was sent to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in 1984
It was accepted in the competition section of the festival, but exactly in those days, a Czech comedian made a program that hit the embassy a lot.
And the relationship with Czechoslovakia was bad, that the movie went without anyone going with it
At the Fajr Film Festival, I think it was the second Fajr Film Festival to win the Best Director and Best Cinematography award.
But they did not show the film, and we went through everything, sir, this was finally made and it should have been shown, but it was not shown.
Until one day I was told that a young gentleman came and liked the movie very much, he wants to talk to you
I left, I think it is better not to mention his name, but there were a young Haji
He was very kind, he got up and hugged me and sweets, fruit, tea, etc., when we sat down, he said that Mr. Sinaei, I like this movie very much, people must see this.
But there is a problem, you solve this problem, I said what? He said change this lady’s clothes
Now the film was 35 mm and it had won an award at the festival, I said Haj Agha, how should I change it?
He said that you are a master, if you want you can, there was no digital film, it was 35 mm, I said I can not do anything, she is the first role
In general, he talked to me and I said, “Sir, this is not a theater for me to tell you to go behind the scenes and change your clothes.”
I want to tell you something and finally conclude, in fact, our cinema was in a period and still is very oppressed
It became very oppressed for a reason, because those who were even kind and literate
They thought that cinema and cinematographers are a group of people who want to entertain people.
They do not have enough literacy and intelligence to do a cultural work, it was very insulting, you know, but that was the bottom of their minds.
I said, “Haj Agha, I can not do this, that is, it is not technically possible at all, how can I change my clothes?”
He said, “Does this mean that hijab means shroud?” The other said that her face is very attractive
Now that you could not fix it, you show this lady’s face in a big way
I said, well, we call this big show in the cinema close-up, this close-up also has a dramatic meaning.
He said you can not reduce this now, I said how can I reduce this? He said, “Then let’s do something.”
He told her that no matter how strong her face is, make the movie unstable, then stabilize it again.
I said, “Sir, it would be screened in six or seven different cinema, I can’t put this many people on guard to do this”
In the end he told me to look, he caled me “master”, he said “Master, I wanted to help put this movie that I love so much in the cinema tomorrow, but you are not cooperating”
He said you were stubborn, I said by God I do not intend to be stubborn but what you ask of me is not possible, I can not do this, let go
After a while, I suddenly saw that the film is in the cinema, at Azadi cinema. I went to check the film and found out that the runtime is 90 minutes but mine was 135 minutes
I could not go to the cinema and the friends I sent said that they must have cut the film
Because the night they cut my scenes in the studio, I said they had no right to take them away before I saw the movie.
They should not have done what one of the same officials said later. Now, when the film is over, we cut so many scissors that it slows down.
You see, these are things that are very frustrating for some people who have spent their lives doing this, sometimes if I say insulting.
You understand and there is nothing you can do, look, Mr. Anvar, I said a sentence before we started our discussion.
It has always been very important to me, I say that someone who is in a profession should respect that profession
It doesn’t matter if he’s not in that profession, he’s not working, he’s here today, somewhere else tomorrow, you know what I’m saying
And this has happened a lot, by the way, I gave you a headache, well then it’s the story of “The monster inside”
Part 10
The story of “Yar Dar Khaneh” is very interesting, after the lost elegy a part of it was shown on TV
I do not know how he found this, one day a gentleman called me that I want to see you.
We fixed a date and he came to me, I saw a young man with a face that really looks very southern.
It looked like for him to be from Abadan or Bushehr, both his face and skin color
And then I saw that he brought so many letters and said that I was actually looking for my relatives.
You thought you could help me make the film you made, my mother was Polish and my father was Greek and my relatives were killed in Auschwitz.
Uncle, aunt, grandfather, these were killed in Auschwitz and I’m looking for them, these are the letters I wrote to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
And I showed these people, but they did not find any of them. Now I have come and I want if any information helps me.
One of them gave me a photocopy of the letters, and when I went through the letters, I saw that they had really corresponded with all of them.
But his face was very strange to me, because I saw that what he looked like did not look like a man whose mother was Polish.
Especially since Poles are very white, they have whites, that his mother is Polish and his father is not Greek.
What happened to me was interesting, I talked to that lady Anna Borkowska, whom I have later in the film The Lost Elegy
I said, “Did you know this woman whose mother says this?” He said yes, I said he had this baby? How was it?
He asked what about it? I said that because a gentleman came and said I was his child, but I don’t think his face fits this story at all.
After Anna started to tell me, she said that we were friends and she could not have children
She had no children, and a southern worker, a woman who was their servant and was for the south and was poor.
She was pregnant and they left it with her, who gave the baby to them as soon as it was born and she did not come to them again.
And the kid is this young man, I just figured out what that’s all about
But what was interesting to me was that this person did not want to doubt at all that his mother was Polish.
I never brought it up, but the position for me is the issue of a person whose real mother does not really want to accept it.
And he is a displaced person in the world, he goes back to another mother who is never found, and in this way he becomes a helpless clown.
As long as that person was in Iran, I did not allow myself to make this film because I thought I was hurting him emotionally.
After that, we made the film with a gentleman who I think made only one film, and that was not the case.
The film was made with many issues, which is very interesting that we made this film again in Mashhad
This film was not much at the time it was made, but later it showed again in Mashhad how crowded it became and how popular it became.
This movie Yar Dar Khane, in fact a friend at home and we travel around the world
The film Dar Koochehaye Eshgh was made exactly one year after the end of the Iran-Iraq war
My daughter, who was a theater student, was in the same class with Mr. Hamid Farkhonejad, and during the Nowruz holiday, 5-6 theater students went to Abadan together.
Hamid Farkhonejad, who was himself from Abadani, had invited them there
When they returned, my daughter had taken some photos and brought them to me and told me that Baba was now destroyed after the Abadan war.
It will definitely be made in another year or two and it will not be like this anymore
So if you can make a movie about it, it would be great
I looked at the photos and saw that it was very attractive for the movie
I will never forget if someone does a good deed in my life
Mr. Abdullah Esfandiari was the head of Farabi’s cultural department, the day before Mr. Esfandiari
I said Mr. Esfandiari, what did he say? I said do you know me? He said, “Sir, you have the right.” I said, “No, that’s right.” I asked
I taught for 25 years, from ’46 to ’71, I said how many of the kids who work with you were in my class.
He said, “Sir, we know”, I said that I have a request from you, do not make me come and go
I will lose the passion I have, when I go and come to the end I do not want to make that movie at all anymore
Let me make a movie with enthusiasm, he said for sure, I said what about the script, don’t you want it from me?
He said no, just tell us what you want to make
I said I want to say that there was a war, Abadan is ruined, Abadan is a symbol of Iran and let’s rebuild this city
He said well, that’s not a bad thing, he said very well, just give me raw materials, give me a lab and a sound studio
If I have these, the other guys will work with me, he said okay, and I requested them not to ask me anything
A year after the war, I went to Abadan with 9 children and made a film In The Alleys of Love.
We went to Abadan and Farkhonejad’s father was still alive, his brother was also there and I did some research and we talked.
And then something happened that was very interesting to me
And that was that I usually check my scenarios, I was very specific about each plan
I even remember the time, for example, especially in short films, if a film was supposed to be 15 minutes, it could be 15 minutes and 15 seconds, or, for example, 14 minutes and 50 seconds.
مYou see, in this area, I was calculating very carefully and plan by plan, but there was an issue here
I say this as a filmmaker who is an experience for others, he had a problem and that problem was that I looked and saw that everything was right in the film.
But in some places it’s not as lively as I wish, by the way, this memory might be interesting again
For young filmmakers, I say that I was young, that is, before the revolution, which was the Tehran Film Festival.
They invited famous directors and actors, one night I was very young and at that time, I was about 30 years old.
I had the chance to sit at the dinner table next to the famous Anglo-American director Joseph Lozi
Joseph Lozi, who made those films The Maid, etc. with Derek Bogard, I was sitting next to Joseph Lozi
Likewise, and to speak, I told him that Mr. Losey, I have a question for you
What did he say? I said that in my films I calculate the plans accurately, I put everything exactly on paper
But now, after a few years of making films, I have seen that while everything is fine, some places are not very alive.
Now I’m almost allowing myself to actually reconsider on stage what I thought of the script.
I looked at the stage and saw what could be better and I could understand it, he laughed and said that I was young and that was the same thing for me.
At first, I was very careful about everything, but then I gradually allowed myself to improvise on stage.
I saw that this is a good thing as an experience, there is another thing in cinema culture called Camra Stillo
Stilo means pen means camera-pen, I basically had some work-adventure in terms of structure and so on.
I thought of making a Camra-Stilo technique in the alleys of love, what does that mean? I mean, I do not write anything
It ‘s as if I’m making a documentary, come and shoot it on the spot if it was a feature film.
But before that, in several places, one of them was in Tehran, there was a hotel in Seyed Khandan, there and other places
I went and asked the young men who were in their twenties, who were now at the beginning of the war, for example, 12 years old, 10 years old, 13 years old, and so on.
Children, write to me your memories of the first day the war started, what are your memories for me?
About 150 short one-page short memoirs were written, I read these and 2 things formed in my mind
One was that one of them, who survived, returned to Abadan and remembers the friends who were killed in the war in these alleys.
Young love, remembers his youthful love and he sees all these scenes
Another I remember when a photographer told me I went into the house and saw a mortar or rocket hit the roof of the house.
And the floor is a crushed cake with a picture of a little girl, and it turned out that it was a birthday party or something that happened.
I mean, I wanted to say that the lines of thought were like this, but I did not write any of them and just took some notes
There was no script, it is my only film that I deliberately wanted to try the Camra-Stilo technique
The film was made and I remember, for example, the film was made in such a way that Mr. Gholipour, who was in charge of procurement at that time,
One day when we were coming, we saw children playing in the alley with bullet casings and grenade launchers.
He came and said that you want to put a sequence that the war is over, but the generation of these children are fighting with them again.
I always said that this was recorded in your name, the film, wherever it is, this sequence is registered in your name
Anyway, the film in the alley of love, was the first or the second film that was accepted in the special section of the Cannes Film Festival.
And it was displayed there and not a single frame had to be turned this way and that, no one touched it.
But let me tell you a painful story, I was sitting in the Rossini Hall at the Cannes Film Festival and I really can’t tell you how I cried.
Do you know why? When it was made in the alleys of love and when we found out that it was going to be shown in the special look section of the Cannes Film Festival
Do you remember me with Mr. Nozari, the head of the guidance laboratory?
Yes, he was tall
He was not very tall, but he was thin. I told Nozari, who had been my friend before the revolution
At that time, God bless Mr. Seifollah Dad, and Mr. Manouchehr Mohammadi and Mr. Asgarpour had an office whose name I do not remember, do you remember?
– Yes, yes
They had a contract with the BBC Channel 4 for a film about Kurdish refugees.
Who had fled from Saddam and came. There was a camp between Paveh and Nosud, you were almost aware of it.
I was going to go to England and assemble it there, you see, so I had to go
The first copy that came in, I looked and saw that my beads were very good in color and these beads are colored, they have no color at all.
I said dear Nozari, what is this? He said, “Now I’m trying to copy a better one for you.” He opened it and I saw that it was the same
I had to go to England, I told you the third copy, look at God, look at my hair, it’s good color
I went to England, I edited the film, it was the same time that I had to go to cannes festival after
I mean, I saw the movie in the Rossini hall and I saw that the color is worse than the first two
I really cried that once in a while one has a chance to be provided with such a situation
I have this, it was 1991, now how it was released, let me tell you that too
You see, what I say turns into hesitation, and I do not want to hesitate
I went to Mr. Beheshti and said, “Mr. Beheshti, this film was in the special section of the Cannes Film Festival.”
The actor is not like that, but I want something as a filmmaker who makes all kinds of films.
The 2 weeks that were shown in cinemas at that time, this film will stay in cinemas for those 2 weeks.
To find out if people are going to watch this kind of movie at all, Mr. Beheshti agreed.
After this film came out, the Cultural Research Office wanted to screen my film, the lost elegy in a Shahre Ghesse cinema.
So I had to go after 3 or 4 days, give the film the lost elegy to projectionist
My face was less known then, maybe the projectionists won’t know me today either
When I took this to give to him, I wanted to go to the cinema and saw that they are taking away the photos and posters of in the alleys of love.
اEh, what happened? It was not more than 4 days, when I went to Aparatchi without saying who I am
I said I brought this that you want to show today, I swear to God to the lives of my children, it is the exact sentence he told me
Said poor filmmaker, film producer, I said why? what has happened?
He said, “Sir, this movie had a magnet margin. This magnet head of ours has been broken since the beginning of the revolution.”
The voice is on the stage and no one understood what he was saying, it was that we were having a fight.
I have nothing to say, but believe what I tell you
– Well, did this happen in other cinemas that showed the film and this only happened Shahre Ghesse?
o, it was not another cinema, just one cinema
– You mean this movie was shown only 4 days in Shahre Ghesse?
– In the form of a show like that, yes, later, one by one, for example, in this city and that city, they did one showing
Part 11
As for the documentary “Autumn Alley”, it was 1996
The first film I made about Jazeh Tabatabai sculptures was 1346-47.
It was a movie called Biography, which is 12 minutes long, and I actually tried to make a movie poem
Which was also screened at the Krakکوw Film Festival in 1974, as an experimental film.
But I thought that the location of the new art gallery and the special character of Tibetan jazz was something that could actually be a good film and hel
But again, as usual I was not used to it, I could not tell anyone
Until one day, Jazeh called me and said that something interesting had happened to Khosrow
I ask why? Mr. Beheshti said yesterday that he was in the cultural spaces department of the municipality at that time
He came here yesterday and when he saw it, he was very excited and said, “I did not think it would be like this here.”
And really, the new art gallery, not only in Iran, I can easily say that it was something special and unique in the world.
And I had his background, I was acquainted with Jazz from 1935-36 and we became friends and I knew his life.
In this way, the municipal cultural spaces development company told us that we provide the raw materials and the laboratory and the sound studio, and the rest is up to you.
I always said that my wealth is not cash, but there were good friends who were always ready to cooperate
They themselves knew that financial issues were not really here, the issue was to do something we would like to do
There was Mr. Loghmani, there was Mr. Eskandari, and there were friends who always worked with me
We started working at the New Art Gallery, it was good and it went well
– Where was this gallery?
The gallery is still there, but the door is closed and abandoned, Taleghani Street, towards Shariati
Tabatabai Alley Moghaddam is right on your right, 100 meters down to the right side of the side of Autumn Alley
I also used this title of Autumn Alley as a symbolic thing, in fact the autumn of the artist’s life that was there
One thing I forgot to say here is that this film happened to be discussed a lot in Cannes.
Because of my background in music, I have always tried to see how transferable these different structures in different arts are to other arts.
Because I believe these are all really human senses, these proportions, these sounds and these images are all related.
But it takes different forms in different arts. It was that two of my films were one for the time I was in culture and art
In the film “Worship”, which was about the Shah Mosque of that time, I made the current Imam Mosque, and one of them was a film in the alleys of love.
I wanted to see how the music sonata form could be worked on in the cinema
This is not something I have done, there are others. Suppose, for example, that Bella Bartok is a Hungarian composer who is the greatest Hungarian composer of the twentieth century.
It’s the golden ratio that exists in the visual arts, for example, you have the golden dots that you have
Proportion brings those golden dots in music and in music he tries to be influenced by it and in one of his works this is
This is what I tried to use the sonata form in the music in the cinema
I said this form of sonata that I used one in the movie Worship and one in the movie In the Alleys of Love
In both of these I chose theme A, theme B, as happens in sonatas that sonatas are actually the basis of a symphony.
Each of these themes expands, merges, and disintegrates, eventually coming together.
But these themes move in parallel and expand, which is what I did in the alleys of love.
I will not go into the alleys of love anymore, In the alleys of love was a feature film that I made with the documentary technique
But Autumn Alley because Jazz himself had an acting background and had acted in movies and is now a sculptor.
I thought this time I would make this documentary, which is actually about the New Art Gallery, with a storytelling technique.
Well, these kinds of experiences have always been interesting to me, that is, evaluating the possibilities of cinema, what can be done, and I did that.
In this way, The Alley of Autumn became a documentary-fiction film, and since then it has been the basis for several other documentaries that I have made a documentary-fiction film.
This film was made in 1375, the only thing I can say is that I am very happy that this film was finally made
As you asked today where that gallery was, the New Art Gallery was one of the non-governmental centers in Tehran.
Which was very active and various artists performed there, from exhibitions
My lady Gizella held her first 2 exhibitions there, I held my poetry night there for the book Sludge Blisters.
That Mr. Naderpour came at that time and talked about the new poetry of Iran and we were constantly there and discussing
The atmosphere was very creative and it was in 1375 that I built the autumn alley
Part 12
But the film Bride of Fire, Bride of Fire has a detailed story
We were making the film, in the alleys of love in Abadan
Mr. Hamid Farkhonejad had a brother who unfortunately died and was a medical student
The brother, who was a medical student, later became Dr. Farhad Farkhonejad and later died
I loved him very much and he was very sincere and honest
In the movie In the Alleys of Love, he played the role of one of the young men who fought on the front.
There were various issues being distorted and he defined one day that he has 2 classmates
A girl and a boy who are interested in each other and want to get married but can not
Well now why not, because his mother’s daughter and of course himself are from the same tribe and when the girl was very young
The mother came to work in a relatively affluent house as a servant, and the girl grew up in that house and was left to study.
He is still in medical school and they became interested in this boy, but because they were born in a tribe, they can not marry because it is dangerous and they may kill them
Well, that’s very shocking to me in the first place
At first, I only thought about it for a while, until a year or two later, I was invited to Shahid Chamran University in Ahvaz, formerly known as Jundishapur.
They showed me a movie whose producer I do not remember exactly, maybe there was a gentleman named Mr. Khoshbakht, the movie was maybe less than 15 minutes
It was called a justified crime and it was about these issues, that is, about the story of the season, and what are the dangers if something like this happened?
Well, the issue got more formed for me, I actually formed 2 teams, a library team
Mr. Nariman Chaichi used to go to the library of the faculties to study and take notes on these issues and take notes.
I was one of them with Mr. Hamid Farkhonejad, who was actually my assistant at the time, and we were going to find different people.
I remember that we went to Ahvaz at once. Fortunately, the Chief Justice of Khuzestan was in Ahvaz. He was very dead, he understood and understood our work.
First, it made it possible for us to go to Karun Prison and the Correctional Center and talk to people.
Secondly, he gave me the files he had on this subject for me to read
I do not forget when we wanted to go to Karun Prison or the Correctional Center with Mr. Farkhonejad
I told Hamid to look, Hamid, these are people who, for example, strangled his sister and cut his aunt with a knife.
They did it, we have to be very careful in dealing with them, not to act at the same time that they become aggressive towards us
We have to be very careful about our questions, these 2 visits were very instructive for me
That is, when I talked to these people, we talked to 10 of us, 5 people in the correctional center and 5 people in Karun prison
I saw that there are so many modest and sublime people that it did not seem at all that this person could suffocate his sister.
The story became very interesting to me because I had already seen this character, who later played Hamid himself, as a violent man who is now defending the rights of his tribe.
In the conversations we had with them, one of them said a sentence that I said to a foreign journalist, once I was a tribute and I was talking about my work, and he wrote it in the book he wrote.
In Karun prison, one of them told me that I had my mind closed while I was out, my mind was open since I was in this closed space.
In my conversations with them, I came to the conclusion that there are people who are stuck in a closed tradition.
Which has its own regional tradition, the logic is that if a girl marries someone outside the tribe, the child she gives birth to
They can claim our land, our water, our palms, etc., and these have been issues to protect their environment, but good times are changing
I saw that these are not instinctual criminals, some of them are very good people at all.
But they are proud of their work. Incidentally, the officials I spoke to also said that our problem is that no one from the tribe complains about them.
In this way, the character of Farhan’s role for has changed, he became a person who is dependent on the tribe on the one hand
But on the other hand, he has a mentality that feels that those traditions are no longer right that way, but he does not know what to do with it, which is much better and deeper.
How this film was made, we first did some research in that year when Mr. Mohajerani was the minister and later I did not know if it continued or not.
That research won the award for best cinematic research, and now it’s interesting how the film was made at all
He had made a trip to Khuzestan and had heard this story of the season and these adventures
He said why a film is not made about this, he was told that Sinai is looking for these stories.
He had said that it was very good, when they came to Tehran, they called me for guidance and he talked to me.
And I said, “Vala, everything is ready to make a film, but we want the possibility,” and he said, “You can make it, and it was possible.”
This is how the film was made and won the award for best research, and one thing I do not know is related to cinema or not.
But I have sometimes said that cinema is one of the most beautiful and at the same time one of the most cruel professions.
I had a brother who told you, that American scenario where a madman shot him and paralyzed him.
We were working in Ahvaz, there is a scene in the movie where this girl and boy escape from the bazaar
The entrance to the market was actually in front of the telecommunications building, so our manager had talked to the telecommunications and the surrounding shops and all that.
That the day we want to capture this scene, they will actually be available
Knowing that it was difficult to capture this scene, I released the team much earlier the day before
They left, at that time mobile was not yet so common that it was easily available, I went to the home phone to call Tehran to see what was going on.
I called and my wife picked up the phone and saw that she was crying at the end of the phone, now tomorrow we will have our hardest scene, everything is ready
I said what happened? It turned out that my brother, who was actually the pillar of my life, had taken the pill and said goodbye and killed himself.
– In America?
In America, he wrote a letter that I am now 70 years old, my children have grown up and this life no longer has meaning, he was in a wheelchair for 22 years
I just wanted my kids to reach a certain age and kill myself
Well, tomorrow that scene is going to be staged in front of the market and the most important person in my life has died
I saw that there was nothing I could do, sometimes cinema is like a battlefield
You face the most difficult situations, but you have to stay calm because there is no joke
I mixed well, came to the dormitory, wrote a small letter to Mr. Loghmani and Mr. Gholipour, who was the producer
I wrote that children have such a situation, do not tell anyone that we have to finish filming
The children both said, “Sir, let go and go.” I said, “Sir, it’s not a joke
We also went and prepared everything, we got permission from the police, telecommunications, etc., there is nothing we can do and we have to get
I do not remember, I talked to Mr. Loghmani to work with 2 cameras, I said you work from above, I had 2 cameras from below
I work a bit on close-ups and we took 2 cameras to the stage on the langshots from above
I went upstairs to explain the scenes to Loghmani, and all the scenes were taken until we came down.
One time I remembered that we had another camera and I wanted to film from below
But my mind was so confused that I was just controlling myself to be able to capture that scene.
This is how the fire bride was made, and then I heard cocktails in the cinema in Mahshahr.
They chanted and it even got to the point where once we went south, we were in the market, they called me
Local friends told him not to call Mr. Sinai because it could be dangerous
I was told that in some college in the south, they heard that he should turn his head to Sinai.
But my good memory is that one day I was sitting there, I saw a gentleman call with an Arabic accent
I also remember, he said I am Mansouri, I said he must want to tell me something now, I said please
“I wanted to thank you and say that based on the same film you made,” he said with his accent and in a low voice.
This evening, a group of tribal leaders gather at my house to make a decision on this issue to prevent it.
Keep in mind, we had a friend at the time who was also a scientist and he died
One day he told me that Khosrow, one of these tribal chiefs, wanted to see you
I said that it was very good, but the fact was that I was not satisfied in my heart because the stories that I had always read in the files were so horrible that some of them said that anything was possible
My friend also lived alone and his house was on the other side of Velenjek, I left around 4 o’clock, the day I wanted to go I left the phone there in the house
I said if I have not heard from you by 7 o’clock, call there and ask what I am doing.
I went there and we sat with our friend and a quarter of an hour later that gentleman came and I, the story also has comedy aspects.
Even when he hugged me like this, I said that now he stabs me in the back with a dagger and tells me not to do this anymore.
But no, he did not, he thanked me and then showed me a scroll and said that you should know
We have a petition with 150 signatures that we will do our best to prevent this from happening again
Part 13
Conversation with the Shadow, let me tell you what I said in different conversations, when I was in high school, later I was abroad, but in Iran I read a lot of books
And in fact, I was familiar with the literature of that time, from poetry to novels
For example, with those who were older in style, such as Matieh al-Dawla Hejazi or Javad Fazel, etc.
That they wrote well styles that, how can I say, were very traditional and there were no things comparable to world literature
Sadegh Hedayat was one of those people whose work I liked and read and I did not understand correctly.
That is, especially the blind owl, three drops of blood, stray dogs, Haji Agha and so on
When I was a film student in Vienna, at the Vienna Film Museum, it was called the Albertina Building
There, when I saw the films of the Expressionist era, I felt that they were very close to the spaces of the blind owl
Those windows without triangular glass, those foggy spaces are very similar in shape.
But to put it bluntly, it was something that went through my mind
I had never seriously pursued it, and then when I became a filmmaker and returned to Iran, it became a completely forgotten category.
I mean, I didn’t have much to do with it, until I once went to Ahvaz or Abadan in one of these film festivals.
I remember standing by the river talking to some friends
I saw a gentleman watching me, when I finished talking to my friends
That gentleman told me that I should see you and talk to you
I remember the first time we saw each other in front of the artists’ house during the April holidays
He was Mr. Habib Ahmadzadeh, a man from whom I have seen nothing but friendship and honesty all these years
I said what is the matter? He said, “I’m conducting a research on Sadegh the Blind Owl, and I think you are the most suitable person to do this.”
I said, well, it’s a very sensitive issue, but I have nothing to say, firstly, as long as the research is convincing, and secondly, as long as we observe fairness in making the film.
Neither to make idols nor to break them, he gave me the research, I read it and saw that he really went and scrutinized it.
And found those places that those who had not seen the films of the Expressionist and Surrealist era did not really know
And the fact is that most of them express their fantasies about leadership
As a film student who had seen both those films and that book, I saw that good direction had a strong mental connection with those films.
In The Blind Owl, he does not imitate those films, he transposes, as he puts it
That is, it takes something, transforms it, and absorbs it, you know
Now, if you ever wanted to, I also wrote 2 articles about this issue that is scatterbrained.
Guidance in those films, which are mostly expressionist films, like Nosferatu’s film, like Dr. Caligari’s cabinet
Like Golem, you can see that yes, he is describing this scene in his writing
But he has transformed it in such a way that it has become his own
And I came to the conclusion that guidance actually uses two techniques, one of which is exoticism.
Selects the foreign factors that always make art attractive and expand the expressive possibilities of art.
The second is scatterbrained, that is, it is called eclecticism, that is, it uses expressionist cinema and uses Indian myths in various fields
I thought that well in the face of all the generalizations that many people make that such guidance and such guidance
Of course, in my opinion, leading a person is very sensitive and genius, but we must be allowed to analyze his work.
And this is not a breaking point at all, by the way, I said we will make the film as long as we are fair, we will not make idols or break idols.
And he provided the conditions, and in fairness, he collaborated in all kinds of ways, and a film was made
The film was made
– 16 or 35 mm?
– How long?
– 91 minutes
The film was made for the first time at the Fajr Film Festival in 1984-85 and was screened at Farhang Cinema and again from those events and calamities that always come to us
This shadow of Hedayat or that famous hat and his picture, etc. was actually a symbol of Hedayat that appears
This shadow falls on the wall, it is a spirit summoning session that is very common in Tehran.
I have this soul summoning session from a post by Najaf Daryabandari
He says that one day I saw Gholam Hossein Saedi and asked him where he was going.
They said they say it is a meeting to summon the spirit of guidance, I am going there, will you come too? He said we went there together
Well, this was the story of the beginning of the film for me, and now some people went to summon the soul
And in fact the sincere spirit of guidance appears in the form of the shadow that falls on the wall
The first screening of this film in Farhang cinema. When the film was released, we suddenly saw that this honest man does not have a head.
I mean, that hat and those famous glasses, etc., are not there at all, I went to follow up and they say that, sir, our frame does not fit into this movie.
And I say, well, why didn’t you say that before?
Well, that was the first shock, the movie that was shown. When we came out, a relatively young gentleman came and said very angrily.
Sir, I have a protest, I said why? He said you broke my idol
I said I did not intend to break an idol, I just wanted to analyze what were the works that influenced the writing of The Blind Owl?
He said no, sir, you broke my idol, I said, well, what did I do, what book did you read from Hedayat?
It was very interesting, he said I did not read the book from him, I like him, I said well, I can not say anything anymore
The film was later screened at the Artists’ House, and Mr. Jahangir Hedayat was the director
And he himself said that in all the films that have been made about my uncle, this film is close to 90% closer to what my uncle was.
And he used to say that even in some of the scenes where Mr. Shoaib played the role of Hedayat, who later made a film in his own cinema, I thought that the actor was my uncle and not that the film was a documentary.
I’m glad that this film was made, but for one thing I’m so sorry, none of the Hedayat fans came to tell me that
Sinai, this part of your film is bullshit, you lied here, so that I can say, well, let’s leave this scene and read the book as well.
You see, nobody did that, they still name all the movies when they want to name a movie about Hedayt except this one
It taught me how we are not willing to analyze the idols we make
Part 14
The film, Like a story, has an interesting story, I remember the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war
One day, when Mr. Beheshti was still the CEO of Farabi, he told me that Sinai did not think that you finally had something to do about the war.
I said Mr. Beheshti has a condition, what did he say? I said I’m afraid you would take the film from me in the middle
Do other professions that are not my professions at all, this is a responsibility
If you promise that the film will not be manipulated, the film will be what I think, I have nothing to say and I will write it.
I wrote a story that I just remembered when you told it, the same story called Desert and Blood
What was the story, the story of 3 Iraqis who were involved in the war, an officer and 2 soldiers
The officer is injured and those who want to take him somewhere lose their way and enter Iran.
There is a hut near where they entered, which is the hut of a grandfather with a grandson.
This grandson is, for example, 12-13 years old. His father, that is, his grandfather’s son, went to the front.
And they come and get to this hut, the commander of these who are wounded, so they actually take refuge in this hut.
These 3 people are 3 characters, one of them is the commander who says that everything in Iran should be killed
One of them is a young man who says, “Sir, there is a front, here we came, where they are receiving us and coming to us.”
Why do this with these, and another is actually opportunistic, has more of the commander’s air even though he does not believe him
But he has the mood that he will not be in trouble later, the story is that now this grandfather is on the one hand afraid of him.
They give them everything they have, bread, cheese, grapes, soft drinks, and so on.
But the commander’s behavior causes them to clash, and the younger soldier is actually protesting
He also protests to the commander, this grandfather has a goat that they hear the goat when they are in the room
They hear the sound of a goat and together they decide to make a good kebab
And this younger soldier says that this is the only goat, do not do these things
Sir, it is true that there is a war, but we have a word that there is a good person in those Iraqis
We are not going to say that because we are at war, not a single good person can be found in all Iraqis
After the war is over, let’s say it’s found now, you know? let’s move on
So in those years it was not made and it was not made, that is, I probably wrote this in 1982-1983.
Until Mr. Ahmadzadeh, who we now became friends with, helped us find a producer when we had a conversation with Sayeh, and we did it.
The war was over and we had the right to have a good Iraq now
I do not hurt your head, I made a fundamental mistake in that work, the team that always worked with me and was familiar with my work ethic
I thought about changing this team, maybe in my work style there might be a variety and they would not think that they always have to work on my films, go and find their own work.
But the new team was not what I thought, the producer was not what I thought
I mean, at the same time, he was making 3 films, and he introduced those people to me, for example, as a stage designer, and so on and so forth.
They were all young people who came when I saw that they were not them at all and said that we were their helpers.
Well, what can I do with an inexperienced young man, you know, the movie I wanted was not
As you know, the more subtle the subject, the more fragile it is. This movie almost 90% of it took place in a cottage.
But it was important to me that, for example, if the cottage was dark and now a candle was coming, the light was the size of a candle.
If now he brings one or two more candles, the light goes up a little, it will not work
Because you may know their colleague anyway, they were very good people but they did not know my spirit at work
This means that when the wall is white, you or anyone standing in front of it, when you adjust it with the wall, the face can be exposed and black and not be seen.
And well, that’s all that happened, that is, we do not see the senses of the faces at all
From here it goes back to Iranian cinema and that is where I have talked about these many times.
I said we need these things, the end of the movie is that this soldier will be friends with that boy anyway
And when the Irvines find out and want to catch him, the boy wants to make the soldier run away
The others were all killed in the crossfire, this escape meant that he had to go into a ravine and stand in a swamp.
I said again 2 months before we started, sir, I want a lagoon so I can rest assured that this young man can go there.
Put a tube in his mouth or any other technical work you do that will not happen at any time.
Well, nothing happened until the end of the film, I was finally told there is a natural swamp near where we are filming, and if you want to film there
Now he was a 20-year-old boy whose father had told me as a child that I had given my son to you.
We went to that place and saw that natural lagoon, right or wrong, I have nothing to do
The locals used to say that a minibus had fallen and disappeared, now I have to tell this young man to go to the swamp.
I do not have a headache, I did not really sleep until morning, Jon was a man, he was not joking
We had a crane that the cameraman had to film from above, which went into the swamp
That day, we tied 3 people with 3 thick ropes around their waists and went to the top of these ropes in the swamp, that is, the ropes went under water.
But when he went 5-6 meters, I said do not go, you do not have to go anymore, because I was scared
And my whole decoupage is messed up, where the film has to culminate emotionally that it sinks, it doesn’t, what happens and how it happens
One plan we got, I said enough, according to friends who saw the movie and everyone said your movie goes and goes like this and the end comes together suddenly
They were right, these are the things I repeated to you many times that Mr. Tim should help the film come up.
When I have a natural lagoon and I know that if it goes a little further it goes down and we can no longer open it
I can not send a 20-year-old young man in such a swamp, I had said 2 months before the start of filming that I want a swamp and it is not
Like the makeup I said I wanted and could not, believe me, 3 people had taken this rope and wanted to pull him out of the mud and they could not
At that time, a film is made in this situation, of course, it is the end of the director, but this director must be able to rely on a series of people.
I am not a swamp expert, I am not a makeup expert, we have so many of these stories that there is no limit
Part 15
As I said before the revolution, I always thought that I should make my first film when I am40 years old and have enough experience.
I used to make movies, all kinds of movies, I used to say to myself, I have to learn this well.
When he was37 years old, the revolution took place and the situation changed at all. With the beginning of the next revolution, I reduced those3 years and made the film Long Live
Which I told you about in detail, and then the inner monster, I thought I had enough experience to be able to make films that
Have a bigger production, have a stronger condition
So I went to the scenarios where I thought I could actually apply that experience of many years.
I think about this one way, one city, one life that I wrote the first time Farabi was made, they said that it is very good.
Very good, it is one of the very good scenarios given to us, this scenario was about the city of Sari
At a time when I remember as a child and the Russians were in Sari and it was a place that is completely unknown to today
But they said how much it would cost, I estimated and then I said15 million
And they said we could not leave more than 8 million, my point was that I do not want money for myself
But the ground is asphalt and we have to build a paved ground, we have to build new shops, we need clothes and so on.
And it was3-4 years later that Channel2 called me again and said that we heard you have a very good script and we want you to make it.
How much does it cost? And I estimated it was110 million at that time, they said we don’t have more than 60 million
Anyway, it did not happen and I am still hot
I later wrote a screenplay that everyone later said was very good, and of course it was in the post-revolutionary era, that
I wrote what happened to my brother in the name of the TV court
That this television trial was actually about how the media affects people’s minds
The media do this for political reasons, but what impact do those reasons have on each person’s fate at the time?
This was about my brother, who was a doctor in the United States and was found by a man who later turned out to be from the Korean War.
Now the issue of the Korean War, in which the United States was involved, is being raised again, and it has been insulted, and my brother is asking why.
His story was detailed, he had shot a week and had tied and paralyzed my brother, my brother was47-48 years old then
Working in court that kills him, well in court everyone sympathizes with him because he is a young doctor who is also a surgeon
And well, when he is paralyzed, he can no longer work, but on the fourth, fifth day of the hostage-taking trial in Iran.
And in court, once he turned the page, he said, “Suddenly, the next day when we left, we saw that it was as if we had killed a man.”
A situation like this had occurred and finally the court said that well, that gentleman who was a wave and is not guilty and should go to a mental hospital
You, too, who applied for a court, must pay $30,000 in court costs
My brother was in a wheelchair for22 years, and after his children grew up, he took pills and destroyed himself.
I say that many did not want to, I protest to those who did not want to, not to those who could not help
Mr. Beheshti was Farabi’s CEO at the time, and he actually set the stage for me to go to the United States
But this was not rebuilt for a thousand and one reasons
Another thing I really liked to make was Blood Age portraits that show the artist in front of the ruler.
The story is the last one based on this, there are at least11 internal and external sources that are from history
And it is the situation that Reza Abbasi has in the court of Shah Abbas, this situation that the ruler has a job, he has his own view
And the artist has another look at the flow and how it is formed in return
I remember Farabi liked this and said that we should just talk about it
The man in charge was a philosopher and a writer, but he was not a filmmaker. He made various speeches that had nothing to do with it.
Well, in his situation, I could not say that, sir, what you are saying has nothing to do with cinema.
For example, in this book, there is a scene where Safi Mirza, Crown Prince of Shah Abbas, and Reza Abbasi are sitting in Toofan Coffee House and Reza Abbasi is drawing.
That I have even included Reza Abbasi’s drawings in the book, and then Safi Mirza, who suspects that his father wants to kill him.
Because it was very popular among the people and Shah Abbas was worried about this
To Reza, who are friends, and now I will explain what trouble this friendship created for me
Reza says what do you think makes a father want to kill his son?
Reza takes a look and says Hub Jah
He says what makes a boy want to kill his father, he says love of place
What makes you sit from morning till night painting plants, animals and people? Does he mean love of place?
In the argument we had with Farabi and the gentleman who was in charge, the argument was that, sir, you can not use love of place.
I said why not? They said that I do not know that in the seventh floor of mysticism, love of place has such a meaning and so on.
Well, I really did not understand what this has to do with cinema, what it has to do with the film we are making.
I gave this to the TV before, I wrote that all the events that take place in this story are taken from historical documents.
But I do not have a historical document for just one event, and of course I did not present the events that happened in the form of historical chronology.
I used these in the whole dramatic context of the story, the only thing I do not have a document is the friendship between Safi Mirzai, the Crown Prince, and Reza Abbasi.
Do you know what the answer was? Since you yourself said that you do not have a document for friendship between Safi Mirza and Reza Abbasi, then it is not possible.
I do not compare myself at all, but I say that Hamlet and King Lear and Macbeth and all these things are not written by Shakespeare.
Use historical sources to create a dramatic effect
In short, I do not hurt your head, because it is interesting to say the last part quickly
We had discussions with the man in charge of culture in Farabi, who said that Shah Abbas was more important.
I was saying that Reza Abbasi has his place, it does not matter who is more important
But you see that the names of the artists remain in history in this way, but the names of some of the kings remain.
Which eventually led me to rewrite it, that is, the figures of the age of blood became two sides of the same coin
This is why there are two sides of the coin, because at the end of Shah Abbas, he comes to the royal painting house at night and sees that Reza Abbasi is working.
Does he know that Reza is upset, tells him that you did the card easily?
He says yes, Your Majesty, he says well, do you think that if the Uzbeks had fled from one side and the Ottomans from another, and so on?
And this country was reduced to dust and blood, now you could easily sit here and do your job?
When Reza says no, he can not, he says, well, then do your job and let me do my job, this is two sides of the same coin.
Luckily for me, it was ready when I went to Isfahan and saw that Aaliqapo was being scaffolded and was being repaired.
I said, well, how long this scaffolding and repairs will take, they said it is not clear, it may take3-4 years.
Well, I saw that it was no longer useful because we wanted to work in Aliaqapo, so it went up in the air.
Another subject that I liked very much that many people told me to make, so I even read it to a law enforcement professor.
He said that he must do this even if it was a theater, and he liked it very much
His name is Sepidjameh, Sepidjameh is related to Muqna
Al-Muqna Hisham, which is in the second century AH and was from the Sepid Jamgan movement
The essence of the story is that a man begins to resist the Arab caliph
In prison, there is a sequence that tells God that I want to claim to be a god.
Because these people do not follow me like that, he is an ugly person and a magician
In this way, a scavenger appears, which is, in other words, golden in color, and in other words, it has a golden-green, that is, golden electricity.
And it seems that the summary of his story is detailed, that with the knowledge of magic he knew how to make mirrors and shed light on people and so on.
They fell on their knees, but the problem is that he himself gradually believes that he is God
And from there, the work reaches the final catastrophe, which is also in the month of Nakhshab, where Mr. Saeed Nafisi once wrote his story.
It has nothing to do with it, but he also worked on it, which eventually throws himself in the oven and kills.
I would have loved to do this, but I also remember that one of the officials said that this is very similar to the situation before us and that it is not possible.
I said it’s a very good drama and it’s a pity it didn’t, but it didn’t
This one that really burns my heart is homes and memories
About 8 years ago, I traveled to20 cities in Iran, the first from west to east
That is, from Tabriz to Bojnourd, after the middle from Sanandaj to Birjand, from the north we came down as well, which were actually Shiraz, Isfahan and Kashan
Then in the south we went from Bandar Abbas to Bandar Lengeh and Kong and these to Shushtar
I had an idea, it was very important for me to do this because when I went to Hormoz Island for another job that was my last job
I saw that the Bank Melli building that was built in Hormoz is the same as the Bank Melli building in Rasht
What do these two have to do with each other, Hormoz to Rasht, that is, in terms of climate, this flow is not proportional at all
It was I who decided to make a film about the fact that in the glorious architecture of Iran, at least once this climate issue was considered.
In Zahedan, I saw, for example, at a crossroads and in that hot sun building a building with a body of metal sheets and glass.
I mean, it puts all this heat in the middle of the intersection, you know
I wanted to make such a film, but I thought that if in this film I only focus on architecture
In fact, it may be very specialized and only architects look at it
That’s what I thought these were luxury buildings, in each of them we see the building when we have it.
Recreate a historical scene that happened in that building
For example, in the Constitutional House of Tabriz, we show the house in the same way that we are brave
Show that in a room, for example, Baqer Khan, Sattar Khan and Ali Monsieur are sitting and, for example, are making a night letter.
Or, for example, show a scene in Khosrowabad Palace in Sanandaj when we are watching
For example, Khosrow Khan Ardalan is talking to Mastoorah, his mistress, in a corner of the garden. For example, they are talking to each other.
Of course, I could not leave all the houses, out of the58 houses we saw in20 cities.
I was thinking of choosing about15 houses and showing each of these buildings in about 6 minutes.
Of these 6 minutes, about2 minutes is a historical flashback
That is, both the geography of this country from north to south and the historical stories that took place in these houses.
Incidentally, Mr. Beheshti also had a role here, I talked to him and said that I want to name this the houses and memories.
He suggested to me that now the final name be travel to imaginary houses
But the same development center said, “Sir, how much will it cost?” I said, “Look, these are big buildings.”
We want to go there, we want a lot of light, we want mobility equipment, etc., and at the same time, the work must be weighty.
How much does it cost? That’s time for 6-7 years ago, I said 800 million, they said we don’t have it sir, it’s not, it’s not good,
And less than 6 months ago, they started a project there that had nothing to do with culture and history and nothing in this country.
As far as I heard, I heard numbers between 8 billion and17 billion that were spent and the project was incomplete.
Even the book I gave about these houses with detailed color photos has not been published yet.
At first they said that sir we do not have the budget to print these in color, I even introduced a publisher
They said if you want us to print these in black and white
I said that black and white does not make sense, these photos, these spaces of these houses, worked in black and white30 years ago, and this has not been slept until today.
I really do not have a problem with anyone, Mr. Anwar, but I kind of say that, sir, I am an example of a person who could do something and this energy was lost, why? It was not clear
When I made the film Lost Lament and told it in its story, I was given the Polish Knight’s badge in Poland.
And then the Polish Ministry of Culture showed me the artist’s honor
At that moment, I told the advisor to the President who had come, “If I make a movie, will you cooperate?” He said for sure
That I have this film, whose first name was Malgorzata, Malgorzata, whose course I do not know the pronunciation of like the Poles, that is, Maria, is the same name as Maria.
Later, in order to be usable for Iran, we named it the winter train
I wrote the script and the Poles liked it very much and wrote the letter, which is also very suitable for the joint cooperation between Iran and Poland.
And it can have a good international market, I have letters everywhere
The Iranian ambassador wrote from Poland, etc., but not to date
I have repeated many times and said, “Sir, in the middle of Poland Square in Warsaw, in a large square that has a large statue with a large stone.”
On it, the hospitality of the Iranian people was thanked in Persian and Polish. Well, this is the best advertisement for us right now, but it has not been done so far.
And lastly,2 years ago, I went next to Mr. Jafari Jelveh, now we went to Poland with Mr. Entezami at once.
In order for him to choose the opposite actor, I told Mr. Jafari Jelveh that these Poles are very interested in doing this.
And I wrote something like50-50, will we do it or not? Because they ask me
Anyway, they said that we do not have capital at the moment, if you want to make a cheap film, so that, God willing, capital will be matched.
I went to Hormoz Island once or twice and saw the activities of Dr. Nadalian and an idea came to my mind.
That this activity shows one thing, we do not have to sit down and see what the government wants to do.
And to say why the government did this and did not do that, everyone is within their power and where they are
He can roll up his sleeves and work on building it
When I saw this activity, the idea was created, first of all, I saw that it has a very beautiful atmosphere
Secondly, I saw that this activity that Dr. Nadalian is doing is a constructive activity
This means that first, women in the family learn a job that can help them earn a living.
Second, we can show that our environment is in danger, that is, when the husband of the family says that my grandfather is bringing a fish van.
My father brings a basket of fish and now I am happy to catch2 fish, which means that these fish are in danger.
Thirdly, our environment, where at least they first told me30 to35, then they said up to 70 different colors of sand and gravel
Well, we should not waste such a natural space, I’m saying now that we did not dare to turn our cameras.
Because we were being taken out of the island, it was going so well that I only showed it in the role of putting it in a bottle and selling it to tourists.
I did not know and I was partnering with Farabi, the film was sent to the Vancouver Film Festival
I only got the result from Mr. Esfandiari, the head of Farabi International Department
Out of5, which was a maximum, he scored 92.3 points, which was very good
Another point that was interesting to me was that there was no prize and it was non-competitive
But in the catalog it was written that an amazing movie that the first question that arises in us is that
When the relations between Canada and Iran get better, we pack our bags and go to Hormoz
Well, when we talk so much about tourism, what could be better?
But the same film was shown in Iran under certain circumstances and it was planned for it, which in the end
When my and Farabi’s share was halved and I gave my friends’s share, one million and four hundred thousand tomans came back.
Instead of focusing on Tehran, we can focus on a bunch of money-making figures.
We can make films in different cities and parts of Iran
And in those parts, there are many talented young people and actors, and we also show the nature of those parts.
We show the culture of those parts and we use them and We can also make a film about this country
And they can be very good films, for example, from their own local stories. Believe me, I’m still saddened by how many of these guys who worked with me in Hormoz
They swore, they said, Mr. Sinaei, take us to Tehran, God, well, I could not do it.
How can I bring him to Tehran? What to do here? But we can go there if we put them correctly
Part 16
I once said a sentence and they conveyed it incompletely
I said that cinema is not a profession for me, it is a kind of life
And this gentleman had gone and published that cinema is not a profession for me
Which later the others protested, what does it mean, sir? I called that gentleman and said why did not you leave the rest of the sentence?
He said I wanted to print this in large numbers and we had no more space, I said well, the people are right, how come cinema is not a profession?
Depending on how you see the cinema, you are sometimes a cinema employee
That is, they say, sir, do this and you will do it without any questions
In fact, there were kids who were compiling the work and saying, “Excuse me,” was the same sentence.
He used to say, “I’m dead, they bring the dead so that I can wash.”
But there is a time when you use this tool because you have a mindset to talk about it.
If you can not say that with cinema, you may write a book, you may write poetry
For me, cinema is nothing but a tool and that is why I can not make every film
Every person has qualities, the highest chance that a person can bring is to discover his true qualities.
As much as I was incompetent in technical matters, I felt the weight of poetry from my childhood without wanting to.
And I would get angry if a poem had a “and” a lot or a little
I always felt the rhythm, its melody came, sometimes believe me, when I listen to my own music, I say who owns it, where did it come from?
– These are innate rather than acquired
Intrinsic art, you see, every artist can learn one thing, that learning is possible for everyone.
But having the essence of an artist is not for everyone
And I’m not saying it’s bad that it’s not for everyone, no one has the nature of a scientist, one has the nature of being a good pilot, not everyone can be everything
A few days ago, I read in a newspaper that he had written who said that cinema should be a cultural phenomenon at all, stick to its economy first, and so on.
All right, do whatever you see fit, but I personally accepted cinema as a cultural phenomenon.
Well, now that this is the case, then it seems that now I say who among the poets likes
One says the Third Brotherhood, one says Moshiri, one says Naderpour, one says Shamloo and one says Sohrab Sepehri
But next to that, for me, cinema is a cultural phenomenon
– That has duties to the people, is not it
– You see, that is not the problem, you do not become an artist with the thesis that I am responsible to the people
You are a person whose artistry and existence are reflected in the work
If this being is an isolated being but has a masterpiece of creativity, it is possible to create a work that is not related to people either.
If this is an existence that is connected to people, naturally that effect is actually formed in connection with people.
Originality is important to me, this other originality depends on its existence, you know what I’m saying
That I am not what I really am, but because I say that I create this work because of my social commitment.
There I start to distance myself, I prefer everyone who really has the essence of art to be himself
There are enough people who have something to say to the community
They can also be artists who create works in their own mental isolation that create new ways of artistic expression.
But it does not necessarily mean social commitment, both of which are good if they are genuine
That’s where the trouble begins
– What movie and cinema do you call Fakher?
– A film that is glorious here, Mr. Anwar, I have a thousand problems with this subject
I say that unfortunately they think that the more the film is spent, the more luxurious the film.
Luxurious cinema means where we can turn a luxurious mentality into a film in a suitable way.
It may just happen in one room, but the mentality is luxurious
See, I’m going to tell you something that might be funny, because I’m also dealing with poetry I work hard
I say that the best poem in the world is a poem that can express a feeling, a sensory world in just one word.
Which of course is not good, I do not look too expensive
And the best movie in the world is I keep a person standing in front of a white wall with at least some clothes
And I can fascinate the viewer for2 hours,1/30 with what is happening there
The evolution of cinema is also shaped by the evolution of tools
Although the younger generation sees a lot more and finds a newer language
Now that we have a good look, we can now compare it like this, we see that in the history of cinema, for example, you have the era of expressionism.
You see actors who have a lot of names and traditions, but the way they play, if they play now, you will faint with laughter.
I even remember myself in the series that I was going to make. The late Ezatullah Vosough graduated from the Moscow Film School.
I’m really telling you that the older generations felt more responsible, and he would come and tell me that Mr. Sinaei
You tell me what kind of scenes do you want me to play, what is my facial mimicry?
I practice in the mirror at night to play like that tomorrow
I said, “Mr. Vosough, I do not want you to do that at all, it will be very mechanical.”
You look at the era of expressionism, you see that the biggest, best and most important actors
They smiled, which means I’m angry now or I’m smiling, it ‘s over
When you look at our cinema, it happened to be a tribute to the late Mr. Ali Hatami some time ago
He was a talented person who used theater actors such as Mr. Entezami, Nasirian, Mashayekhi and Keshavarz, etc.
And Mr. Keshavarz, who spoke, said that the principle of cinema is that you should start with the theater first
Well, my view is that these have nothing to do with each other
I am from a generation that ranged from Fereydoun Rahnama to Sohrab Shahid Sales, etc., who said that there is no actor.
What the director does to the actor is important and what the director pulls out of the actor.
I remember it was the anniversary of Sohrab’s death and in one of these channels he was showing Mr. Parviz Sayad
Who had played Sohrab in exile in the film, then they wanted him to explain how, for example, Sohrab worked with him
They asked what Sohrab was doing, he said he was not doing anything well
They would say what it meant, he would say we were not sitting anywhere, he would put a glass and say that the camera that started you should take this water and drink it, this and other things do not want you to do
You see, now I want to say about the younger generation that the style of work is different
The kind of acting that our very good and respected actors used to play in Mr. Ali Hatami’s films has no buyer anymore.
Now the highest type of actor that many of our very good youngsters play is a kind of game that you seem to not play at all
In other words, in world cinema, you see the likes of Robert De Niro going the same way.
Play as if you do not play at all, not play to see how well I play
Now when I look, I see that the younger generation has taken this quite well
And most of the players play as if they are not playing at all
The lightness of the tool and the availability of the tool on the one hand make it much easier
And on the one hand in many cases led to sloppiness
When I wanted to work on the stage sound, we had to put the Ari Flex camera of that size in a box of this size.
Well, it was on a tripod, I could not just tell my cameraman to put the camera there, no, no, I was wrong, now put it here
I had to think, find the reasons and the infrastructure
Now I look, I see that unfortunately in many cases this light camera makes him hold his hand and take the scene in one way.
Now, yes, yes and no, he puts it aside in the assembly, he thinks that it is easy.
But something happens here, it happens that the mind is not made, far away
Bin is making the movie, your mind is not making it
That’s why I told you when I was making the film Alleys of Love that it was the first and last film I made without a script and decoupage.
But I had worked on it for years before, it was a very funny result, the critics who criticized all my films wrote about this elephant that I had never decoupage before.
In this film, the movements of the camera and the location of the Sinai camera are very beautiful and correct
The mind must be made, you see, I always told my students when I was teaching that
Children see you think you see but you do not really see what you have to see
You think you hear, but you do not really hear what you need to hear.
You need to strengthen these muscles like a weightlifting champion who wants to lift a weight.
Strengthen your back so you can lift weights
You have to strengthen this eye, seeing beauty is not possible just by watching movies
You should see a good painting, you should see a good photo, you should see a good architecture
As you speak now, they say, sir, why are their films so beautiful?
Mr. Yaro has lived in Rome or Paris for a lifetime, has seen composition, has seen Michelangelo, has seen architecture
This subconscious is formed, so we must train this eye, this ear, and finally this mind
Then we begin to see the things we think we see but do not see.
This is where I think these cameras helped a lot. I have no doubt about that, but it also created a kind of mental laziness.
That the filmmaker does not have to see the film in his mind beforehand
Fellini says very nicely, “Before I make my film, I have all the film in my mind.”
He’s right, he only walks it technically, that’s when you have to think beforehand why my camera is here.
And of course I said that we also have a problem here, the era of modernity, the era in which we were raised was the era of structuralism.
Now is the age of ideology, that is, postmodernism has reached a kind of ideology
And it’s enough for them to come up with a good idea, the camera, which is light, gets a good idea, and it’s very successful, it’s not in line with my mood.
Part 17
Cinema is a phenomenon that, unfortunately, has always been an economic issue
I personally admit that now, with the passage of time or the social conditions that have arisen, our cinema as a whole, and if we leave aside the single works, it has become a much more respectable cinema.
But there is another side, I think something happened in this historic cut of time
The generation that had learned things could not continue it, except when they went outside Iran
If those experiences continued, the cinema could have matured much sooner
But from the point of view, there are a lot of talented buds
What makes me sad, let me tell you an example, because my teaching was also discussed.
I taught filmmaking at the Islamic Center, although there was no bachelor’s degree and no more than2 years.
But it’s probably one of the best times I could teach because it was a living space, it worked, it just didn’t matter.
I had a student whose first name was Mehdi, I do not remember his last name right now, he was very talented
And in the works that the children presented, it did a very good job
One year at the Fajr Film Festival, I was a member of the jury and I saw on the list that my student also made a movie.
I was very curious because he was a very talented kid
Well I went to the hall and I was sitting curious, I saw the movie, I saw the movie was very vulgar, it was very bad
I did not expect this at all, I was very upset, to be honest
When we came out, I was in the hall above the Farhang cinema when I saw him standing next to me, I looked at him and I smiled.
He came to me and said that I want to talk to you, I said what happened, he said I know I made a very bad film, I just wanted to enter the cinema profession with this film
You see, this is where it really struck my heart that a talented young man has to make a vulgar film with his own consciousness in order to enter the profession.
Our cinema soon fails to make money, while I personally think it would have looked at the story more openly.
Not to say that France or Italy are better, I know that it is the same even in France, for example, it was Jean-Luc Godard’s film, there were no more than 6 people in front of the cinema
It was a spaghetti western movie and they lined up, yes it is, but the Milan Opera, the Vienna Opera and so on.
The government helps to promote and maintain this culture, it has its place
Excuse me, I can easily say that pornographic film has its own cinema, that very market film also has its place, this also has its place.
Like a book, you go to the library. Some books are only useful as a magazine footnote.
But some books make the history of literature, here we in cinema do not think so unfortunately
We say a movie, if in every movie they have only one tool, just as a book has only one tool.
Some magnificent literary work, now magnificent with that mental concept, with that footnote that is written, both of them were created with pen and paper.
Cinema is with this device, but each has its place, the system that can and should help is what builds a basic culture.
The film should have its own charms anyway, but how many people go to libraries
So this comparison is completely irrelevant to say that a certain movie sold so much and this one did not sell a movie.
This is where I think this system of thought did not take shape in30 years
I mean, there were efforts, I have no doubt about that, but cinema is always exposed to the defeat of goods and trade, and this has damaged cinema.
Cinema is an art that is in fact very international in nature, cinema should be international at all.
I strongly believe that Iranians and young people are very talented
Now some people get involved in the middle, but we have a lot of talented people
I am not saying this one-sided talent too much, I saw it there too, but I have been saying for years that my dear, we should not be happy about this game festival.
Do not be embarrassed, whether outside or inside, we lack one thing in this cinema where there are many talented, constructive and intelligent people.
This way we can not go after a series of subjects, why now 90% of our subjects in one apartmant happening in a city?
When I was looking to make Blood Age portraits, before I was told to make the film
I always thought, well, if they told me to make it tomorrow, who would do the make-up, the clothes and the decor?
Who is going to work at the level that we say our cinema is international?
Well, if we make hundreds of films, which we will definitely make, how many people do we have in terms of decor, makeup, stage effects?
Even in terms of dealing with animals can do the job, I made any movie that had a dog or a horse, I had to throw that sequence away
Because I’m not the director of Dogs and Horses, and on that basis I always suggested that
Accept the really talented volunteers from these talented students who are in different educational centers.
You make some of these expenses for festivals where it is not clear why they are so repetitive.
Give scholarships to those who go and work and learn with a professional and good filmmaking team wherever you can in the world.
Not that they practice for their own practice and5 people are killed, that one one is shot in the brain and dies, oh, that it was not possible to make a film
I told you that I myself was faced with a natural swamp like a story, well, we have to build this infrastructure, but well, less thought has been given to it.
In innovation, in my opinion, there is a kind of originality, that is, whether the innovation has boiled from the heart of the issue or whether we wanted to do something else.
I do not agree with innovation, even if we make any claim that is unlike any other work and call it innovation.
And here is a point, in order to do something new, you have to know and digest old things.
Like the word I said to my teacher that you should know a lot, but your shoulders are so strong that you do not feel the weight of that knowledge
If you get there and move with the so-called time, a new effect will automatically form, something else will form.
If you want to pay, you can not do anything, we have this even before the revolution
For example, the new wave of France that was formed tried to pay tribute to Truffaut, to pay Godard, these become nothing.
Innovation must be rooted in your creativity and knowledge
It is good for me to say now that one of my problems is that once a newspaper, maybe it was Abrar, I do not remember exactly, asked me the difference between a critic and an artist.
I said the difference is one thing, both should have enough knowledge and understanding, but the difference is that the artist at the moment of creating the work
All that knowledge must have gone to his subconscious, and the critic must have that knowledge in his mind at the moment of writing a critique.
In order to be able to determine the position of a work, and this is our big problem
It does not bother anyone, but many dear critics are waiting to see what the world is saying and to repeat it.
Why? Because their knowledge base is not in a place where they can evaluate something independently.
And to determine its place in the realm of their own art, they have to wait to see what the Onorians say.
Of course, those people are not strange people, the market is crowded, but I want to tell you that in my opinion
It is very important that creativity is a creativity based on knowledge and cognition
Let me share a memory with you, when I was composing, we were4 student students
We had a teacher who taught us the piano.
There were4 of us,2 of us were Iranians, and it was me and a man named Iraj Shimi who I later heard became a composer and I do not know where in the world he is now.
She was an American student and a Japanese girl, she was very funny, now she was an old woman who did not know us at all
Our constant beating beats2 irons to that unfortunate American and Japanese
He said, “Look, these Iranians, because they have to constantly climb mountains and fight with nature, etc., he thought we were wild.”
How sharp they are when they sit at the piano, you are very industrial and dry behind the piano
He used to say that these are mills, like leopards in the mountains, these are also like that, he used to describe me and Mr. Shimi a lot.
I’m sure the Japanese and the Americans both became good pianists
I do not know chemistry, but I do not think he also became a pianist, and I did not become a pianist at all.
Because what I have learned and believed is that we are not systematic
I always compared and said that a coach who works with the Brazilian football team should work completely differently from a coach who works with the German football team
These are2 nations with2 different spirits, that Brazil cannot be solved in the rest, it wants to be seen as a monolith, but that Germany itself is in the service of the people.
I once said we are a land of bright stars far apart, both in terms of historical figures and monuments.
You go thousands of kilometers and for example you come across a building like Soltanieh
You go thousands of kilometers and come across a building in Dargaz and each of them is a masterpiece.
But how many do we have in an urban space?
In our society, you go back to centuries ago and meet Rumi, Saadi and Hafez.
But where do we have an established social system? Those brilliant monostars have always been in our history
But it was not a system that created a general cultural bond
This is where we need to build when it comes to the future, not just the future of cinema, but the whole of our society.
We need to learn to be systematic and build step by step, not all that we do
Have a glamor for now and then see you again tomorrow for nothing
And here it is, it’s relevant to the whole of society, it’s right, it’s cinema.
Part 18
What effect has cinema had on your lifestyle?
I brought luck in life, of course I provided this chance for myself, not that I provided it myself, life provided it for me
And that is that those who were my partner, I always say that you do not see these in the very close criteria of one woman and two men and two women and one man, and these things are not at all.
We decided as3 artists with our kids and I came to the point where we said we could live together
In this way, in our lives, I do not come at all to sit and talk about, for example, the common things that the neighbor did or the price of the land.
We were the harshest critics of each of us
I mean, even my children can easily watch a movie that everyone says is good and say, “My dad, I’m your son or daughter, give me your movie here or give the whole movie at all.”
You see, he says I’m your child and I have no intention
You see, I am happy with the life of all its problems, with all its ups and downs
I say whatever he wants to happen, happen, but at least fifty-five years have passed.
Each of us was able to create something, do something
What effect did cinema have now? First of all, its effect was that I actually lived in a constantly mentally active space.
Sometimes you believe what I tell you happens because we are constantly arguing.
I say, children, we are not aware that we have repeated these arguments so much that it seems to us that it is too far-fetched.
For those who are not in this space, those discussions are very strange at all, and fortunately, my children were in the same space.
I do not believe that I was wrong, if I became an architect, I would be an average architect, not that I could not, I could be, but I must have been an average architect
If I became a composer, I do not know what would happen, the cinema would eventually have a collection of what I had learned.
And here my problems with cinema also occur because especially not only in Iran but in the world, cinema is considered a depicted story.
I say it is just a kind of cinema, cinema can be a composite art, a combination of sound, music, effects, words, literature and so on.
And it may not have a story in the literary sense on paper at all
I make a fire bride to say that this is how I can make a movie
I make Long Live to say that this is how I can make a film, I can also make an inner monster, but
I can also build a colorful island next to it and that is another thing, it depends on my possibilities
How is your relationship with the art of music?
At first, I decided to be just a filmmaker, because I was, and the person I had found that we had a very good mental understanding with was Mr. Cheknavarian.
But Mr. Cheknavarian was abroad after the revolution when I made a movie
Before that, he told another person, who was even less fortunate enough to actually write music for the film, that he was the composer of the concert.
And he said that if you just give me a nickname, I’m ready to write music
He wrote the music, of course he was a master, but I saw that spiritually it is not what I want at all.
And besides, I have a friend and a contract with him, it was that I had done a small job in some of the films myself.
But I could not sit down and write and perform music for a complete film of my own
Cheknavarian was not, either, with the experience that I now have to say that what would a composer do if he wrote something that was of no use to me at all?
This is when I told myself in the movie Monster Within not to be afraid, close your face and write for1 month,2 months.
Really like the kid who went and sat in the first grade of elementary school, I sat down and wrote the music myself and performed a lot of things myself.
I knew that in many places he could work better as a professional composer
But in terms of the mood I need in the film, I saw that it was what I wanted.
And when I come in as a filmmaker, the rest are actually subject to the film
In this way, a problem arose and my problem was that after that I had to write the music for many of my films myself.
Sam and I actually do a lot of it
Those who knew that I was dealing with music, Ms. Parvin Dolatabadi had written26 poems that were actually about a traditional family.
Their lives start from morning till night when the children sleep, Ms. Dolatabadi’s poems were for children and teenagers
For me to write a work on these, I actually wrote an operetta that we performed in the same years.
But there were years when there were a lot of problems, for example, if he said white and blue ball, how much in the twists and turns and well I had beaten
Then we took it for permission, they said, sir, the sound of beating is forbidden, I said, sir, this is the sound of the ball, they said no, because it is the sound of beating, it is not possible.
Or, for example, the mother of the family used to lullaby the children to sleep, they used to say that the woman’s voice is forbidden, and these stories
That tape that burns my heart so much, just like this scenario where he has been asleep for thirty years now
What happened to the tape? Did you record?
Yes, but his songs have to be repeated, fortunately I have a separate track for his music
And from time to time I write music for my films, and the last thing I did was wait for it to be licensed.
It was last summer that it was not possible to make a film again, I wrote music for27 of my own poems.
To say this and close this case, I thought for a long time because there was talk and some people were saying what poetic cinema means.
The question for me was, what exactly is poetry? Where does it form? Is poetry the word we write on paper or is poetry something that is formed here?
If we are a poet, and when it was formed here, we can convey it verbally according to the instrument we are proficient in.
We can use music, we can use painting, all of this can be poetic as long as the mind is poetic.
And this summer I actually sat down and experienced this, which I happen to see as not having a bad reaction.
Some people have heard that they liked it and it is currently in the process of getting a license, so that, God willing, we can see how it goes. This was my relationship with music.
What is the place of research in your works?
If I were to show you that for a half-hour film like the narrators of history, I would have to name those who really worked hard.
Mr. Sohrab Farsio, who was doing my research
Yes, I know him
Sohrab Farsio is angry with me now, but there is nothing wrong with him, his anger is for another reason, which is not a problem.
But I always appreciate him, they are very curious and punctual and it will be just funny to tell you
It went so deep that I said, sir, you go so deep, the party who ordered it will not accept it at all.
For example, in a movie, until a light comes on, when we wanted to make a movie
Well, the Ministry of Energy, the regional electricity organization, had ordered us and we wanted to show the Shahid Rajaei power plant.
He had gone and researched so much how much energy is wasted in this power plant, I said, sir, we can not put this in the film
But really, if you want, I can show you today that I do not have a film without my research
I told the fire bride that I had researched both in the field and in the library, two people, one of whom was Mr. Nariman Chaichi and the other was Mr. Hamid Farkhonejad
In fact, this research took 8 years from the time we wanted to make the film to the time it was made
But research that benefits the cinema, this is a fundamental point because we were at the beginning of our career when we were in culture and art.
It was said that a film could be made about a certain subject. People might go and take a few pictures and come and take the stage and put it together.
And assuming good music was put on the film and the work was done, but one thing was how much the researcher knew about cinema.
And how much his research is useful for cinema, I have discussed this many, many years
I said that we must first accept that books and cinema are two completely different mediums
What is useful in the book may not be useful at all in the cinema
Do you also teach?
See me since I came to Iran in1346 at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts
I started teaching like this until the year50
Many of my friends who are now old men were in my class
It was very funny now and I can tell you this as a joke, that Mr. Keshavarz, who is now older than them,
And the late Rokn al-Din Khosravi, who was10 years older than me
That I was embarrassed to try these at all and it was always held with laughter, and I taught film music, for example, in their class, we have nothing to do
Then I taught at the University of Tehran for1 year and then at the University of Arts
That is, in total, I taught from the year46 when I started until the year 71, that is, for25 years
Then I came to the conclusion that either you have to be a good teacher or if you want to make your own film, these two do not fit together.
There’s a reason for this, I happen to say this to some, especially those who think very academically
I can say this because I myself have experienced many academic stages
When one teaches art, one also believes that what one says is very important, then one sees that no
If someone has an art background, that spark should be ignited, that spark does not have to be ignited only in college.
College is only one way, that spark is created if it ignites
By the way, let me stand in front of the camera for a minute to say why I came to these results, sorry, this is it
You see, when I saw this, I lost all faith in academic education
I forgot to say first that I did not take the pink sculptures from the back, I bought them from Thailand, I bought them in Bali
But one day I was walking by the sea on the island of Bali in Indonesia when I saw a boy who did not look literate.
He stands by the sea in a pair of shorts and throws a stick next to himself and makes a sculpture out of them. This is an example of those sculptures.
When I saw this, I asked myself how many people with a bachelor’s and doctorate in art could make this.
Another important thing is that you are in a space that makes you an artist, if you have the background.
Otherwise, read a thousand books with archives, go well and explain those books to others, but you will not become an artist.
I have a book that I have been wanting to translate for years, in English called How to Awaken an Inner Artist
This goes back to an educational tradition that we unfortunately and fortunately had in our culture that was said to be breast to breast.
Yes, it is when a teacher has5 students, but when there are colleges where there are100 to100 students in the classroom.
You only have a few theories to teach them and those theories that you did not experience in practice
And this is the situation that I always have with that and I say that art is not formed by words, it is formed in practice.
And I say this boldly because I myself have practiced art in practice now during the conversations we have had.
For this reason, yes, I have been teaching for25 years, and after another teaching, I am sometimes invited to workshops.
And I’m going to talk to the kids, but I never go to class regularly
How do you benefit from filmmaking?
I enjoyed filmmaking, let me tell you something that is with poetry and I will read this poem to you
You see, when I said that life is empty, it is meaningless, you are right, comrade, life is a lonely moment, fill the empty moment, life is great
I’ve always been full of life with filmmaking, which is why I once said that you should see that I am not a slave to my film being shown, winning an award or selling so much, no.
I enjoy my life with filmmaking, I have said time and time again that someone who has not understood the momentary pleasure of creativity
He does not understand why the artist may not be willing to do anything else in the most difficult financial situation
I mean, just in the morning when you get up, do not think about what is happening now, what should I do and what happened to my salary.
They are also among them, but that one should not sleep overnight until morning and find a solution at once.
See if you can tell me a moment, this is one of my most beautiful memories
I was making Autumn Alley from Tabatabai Jazz, which was supposed to end at the end of this mode.
As it stands, these iron men stood around the jazz
And Jazeera is lying on the bed there, wearing a white dress, and he is going to die, and these people are going to cry.
What happens next is that the artist, the man, is all crying and wailing
But from the beginning we started filming as a director, I was talking about how to die.
That I say sleep there, now for example breathe and now do not breathe is very fake
Because the viewer knows that he is not satisfied, you know, that he is not dead
It was playing in my mind like this until we had to shoot this scene tomorrow
Believe me, Mr. Anvar, I was coming from the same alley you saw with the agency, and until it turned, something suddenly came to my mind that I am still happy about.
In the film, the body of a dead white dove is actually a symbol of an artist, and I did not understand how, but it came to my mind.
Well, I put the camera down and the whole scene can be seen, Jazeera is in front of this
And one hand in the hand of one of these iron sculptures, now the camera moves, goes forward, goes forward and passes through the body of the jazz
If it is no longer a matter of breathing or not, the camera reaches the medium-shot and medium-close-up of these two hands.
The iron hand and the jazz hand that are in each other, when it reaches this, now the jazz hand slightly slips and falls down
When it comes down, the head of the camera turns down and the bottom of the pigeon’s body is dead
The dead white dove that symbolizes the artist, it still lingers in my mind and the joy I had with it
And this is where I sometimes prefer poetry or music as art
Unfortunately, this is not possible for the cinema, because you can transfer it purely when it comes.
It rarely happens. I often said that I made hundreds of films and3-4 of them are my films.
And in the rest, if I could get 60% closer to what I wanted, thank God
But in your poem you can, when there is a poem and now it comes and I write it but I do not collect it, I leave it there on the table
I come and go for a week and I look and say change this word, but that original texture has been formed.
What is the difference between a fantasy world and a reality world for you?
The older I got, the more I became connected to the fantasy world because I saw that no reality is reality.
The things we think are real are very mundane, but the fantasy world can take you far and wide.
Which is closed in reality and I did the same in my poems, I did not set any limits for my imagination in my poems.
Even in music, for example in film music, it is between shadow and light that I suddenly tell myself that you should not go crazy.
Now I tell you, what is the idea that came up, but I tell myself to do it
And when I do, I see that it’s very good, and for good reason, you know what we really think?
Reality is something we have experienced before and we know it is, it is not new
The imaginary world is a place where you create something that is first strange but then unique.
Then they might repeat it, so the more I really tell you, the closer I got to the fantasy world.
One of my regrets is that I said that when I was studying filmmaking, I also participated in screenwriting as a side class, which was excellent.
There, the story I wrote was called Return, and it was completely surreal and not at all realistic.
And only things and secrets of reality came as a symbol, but then here’s where the documentary bothers me.
While I say that I have always learned from the documentary, I have learned the structure, because you have2 strong supports in the feature film that make the film attractive.
One is the story itself if it is good and the other is the actors if they are good actors, you do not have these in the documentary
You have to learn the structure of the film so that you can attract the viewer without the story and the actor
Well, I learned this from the documentary, but the documentary actually solved me in a way that I could go from that fantasy world to the reality world.
Well, here I am a little bit away from myself, but now that my past is over
I see that the fantasy world helps a lot
Which filmmaker’s work has influenced you?
I can basically say it ‘s a morality that sometimes the trouble I have is that I will not support anyone forever as a filmmaker or an artist just because of his name.
Because of his work and which work I will be a fan of, so I can not say that another filmmaker is my eternal hero, no, it is not like that.
The person I may like very much may also have a very weak movie that I do not like.
But when I do a review, those are the ones that really made me go to the movies
I have said many times that there were people in the early 60’s who introduced me to cinema in a different way.
I used to love cinema, I always said that I liked the movies in which I was a child, the famous Orwell Flynn, who played fencing a lot.
Or something like that, without a closer look at cinema
Of course, I later found out that in the same films, he was apparently an actor, but big people like Michael Curtis were making films.
How strong they were in terms of mezzanine and montage, but I did not understand them at the time.
I told you that I read a lot in high school and then in Austria
Cinema in the early 60’s Europe After that, the spaces I liked in books approached cinematic language
And so those who were etched in my mind and stayed like Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, like ……… his neorealist era
Like Eastern European filmmakers like Martha Masarosh or Andrei Vaida or Miklos Jancho
These were works that attracted me to cinema at all
The fact is that in American cinema, both the adventures that take place and its characters
And even Hollywood cinema, if it wants to make a good movie, can do it and it can do it.
But in fact both the social space and the human connections of that many of us era if Eastern European cinema
It was very close to our lives, both in terms of human issues and social issues, and in terms of the modern technology it found in the1960s.
Wild Strawberries is one I will never forget, or Antonioni’s Red Desert.
These were the things that influenced my mind to become a filmmaker
What did cinema give you and what did you give to cinema?
Cinema has given me the opportunity to live an exciting life and always be entertained and never feel empty.
I never felt it was over now, I told you today that I am a stranger to what is happening outside.
But in another month I will start a movie, in this room, to make what I want.
So cinema has given me that I never lived empty, what did I give to cinema? I do not know
I tried to present cinema as much as I could and as much as the talent and knowledge that I gathered from here and there, as a respected profession.
I have no pride in filmmaking, but I have a pride, I have never made a film that I can not believe
How do you react to negative criticism?
First of all, we have the toughest critics in this house
I mean, when I was showing a movie to my kids, it was last year that my son came from America and said, “Baba Joon, I’m your son and you know I love you.”
But I’m not complimenting \ us, your movie is like this in my opinion, it means these things are in our house
But when I see the purpose and the disease in the criticism, I just get sad
For example, about the movie Bride of Fire, which was a good movie that I tried to connect with people.
But when a critic who has done nothing writes that the film is about telling people not to drop banana peels on the ground, others are slipping.
Oh, that’s the point, you just wanted to speak lightly
A while ago, a gentleman said something about my last film and said, “I surrender, you are right.”
You are right, but the reason I could not capture this scene as you say was because I could not turn my camera back on.
But I realized that he understood, anyone who criticizes constructively and I am very grateful to recognize that it is a critique based on awareness
Mr. Anwar, I always said that I was happy and I lived happily because I lived a full life
But if I’m heartbroken, there are some movies I could not make and some movies that were never shown in its time.
Part 19
What is the relationship between modernism and national identity?
I have always believed that if we reach a stage of reason and experience where we can achieve anything good anywhere in the world
And to make it according to our culture and to give the world the good thing we have
I now know European culture because of the way I studied
I read the history of European art three times, I have a lot of problems with Western society now, a lot
But this does not deny that I do not see its positive points, although I see its negative points a lot.
I look and see that, first of all, Western society was formed more and more because of the prosperity that came to it after World War II.
There are ways in which I personally have very doubts about where this will lead
So I am an Iranian who is now at a different stage in society, at least those who are able to see and think.
They need to be able to assess what works for us and what does not
You see, I am a person who did not go to Shiraz Art Festival once as an internal protest, of course I do not misunderstand
I would say that many of the works that are presented there are either not early or appropriate for our society
And this creates more resistance to modernity
When the so-called intellectuals were doing strange things before the revolution, I saw that it had nothing to do with the people at all.
This lack of progress and unsystematicity causes the bright stars to fall apart.
In our cinema, with all the efforts that have been made, I have said many times that, my dear, we should not plan for today or tomorrow.
Now plan for another15 years, do not quarrel in these15 years, do not have glamor and build the infrastructure so that we will stand firm15 years later.
Not that with the arrival of one or two talented people, our cinema will suddenly cause controversy and those who were not will sleep again and again.
Where is man going in the age of internet and virtual networks?
You touched a sensitive point that has become a kind of disease in me, let me tell you
Maybe once I told you this, I do not know, this was written by a German author, Dragon Skin
“To protect ourselves, we learned to lock ourselves in a dragon’s skin because the dragon’s skin protects us,” he says.
But we do not notice that in this dragon skin we are rotting alone
Personally, I say hands up, I lost and I accept, but I prefer to live with my faith in this loss as well.
Too naive and sorry to say it’s stupid if we want to forget the role of the internet and social media
What they give us and what they take from us, they give us a lot of information
We can sit for hours and be aware of everything, but to what extent does all that we know deepen within us, our human vision?
There I think we bring a little bit, I tell a lot of people who have a lot of titles that literacy is a kind of information
What makes a person a human being is the sediment that eventually matures with all that literacy and information within a person.
People are constantly texting each other in the telegram and other places, they do not know each other at all, they do not tell each other the truth and they play with each other
I say I accepted the loss, the era is not my era and I am glad it is not
Now you and I are sitting and talking for hours and we must have known each other a lot more during the2-3 days we talked.
Of course, this is where when one does not want to be reactionary, one must accept that one must move forward.
And science should contribute to this progress, I have no doubt about that, but I think it’s kind of human greed that exists and can not be done.
Man has many good qualities, I see that eternal thing of the devil and Ahuramazda, both in human beings.
And if we think like that, there are always demonic forces that we now see on the world how it works
But what should the artist do? I have always said that we may not be forced, but we should try to act on that Ahura front.
In this way, I love modernity to the extent that it respects human existence
How do you see the future of cinema in the digital age?
This question goes back to my own main question, what exactly is art?
If everyone gets a camera and does something and then gets100 awards and becomes a billionaire, then what do we say?
I do not disagree that if people are talented, if they have the ability, to be successful and rich, that’s very good
But when things get crowded, it’s usually the less talented who push everyone like this and open their own way.
And according to some, they become so large that the person who is perhaps more talented is crushed and destroyed.
First of all, this question for me, my request is that you do not see these in the sense of being reactionary.
When I was about to film at the Shah Mosque, our arches each had such an opening, and10 people had to help get it up.
So I did not want to be a slut, I had to feel responsible, now I might be a little talented and the result would not be good.
But when it comes down to it, of course there are talents, but there are also many who
They do not have that talent, but they have the stubbornness and garbage, there the story gets mixed up.
I do not know what to say, these are good and bad that move together and this goes back to that glorious cinema
He says, “Sir, let’s work with that camera because its resolution is so much higher than that one.”
I say, Dad, those cinematic masterpieces that were made were made with a small Bolex camera
It’s important in the brain, we do not look for these things, it’s good that it is, but without it, a masterpiece can be made
What surprises you in the world today?
I say nothing, there is a reason, I say something and some people say what is this word, do not say this word
I say I am very grateful to ISIS, they say what does it mean? I say ISIL showed me something
How savage human existence can be if we take away that system of control
Man is human because Ashraf was created because he has learned throughout history how to control his instincts.
That is, it has a key or fuse, that fuse can be more animal and ruthless than any animal if it jumps.
This is one side of the story, you know how far human beings can go on the other side
So nothing surprising to me, now in our own country as an example you believe that
During Trump and Clinton, well, all the statistics and everything said that Mrs. Clinton will become president.
And I jokingly and seriously said that I think Trump will be elected, not that I like him, I hate him very much.
They said how? I was saying that the world is somehow moving towards a form of chaos and confusion and disruption of standards.
And here, that’s where Trump is the best symbol of breaking all the standards at this point, and I hope this does not lead to disaster.
When all the criteria are broken in this way, then he approaches a depth of human catastrophe that he then appreciates comfort again and begins to build.
This is the fear I have, so when you said it was amazing, I accepted that human beings are so vast.
Both positively and negatively, it can approach the highest human standards
And it can reach the depths of the dirtiest traits
What is your biggest wish?
My wish is both impossible and not, and this wish is to always remember that we are part of nature
And if we destroy nature, we are axing our own roots
And if the world can move in that direction, because it has nothing to do with my life anymore and I may not be at all.
After all, after all that may seem pessimistic, I think the world has moved and gone up and down in a sinusoidal curve.
But in this ups and downs it has always gone more upwards
It is true that we say Hiroshima or Nagasaki or all the wars but we do not remember
When the Mongols invaded Iran, in Shadiakh, a million people went underground and they flooded and plowed the land, which was also in history.
Let us remember that Agham Mohammad Khan Qajar used to build towers out of human heads, so these are human nature.
But here is a point, what gives me peace of mind, I have always said about democracy that democracy has many flaws
But it has a great property, if it is done correctly, it controls power, meaning that not everyone can do everything.
This is the story of Mr. Trump who says that 7 countries are not allowed to enter the United States, but a judge says that no, sir, you are not right.
I believe that if we do not destroy the world, that is, we will not destroy the world during different wars and with different bombs.
Because when one knows the galaxies, one sees that it is not unlikely, there were many galaxies that were destroyed.
If we do not destroy the earth, in the end, human science and civilization will save the earth. It is true that this arc is up and down, but in the end, it is going up.
What are your hopes and disappointments?
I hope the world becomes a better world, I just asked a person this and it’s good that you know the answer
I said, who do you think will go to heaven? He was a religious man and said that in my opinion, that person will go to heaven
That when he is going to die he has tried to build a better world during his life, since he was born
I hope that Ahuramazda will finally overcome the devil according to our ancient belief
This is my hope, but some of the things I see I say to myself that maybe they said it too because we
Let’s give ourselves some hope, but I do not know if it is in human nature or not
If you had to make a recommendation to your students, what would it be?
I just recommend, try to be yourself, this is very important, try to discover yourself and be yourself
You see, what I discovered about myself was that I told myself that you learned a lot about cinema, but your character was not suitable for cinema.
This is my discovery, but it’s too late
One day I said that life is empty, meaningless, you are right comrade, life alone is empty for a moment, fill this empty moment, life is great
This is really my motto, this is my philosophy, I say if you are alive, do not waste oxygen
The breath you take is the oxygen in the air, if there is still oxygen in the air, then do not waste it.
If I can not make a film, I will recite my poem well, now that my back is like this, I have made2 books of poetry.
I have nothing to do, I have no claims, my first book of poetry was published in 1342
And now I have written the music and I have performed some pieces of it myself and some people have collaborated with me and I hope that the DVD will be released soon.
I do not claim to be a poet or a composer, neither do I say that I only live with these.
I was invited to the conservatory and I told the children, if you are looking for art for the sake of wealth, do not go.
Out of every10,000 people,3 may become rich and it is not known if you are one of those3
If you are looking for art for the sake of fame, still do not go because people like to have one of their heroes today and make him famous.
They take a picture of it on the front door and print it in the newspapers, and3 days later they get tired and bring another one.
Then you, who got used to the fact that his picture is high every day, suddenly you see that you are no more and you suffer there again.
If you are looking for art to live more beautifully, be sure to go because until the last moment of your life you feel that you are not retired and you are still working.
Fortunately, I have now made my decision with these tools and cameras that exist and I do not like them.
And I realized that they crush me in the outside cinema, not crush me, they think they crush
In that cinema, which is the so-called commercial screen cinema, etc., I burn any film that is a masterpiece of the world.
And this has happened to all my films, but they could not stop me from making films. I make my films, these films also have their own audience.
How would you describe yourself?
In two ways, let me tell you this, interesting, I’m used to looking at myself from here and myself from within
Tell me the memory that I was in Tokyo and one day I want to go to the Tokyo subway
You know the Japanese have black hair, when I looked up the stairs were all full and I saw that some blach dots are there
As I was looking up, I suddenly thought to myself, what would happen if one of these points was not there?
But that point has parents and wife and children, you see, when you look down as you say, well, one less point, nothing happens that
Now so many people are being killed, I want to look at the issue sickly, everyone is saying what did you see?
I say well, when I was a schoolboy, the world population was3 billion and500 million
Now this population is over 7 billion, at that time we were living and nothing special happened
But now3 billion and500 million, maybe4 billion more people
Well, think that there will be a war and out of these4 billion,2 billion will be killed, what will happen?
Nothing, the world becomes more secluded, people fit in again, consumption becomes less, this is when you look at it from above
But it’s awful when you think like that, but what happens when you come to yourself
In myself and to the best of my ability, I tried to live in a way that I could sleep well at night
You see, if I could live this, I would be happy