Hooshmand Varaei: "Whistling Under Water"

Whistling Under Water

The 2010 edition of the Videoex Experimental Film and Video Festival awarded Iran's Whistling under Water directed by Houshmand Varaei. The 15-minute film was granted the Special Mention of the Swiss festival, which was held from May 22 to 30, 2010 in Zurich. Whistling under Water also won the First Prize for Best Film and Second Prize for Best Director of the first Nowruz of Hamghadam Short Film Festival in Paris. A production of Iran Film School, Varaei's 2009 production was granted the Open St. Petersburg Film Festival Beginning's diploma 'in memory of Sergey Dobrotvorsky' for the fruitful search of sources of the impossible.Varaei has also directed the 30-minute film Kites Know No Chastity, which has been screened at Denmark's International Odense Film Festival and the Australia Experimental Film Festival.

Asghar Farhadi: "A Separation" (2011)

A Separation (Persian: جدایی نادر از سیمین, translit. Jodái-e Náder az Simin) is a 2011 Iranian drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, starring Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat and Sarina Farhadi. It focuses on an Iranian middle-class couple who separate, and the intrigues which follow when the husband hires a lower-class caretaker for his elderly father. The film received the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bears for Best Actress and Best Actor at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first Iranian film to win the Golden Bear.The film is the official Iranian candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. (From Wikipedia)

Asghar Farhadi

  

Asghar Farhadi is a graduate of Theatre, with a BA in Dramatic Arts and MA in Stage Direction from Tehran University and Tarbiat Modarres University. Farhadi made short 8mm and 16mm films in Isfahan branch of Iranian Young Cinema Society before moving on to writing plays and screenplays for IRIB. He also directed such TV series as the popular A Tale of a City and co-wrote the screenplay of Ebrahim Hatamikia’s Low Heights. Dancing in the Dust was his feature film debut, which he followed with the critically acclaimed A Beautiful City.

His third film, Fireworks Wednesday won the Gold Hugo at the 2006 Chicago International Film Festival. His fourth film, About Elly won the Silver Bear for Best Director at 59th International Berlin Film Festival as well as Best Picture at Tribeca Film Festival. It is about a group of Iranians who take a trip to the Caspian Sea that turns tragic. Famous film theorist and film critic David Bordwell has called About Elly a masterpiece.

His latest film Nader and Simin, A Separation premiered on 9 February 2011 at the 29th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran and received rave reviews from Iran Society of Film Critics. It won Farhadi four awards including Best Director (for the third time after Fireworks Wednesday and About Elly). On 15 February it also played in competition at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival which finally earned him Golden Bear for best film becoming the first Iranian film to win the Golden Bear. In June 2011, A Separation won the Sydney Film Prize in competition with Cannes Festival's winner The Tree of Life directed by Terrence Malick . (From Wikipedia)

"A Separation" could hardly be more concrete, or contemporary, or dramatic.

Joe Morgenstern

Wall Street Journa

Farhadi demonstrates a Hitchcockian flair for suspense, while his cast deliver faultless performances.

Lewis Porteous

Skinny

 

One of the year's best foreign films, A Separation goes beyond its particular Iranian tale of a marital dissolution, contesting along the way gender, cultural, and religious values and taboos.  

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

A light yet powerful Islamic family drama that refuses to cave in to stereotypes.

Ron Wilkinson

Monsters and Critics

A solid Iranian Oscar-entry that puts women in the forefront in a battle of wills that happily posits more questions than answers.

Harvey S. Karten

Compuserve

It resonates deeply thanks to its universality, which it miraculously achieves without ever once selling out the social mores of its location. Profoundly affecting, wonderfully performed and endlessly surprising.

Simon Miraudo

Quickflix 

A masterpiece of intimate, dramatic filmmaking.

Tom Clift

Cut Print Review

The iniquities of contemporary Iran are essayed in this absorbing, award-winning marital drama about the ways in which tiny events can have cataclysmic consequences.

Alistair Harkness

Scotsman

A stunning piece of work, beautifully telling a raw human story with expert writing, direction, photography, editing and acting. 

Rich Cline

Shadows on the Wall

 

A Separation twists and turns, layering on crucial details and moral quandaries in each scene, never for a moment allowing us the luxury of identifying too easily with any single character.

Sukhdev Sandhu

Daily Telegraph

 

You won't see a more absorbing film all year.

David Edwards

Daily Mirror [UK]  (From Rotten Tomatoes)

 

 

 

"First Case, Second Case (1979)" by Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami

Open case: Kiarostami's film reemerges after 30 years
by MEHRZAD BAKHTIAR (Tehran Bureau)

In the magnificent haste and enthusiasm of Iranians to share insight about the questionable presidential election in June, a number of significant cultural artifacts, either forgotten or previously unheard of, have been brought to light. One such gem is Abbas Kiarostami's Ghazieh Shekle Aval Shekle Dovom or First Case, Second Case.

Kiarostami is a canonized filmmaker both inside and outside of Iran, yet this highly important work managed to remain under the radar of even most cinema enthusiasts until just a few months ago when it appeared online. Free and widely available, it affords us the opportunity to examine Kiarostami's astute social observations through the lens of recent history.

The 47-minute documentary begins by depicting a scenario: a teacher drawing a diagram on the chalkboard with his back to the class is interrupted several times by the sound of a pen banging rhythmically against a desk. Each time he turns around, the noise stops, only to resume again. Finally, unable to pick out the culprit, the teacher tells the seven boys sitting in the corner of the room to leave the class. The students are given an ultimatum, which becomes the basis of the film: either (case one) they inform the teacher who was causing the disturbance, or (case two), they will all be suspended for a week. Kiarostami then goes on to interview the fathers of the students, as well as ministers, religious leaders, writers, filmmakers and directors of educational institutions about their opinions as to the proper course of action.

The initial appeal of the film lies in the presentation of this very dilemma. Rather than take a moral stance on the issue, Kiarostami depicts each case with a sense of removed neutrality. We are encouraged to weigh two deadlocked positions against each other; each has its advantages and disadvantages, and there is no nuanced third way out. Those viewers who are unable to reduce their vales into a cut-and-dry answer will likely agree with writer and filmmaker, Noureddin Zarrinkelk, that "a clear answer is really very difficult to come up with."

After this first response, the film cuts to a head-on shot of a working projector, invoking in the viewer the feeling that the film of the students in the class is being projected onto their person, that he or she is in fact one of the children faced with this moral decision.

As the film continues, however, we see that few of the interviewees are as torn or impartial as Zarrinkelk. Having been shot in 1979-80 and released in 1980, only a year after the Islamic revolution, most answers are impassioned and highly politicized. The question is not merely one of a student disrupting a class and a teacher doling out whatever punishment he deems fit. Whether or not the analogy is explicitly made, most of the people interviewed see the scenario as a greater issue of solidarity versus selling out, of standing one's ground against an abuse of power, versus giving into, and hence supporting that power.

In addition to still-popular celebrities like Iranian actor Ezzatolah Entezami and filmmaker Masoud Kimiai, First Case, Second Case includes a cast of important political figures: Ebrahim Yazdi, for example, was an active member of the National Resistance Movement as well as the Freedom Movement of Iran. He became Foreign Minister after the revolution, only to step down in less than a year in opposition to the hostage crisis. Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, then director of the Islamic Republic's Radio and Television Network, would replace Yazdi, only to be executed in less than a year for allegedly plotting to assassinate Khomeini. Other figures include Kamal Kharazi, who would become Minister of Foreign Affairs during the Khatami administration, and Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, the notorious Revolutionary Court magistrate who sentenced a great number of former government officials to execution.

The obvious, retrospective irony, of course -- the element that makes this film even more compelling now than when it was made -- is the sight of so many important figures supporting a revolution that would come to embody a totalitarian government, itself completely intolerant of the very same rebellion and resistance they promote in their films.

Whether or not Kiarostami could foresee what this film would come to mean is ultimately irrelevant. Either way, he was able to put his finger on an issue that beautifully captured the fervent dynamics of a historical moment. What resulted was a film from which, thirty years later, every Iranian can still learn. (From Tehran Bureau)

"My Tehran for Sale" by Granaz Moussavi

Granaz Moussavi

Granaz Moussavi (Persian : گراناز موسوی ), (born January 26, 1974 in Tehran) is an Iranian-Australian contemporary poet, film director and screen writer. She is primarily renowned for her avant-garde poetry in the 90's. Her award winning debut feature film My Tehran for Sale is an internationally acclaimed Australian-Iranian co-production. (From Wikipedia)

My Tehran for Sale (Persian :تهران من، حراج), is an internationally acclaimed 2009 Australian-Iranian feature film written and directed by avant-garde poet turned filmmaker Granaz Moussavi, produced by Cyanfilms and starring Marzieh Vafamehr, Amir Chegini and Asha Mehrabi.

Officially selected by Toronto, Rotterdam, Pusan and several other international film festivals, this debut art-house, explores the contemporary Tehran and its underground art scene focusing on the life of a young actress who has been banned from her theater work. Struggling to pursue her passion in art as well as her secret life-style in a socially oppressed environment, Marzieh gets involved in some subsequent and unexpected events leading her to a decision-making dilemma regarding her survival and identity.

Unlike already acclaimed Iranian exotic cinema which is mostly known in the West by its portrayal of rural life, nature landscapes, as well as socio-economically deprived children struggling for survival in the outskirts of Tehran, the writer/director of My Tehran for Sale attempts to depict the middle class people and the uncertainties in their every day urban life. My Tehran for Sale has a poetic language to address critical issues such as double life of young people, women oppression, HIV issue, secret abortions, underground art, massive immigration, crisis of identity, people smuggling and also asylum seeker detention centers.

My Tehran For Sale is the winner of Independent spirit Inside Film Awards 2009. It won the jury award for best feature Film at the TriMedia Film Festival in 2010. Apart from various festivals and universities the film was screened at Museum of Modern Art MoMA in New York as well as Cinémathèque Française in Paris.

The film has been an official selection to Toronto International Film Festival TIFF (Sep 2009), Vancouver International Film Festival (Sep-Oct 2009), Busan International Film Festival BIFF(formerly PIFF) (Oct 2009), International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg (Nov 2009), Museum of Modern Art MoMA (New York, Jan 2010), International Film Festival Rotterdam (Jan 2010), International Film Festival Prague - Febiofest, 2010 Cinema Novo Film Festival Brugges 2010, CPH:PIX Copenhagen International Film Festival 2010, Guadalajara International Film Festival Mexico, Sydney Travelling Film Festival, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival, Human Rights Arts and Film Festival HRAFF 2010, Focus on Asia Fukuoka International Film Festival 2010 , Global Lens USA 2010, Dialogue of Cultures Film Festival New York 2011 and SVAW Film Fesival Melbourne 2011, etc. (From Wikipedia)

"Talking With A Shadow" by Khosrow Sinai (2005)

Talking With A Shadow is a movie about the renowned Iranian writer Sadegh Hedayat.



Sadegh Hedayat



Sadegh (also spelled as Sadeq) Hedayat (in Persian: صادق هدایت; February 17, 1903, Tehran — 4 April 1951, Paris, France) was Iran's foremost modern writer of prose fiction and short stories.

Hedayat was born into a Iranian aristocratic family in Tehran and was educated at Collège Saint-Louis (French catholic school) and Dar ol-Fonoon (1914–1916). In 1925, he was among a selected few students who travelled to Europe to continue their studies. There, he initially went on to study engineering in Belgium, after a year he gave this up to study architecture in France. While there, he gave up architecture to pursue dentistry. In this period he became acquainted with Therese, a Parisian with whom he had a love affair. In 1927 Hedayat attempted suicide by throwing himself into the river Marne, however he was rescued by a fishing boat. After four years in France and Belgium, he finally surrendered his scholarship and returned home in the summer of 1930 without receiving a degree. In Iran he held various jobs for short periods.

Hedayat subsequently devoted his whole life to studying Western literature and to learning and investigating Iranian history and folklore. The works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant intrigued him the most. During his short literary life span, Hedayat published a substantial number of short stories and novelettes, two historical dramas, a play, a travelogue, and a collection of satirical parodies and sketches. His writings also include numerous literary criticisms, studies in Persian folklore, and many translations from Middle Persian and French. He is credited with having brought Persian language and literature into the mainstream of international contemporary writing. There is no doubt that Hedayat was the most modern of all modern writers in Iran. Yet, for Hedayat, modernity was not just a question of scientific rationality or a pure imitation of European values.

In his later years, feeling the socio-political problems of the time, Hedayat started attacking the two major causes of Iran's decimation, the monarchy and the clergy, and through his stories he tried to impute the deafness and blindness of the nation to the abuses of these two major powers. Feeling alienated by everyone around him, especially by his peers, Hedayat's last published work, The Message of Kafka, bespeaks melancholy, desperation and a sense of doom experienced only by those subjected to discrimination and repression.

Hedayat travelled and stayed in India from 1937 until 1939. In Bombay he completed and published his most enduring work, The Blind Owl, whose writing he started as early as 1930 in Paris. The book was praised by many including Henry Miller and André Breton. It has been called "one of the most important literary works in the Persian language".

At the end of 1950, Hedayat left Iran for Paris. There, on 4 April 1951, he committed suicide by gassing himself in a small rented apartment on 37 Rue Championnet. He had plugged all the gaps in the windows and door with cotton and, so it wouldn’t burden anyone, he had placed the money (a hundred thousand francs) for his shroud and burial in his side wallet in plain view. He was buried at the division 85 of Père Lachaise cemetery. His funeral was attended by a number of intimate friends and close acquaintances, both Iranian and Frenchmen.(From Wikipedia)

Khosrow Sinai

Khosrow Sinai (Persian: خسرو سینایی , born 19 January 1941 in Sari, Iran) is an Iranian film director. His works are usually based on social documentations. He was the first Iranian film director to win an international prize after the Islamic revolution in Iran.He is also known as an Iranian scholar and has been awarded the prestigious 'Knights Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic'. (From Wikipedia)

"Tehran is the Capital of Iran" by Kamran Shirdel 1966 - 1980

Kamran Shirdel

Kamran Shirdel (born 1939 in Tehran) is a renowned Iranian documentarist. He studied architecture and urbanism at the University of Rome and film direction at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia of Rome, graduating in 1964. He worked as an assistant director with John Huston on The Bible before making his diploma film, Gli Specchi (The Mirrors), in Rome. He returned to Iran and started his career in 1965. He is also the managing director of Filmgrafic Co. Kamran Shirdel was appointed as IL CAVALIERE Della Republica Italiana and received the Medals of LA STELLA DELLA SOLIDARIETA' ITALIANA in a ceremony held in Farmanieh Palace in Tehran on May 2010. (From Wikipedia)

Tehran Is the Capital of Iran (1966-79) documents life in a deprived district in the south of Tehran. The images of destitution in Tehran's poor areas is accompanied by a variety of spoken accounts: the official viewpoint on the district's living conditions, what the inhabitants have to say, and occasional extracts read out of school manuals. The key element in Shirdel's film is the counterpoint effect he creates with image and sound. His impressively powerful portrayal of social unease helps reinforce the impact of his astonishing documentary images and social themes.

The Brick & the Mirror by Ebrahim Golestan (1965)



Ebrahim Golestan



A pioneer in filmmaking and literature, Ebrahim Golestan has influenced generations of Iranians in various fields of art for more than half a century. Golestan published his first collection of short stories entitled, "Azar, the Last Month of autumn" in 1948.

Golestan began journalism as a writer, then editor, early in the 40’s, and photography as a freelancer with news organizations in 1951. Later he produced several landmark documentaries and feature films such as "A Fire" (1961), "Wave, Coral, Rock" (1959/1962), and "Marlik Hills" (1963). His first narrative film “The Mudbrick and the Mirror” (1963/4) is considered by many historians as the first of the social realism wave in Iranian cinema. At the same time, he continued to write and publish his work in fiction. “Hunting the Shadow” (1955), “The Brook, the Wall, and the Thirsty One” (1967), “Tide & Fog” (1969) and “Secrets of the Treasures at the Ghost Valley (Asarare Ganje Darehye Jenni)” (1971/3), “The Cock” (1974) are examples of his published works of fiction; and “The Words Spoken” (1995), a selection of his lectures, literary criticism and interviews, and some narrations for films.

Golestan has made valuable contributions as a translator of great works of literature such as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and several of Hemingway's stories.

Golestan’s feature film, “Secrets of the Treasures at the Ghost Valley”, was banned before and after the 1979 revolution. The film presents an insightful, thought provoking account of dynamics of various social strata of Iranian society at a historical juncture, best described by the director as “the twisted image of a twisted situation”. Tirgan 2011 is proud to present this influential and rarely seen masterpiece of Iranian cinema. (From Tirgan)





The Brick & the Mirror

  

"Bashu, the Little Stranger" by Bahram Bayzai



Bashu, the Little Stranger



Bashu, the Little Stranger (Persian: باشو غریبه کوچک), is a 1986 Iranian drama film directed by Bahram Beizai. The film was produced in 1986, and was released in 1989. This multi-ethnic film was the first Iranian film to make use of the northern dialect of Persian, Gilaki, in a serious context rather than comic relief. (Susan Taslimi playing the main character is Gilaki herself).

The film is about a young boy from Khuzestan province, in the south of Iran, during the Iran–Iraq War. His parents are killed in a bombing raid on his home village and he escapes on a cargo truck to the north. Eventually he gets off and finds refuge on the farm of a Gilaki woman, Na'i, who has two young children of her own. Initially, Na'i tries to shoo Bashu away, but later takes pity on him and leaves food out for him. Although Na'i is initially ambivalent toward Bashu, and he is initially suspicious of her, they come to trust one another, and Bashu becomes a member of the family, even calling Na'i "mom". Being that Bashu speaks Arabic, while Na'i and her children speak Gilaki, they have trouble communicating with each other, although Bashu is able to speak and read Persian (for example in the scene where he picks up the school text book, reading a passage from it in an attempt to appease the children fighting). In a gesture of reciprocation and perhaps love, Bashu cares for Na'i when she falls ill, as she had done for him, crying for her and beating a drum in prayer.

Throughout the film, Na'i maintains correspondence with her husband, a war veteran looking for employment, who has been gone for quite some time. She tells him about Bashu, and implores him to return home in time to help with the harvest. Bashu becomes Na'i's helper on the farm, and even accompanies her to the bazaar to sell her goods. Throughout the film, Bashu sees visions of his dead family members, which cause him to wander off. Ultimately, however, he and Na'i are always reunited.

The other adults in the village harangue Na'i about taking Bashu in, often deriding his dark skin and different language, and making comments about washing the dark off of his skin. In addition to the village adults, the school age children taunt and beat Bashu, although the children prove ultimately to be more willing to accept Bashu than the adults. In one scene in which he is being taunted, Bashu picks up a school book and reads aloud a passage stating, "We are all the children of Iran." Before this point, the children had assumed Bashu to be either mute or stupid.

In the end, Na'i's husband returns home with no money and missing an arm, having been forced to take on dangerous work that is never identified. He and Na'i argue over her having kept Bashu against his wishes. Bashu comes to her defense, challenging the strange man to identify himself. Na'i's husband tells Bashu that he is his father, and upon this realization, they embrace as though they were always a part of the same family. The film ends with the entire family, including children, running into the farm field, making loud noises together to scare away a troublesome boar. (From Wikipedia)

Bahram Bayzai

Bahrām Beyzāi (also spelt Bahrām Beizai, Bahrām Beyzaie, Persian: بهرام بیضائی, born 26 December 1938 in Tehran) is an Iranian film director, theatre director, screenwriter, playwright, film editor, producer, and researcher.

Beyzai is part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and includes other pioneering directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Shahid Sales, and Parviz Kimiavi. The filmmakers share many common techniques including the use of poetic dialog, references to traditional Persian art and culture and allegorical story-telling often dealing with political and philosophical issues. (From Wikipedia)

 

The Queen and I by Nahid Persson Sarvestani, 2008 (Swedish)

Nahid Persson Sarvestani (born 1960 in Shiraz, Iran) is an award-winning Iranian-Swedish filmmaker and director.

Her most famous documentary films are Prostitution Behind the Veil, My Mother - A Persian Princess, The End of Exile, and The Last Days of Life.

In November 2008, Persson Sarvestani finished the production of The Queen and I, a 90-minute documentary in which the director's year-long, complex relationship with the Iranian former Empress Farah Pahlavi is examined. The film had its North American premiere at Sundance Film Festival in 2009.

Persson Sarvestani has received several awards for her films. The Last Days of Life received the Swedish Cancer Foundation's (Cancerfondens) Journalist Prize in 2002. The film Prostitution Behind The Veil received an International Emmy nomination, as well as the Golden Dragon at the Krakow Film Festival, Best International News Documentary at the TV-festival 2005 in Monte Carlo, as well as The Crystal Award (Kristallen) by SVT (Swedish State Television) and the Golden Scarab (Guldbaggen) by the Swedish Film Institute in 2005.

Persson Sarvestani also shares TCO's (Tjänstemännens Centralorganisation) 2005 Cultural Prize with the author Marjaneh Bakhtiari. (From Wikipedia)

Swedish-Iranian film director Nahid Persson Sarvestani

Farah Pahlavi (Farah Diba; Persian: فرح دیبا Faraḥ Dība) born 14 October 1938, Tehran, Farah is the former Queen and Empress of Iran. She is the widow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, and only Empress (Shahbanu) of modern Iran. She was Queen consort of Iran from 1959 until 1967 and Empress consort from 1967 until exile in 1979. ((From Wikipedia)



Empress Farah Pahlavi

                   

AVICENNA -- АВИЦЕННА (1956) by Uzbek Director Kamil Yarmatov

Uzbek Director Kamil Yarmatov

Nasseroddin Shah Actor-e Cinema or Once Upon a Time, Cinema (1932) by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Set in the Qajar era, the film follows the character known as the cinematographer (Mehdi Hashemi) as he shows films to the Shah (Ezzatolah Entezami). The film shows clips from older Iranian films from the silent age onwards. The Shah falls in love with an old film character, Golnaar (Fatemeh Motamed-Aria). After she leaves the movie, she appears in and enters the "real" world. (From Wikipedia)



 


Mohsen Makhmalbaf