Here Without Me

The following piece is my short review of "Here without Me" and the interview I had with its director, Bahram Tavakkoli" which was aired this morning on CKUT radio.
Following the interview, we talk about an event held at Cinema du Parc, in support of Jafar Panahi.

 

The film's story is about a family whose 3 members are suffering from the current situation, in their own way. Yalda is lame and walks with a crutch. She cannot withstand people's look in public and sometimes faints. Thus she imprisons herself in house and obsessively washes and dries her crystal figurines who are the friends of her lonely hours. Ehsan, her brother, works in a warehouse which gradually eats his soul. The only thing that slows this down is relieving himself by writing and going to cinema. Ehsan is mesmerized by the magic of cinema. The mother is worker in a factory. Worried about her daughter's future, she works overtime to send her to a class to learn embroidery; she sells cosmetics to finance a new set of furniture for the day a suitor comes to seek her daughter's hand. Struggling to survive and dreaming are the main subjects of the movie.
"Here without me" was shown in Montreal's 35th world film festival. "Fatemeh Motamed Arya", was awarded the best actress for her role in this movie. Following comes an interview I had with "Bahram Tavakoli", the film's director.


Acey:When is this story happening and where does it take place?

Bahram Tavakoli: Without any precision on the time and place, the story happens in the contemporary time in Iran. In fact it's an adaptation of "the glass menagerie", a play by Tennessee Williams.

Acey: The reason I'm asking you this question is because the atmosphere in Tehran is different from other cities, particularly small cities. Do you think this story can happen anywhere in Iran?

Bahram Tavakoli:Obviously Tehran has different social classes and these social classes don't have the same cultural level, not only in Tehran but also in other big cities. In Tehran you can surely find families from a different social class than this family; however economically, this family belongs to a poor working class whereas it had previously lived a better life. My focus was on this class of Tehran society but as I said it can be from any other cities considering their different cultural backgrounds.

Acey: When Reza, Ehsan's brother, shows his fiancée's photo to Yalda, he tells her that they're getting married in a month. What we see in the movie, is that Yalda gets upset and Reza suddenly leaves their home. This leads the film into a new phase: Yalda stops eating while awaiting a telephone call from Reza like a lunatic. I, like Yalda's mother and brother thought that Yalda has gone out of her mind. Is this what you intended to make in the viewer's mind?

Bahram Tavakoli: From a certain point in the movie, where Yalda claims that Reza had called her, the film falls  into a suspension, meaning you can't make a definite decision on the process; something which also existed in the play by Tennessee Williams and we tried to dramatize it visually so that you wouldn't be able to distinguish between a dream and reality. This was one of the things we tried to do because in my opinion, one of the distinguished ideas of "glass menagerie" was to take you away into a magic realism. You are not able to discriminate  between reality, dream or others' nightmare and you mentioned it precisely, it all starts exactly from that telephone call. Until that point, everything is realistic. After that you experience a feeling when you see nightmare. Even watching good happenings, doesn't make you convinced that they are really happening.

Acey: I think the cultural atmosphere in Tennessee Williams' play is very different from your film. How did you handle this difference?

Bahram Tavakoli: This is a typical feature in any adaptation. Obviously you lose some details which you need to fill with other elements. Some facets can be culturally translated such as the type of intellectualism in Amanda which of course isn't logical  when it comes to a family from working class in Iran and so should be translated  differently. Another example is the relationship between a man and a woman. There are other instances too. This film doesn't claim and doesn't want to portray all the features in "glass menagerie". This is an Iranian look towards this play. We tried to portray people in today's Iran, in the role of the main characters, regardless of how well they conform to the characters of the original play; of course at some points, they don't.

Acey: So what happens between Yalda and Reza, is not a coincidence; you actually intended to point out a societal reality which is rooted in our culture, is that right?

Bahram Tavakoli: Drama is nothing more than actions and reactions between the characters. Naturally, these actions and reactions conform to their culture and so in this movie, they conform to today's Iranian culture. (bestare farhangi)

Acey : In all unlikelihood, Reza breaks up with his fiancée and asks  Yalda's mother and brother for her hand. If he wanted to do so, why did he show Yalda his fiancée's photo at first place?

Bahram Tavakoli: It's obvious that from a point, the film is not realistic. After the suicide scene, all we see is the son's dream and the last scene of the movie clearly shows this. If you want to see those scenes as realistic, for sure you will have this question. I hope with the cinematic marks and the last scene of the movie, viewers wouldn't have realistic interpretations .

Acey: So far, which movie or movies in Montreal's world film festival has caught your attention?

Bahram Tavakoli: I liked Artist, a French film which was silent. There was also an Argentinian comedy which I liked very much.

Acey: Thanks for your time

Bahram Tavakoli: thanks to you.

Montreal Fashion Festival 2011

I don't know how probable it is in Paris to see Jean-Paul Gaultier fashion show for free but in Montreal, it is probable. One of the good things about Montreal is that in summer specially, the city is full of festivals most of which are free. Among these, is the fashion festival which lasts for 4 days in McGill College St.
Designers are mostly from Montreal area but not limited to this city. Models walking on runway, while opera singers in atypical outfits were belting out, made one of the shows quite special.

Unfortunately I was late on the first night where Jean-Paul Gaultier had a show. I did manage to watch but the front rows were so packed that I couldn't take a single photo.

Here are some of the photos I took from the festival

 

And here you can find the anomalous designs by Gaultier with which he has broken some boundaries. The photos are taken by "Allen McInnis". I selected a few of them here.

Paris and the fashion festival in 2010

In my last days in Paris, I had a chance to get a pass and try my chance on fashion photography for the first time. I went to 2 shows, L'Oreal and Christophe Guillarme. As my first experience, I was surprised to see the tough environment and the atmosphere filled with unpleasant rivalry among photographers. One of them realized that I was a novice and started to distract me by pretending to give me hints about the setting of my camera while his friend was getting ready to shoot. I missed the first model and it was then that I realized what the story was.
Here are the ones I took from L'Oreal backstage. 

And these are from the runway.

"Christophe Guillarme" show was at night, in the narrow old streets near Rue de la Roquette. Another interesting thing happened. The people at the entrance, realized that I was an amateur so they told me to go upstairs where no photographer would go. I didn't say anything and came to sit beside an old guy who was a professional photographer and wasn't afraid to give me room in the front row. He even gave me tips on how to tackle with fashion photography.
Here are some of my photos. There was no runway, I used my zoom lens which unfortunately doesn't have a fix depth of field.

I will have some photos from Montreal's fashion festival in my next post.

Forever Enthralled

This is my review which was aired on CKUT this morning. 

 

For those of us who are not familiar with Peking Opera, listening to the shrill falsettos of male singers impersonating women in the spectacle of acting, poetry accompanied by dance and martial art might seem strange. Western opera during Baroque era was highlighted by castrati such as Farinelli who sang with a soprano voice, bright and clear, whereas in Peking Opera the theatrical performance of the male singer seems more important than his voice.

“Forever enthralled” is the story of “Mei Lan”, one of the most important figures of Peking Opera who made it known to the rest of the world.

Though discouraged by his uncle to continue the family tradition of singing opera, young Mei chooses his path with confidence. Though he highly reveres his master, he doesn't follow him obsequiously. Instead he challenges him. This challenge is not welcome by the master who believes the focus should be on him, but in the end, it's Mei's subtlety that makes him win over his master.

 «Characters should be flesh and blood; actors mustn't stick to the old ways both on stage and in life. Chinese women were taught to follow the rules whereas great theatre shows how to break rules. »  These were the words he learned from Qui Rubai, the man who quit his job as a lecturer after he saw Mei Lanfang's performance, to become his mentor. « Only one, whose mind is clean and pure, could express passion in such an exquisite manner » he told Mei after the performance.

The strange thing for me in this movie was the fact that women played a role of men in Opera as well. This mutual impersonation, led to a mystifying attraction of a man and a woman, Mei and Meng to each other.

It is after the invasion of Japan, that we understand the importance of Peking Opera in China. Mei refuses to sing during the war which caused him an impoverished lifestyle in that period. « No matter who wins this war, Mei Lanfang must live on. », a Japanese soldier told his commander who wished to force Mei to sing for them but didn't succeed. He was right. War ended and Mei Lanfang lived on.

Blank city

This is a review I wrote for Blank City, a film recently directed by Celine Danhier and the interview I had with her. They were aired this morning on CKUT radio, in the film segment of "Wednesday morning after" program.
This week, there was also another interview with Eric Tessier, a 3D filmmaker. He talks in length about Pina Bausch, Wim Wender's recent art film in 3D. 
You can listen to the whole film segment here. It starts at minute 22.

Below you can listen to my review and interview on Blank City.

Blank city by Acey

Quite a few films including documentaries have been made about the influential underground music scene in the 70s whereas a place for a movie chronicling “no wave cinema” and “cinema of transgression” was empty. Recently however, Celine Danhier, plucked up the courage to start her filmmaking carrier by documenting one of the most significant yet short eras of film history which took place in New York city.

No one can deny the role of directors such as “Jim Jarmusch”, “Amos Poe”, “Eric Mitchell”, “James Nares” and the likes in cinema. These pioneers of No Wave movement were dissidents who used the Lower East Manhattan to craft candid movies, which shaped the Independent Film today.

The artist community who where the denizens of the dilapidated buildings in that part of New York,             came together with no money in their pockets, often stealing rolls of films or cameras, to make films of their lives and that of people in this area at the time where the city had gone bankrupt. There was no script, no real actor and all was done by a super8 camera.

In Blank City many of the influential directors, musicians, photographers, artists and sometimes a blend of these like John Lurie and Steve Buscemi, tell their stories of that time.

The audacity of the photographers becomes striking when we realize that “there were people who believed taking photos is equal to stealing souls”. Amos Poe describes this cash-strapped period of his life as “best time, worst time”.

Directors as well as actors were seeking a semi-documentary possibility; thereby the distinctive ethos of No Wave Cinema, which made it one of a kind, was a knack to make narrative instead of art film. The films were free from style to maintain the stance of a period, which gave birth to leading figures like Andy Warhol and street artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring. Heroin had become prevalent and many of the epoch-making artists including the latter 2, died of AIDS or drug addiction. One of the artists in the movie recalls this tragedy: “my friends came to me one by one and confided in me that they were HIV positive. It was awful to see them all lined up to be executed.”

Music was one of the axes of No Wave cinema. Interviews with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Debbie Harry of Blondie, alongside the soundtrack made by Patti Smith, Television, Liquid Liquid and many more, highlight this element in Blank city.

The title of the movie at first place produced an image in my mind of a blank space which turns into a city, but after watching the film, I asked myself: could this blank space come out of Berlin, Paris,London or it was just New York which could give birth to this city?

AmerAsia film festival

This is my report on the second AmerAsia film festival in Montreal in March 2011, which was aired on CKUT radio. It includes interviews with the organizer "Mi Jeong Lee" and "Gerry Balasta", the director of "the mountain thief".
 

For my reviews on two of the festival films, refer to the following links:
"the mountain thief"
"don't cry for me Sudan"

The Mountain Thief

Thief? Stealing on the mountain? May be there is a treasure up there, but the treasures in "The mountain thief" are not gold or gemstones, nor the mountain is high in the clouds.
"The mountain thief" reveals the story of a land where people's treasure is trash. The land on which people who inherit a space on dump, are considered lucky. The land where a 6 year-old child who fled the atrocities of war, feels safe and happy.
The film muddles our notion of security, happiness and hopes. It is acutely difficult to fathom the gravity of a situation where one's hope is to own a piece of dump site. It wouldn't even cross our mind that the things we throw away, could be fought over, to the extent that it would cost a life. But in Payatas, these are all possible.
Far from the battlefield where people live in cities, there lies a land of trash which shelters people deprived of fresh air. The inhabitants of this land, are scavengers, who make a living by recycling trash, sometimes finding a piece of metal or anything still of value equal to a portion of food.
"Gerry Balasta" takes us to this land and tells us a story. Before unveiling the true story of the scavengers of Payatas, he asks them to play a fictional story for us in front of the camera, simply because he's not a documentarist. He wants us to see the story he created, hinting at the importance of religion mingled with superstition in Philippines.
Had it not been for his story, one might have given up watching the harsh story of the real lives of the scavengers, and thus not have asked oneself many questions:
Was I aware of such lands spread along the globe? How much is trash worth? What do governments do for these scavengers? How is trash dealt with in my country?

Thinking on these questions, few things came to my mind. The first was a photo reportage by Majid Saeedi from Peshawar in Pakistan, telling the story of an Afghan boy who sought refuge in Pakistan to collect garbage and earn a living.
The second thing I thought of, was the importance of educating people why and how to recycle; and last but not least, what have environmentalists done in these countries?

Don't cry for me Sudan

This was aired on August 3rd 2011 on CKUT

 

Perhaps the title of this movie reminds you of Eva Peron song for Argentina and how people were mournful for the loss of such a great woman.
However it is a far cry from Sudan crying for a Korean man. "Lee Tae-seok", was a doctor, who became a priest and found his happiness among the helpless, miserable people of Tonj in Sudan, but to me, he was the saviour, the father, not only to the young children of Tonj, but also to the aged.
He was an astonishingly hard-working man with a great deal of talent and creativity. His love for music was an inspiration to found the first brass band in Tonj which transformed guns to horns, trombones and trumpets, at the time when children were forced by warmongers to fight in the civil war.

Lee built the first hospital and a few years alter, the first school of full 12 grades. It was overwhelming to see how tireless this devoted man was, seeing 300 patients a day, teaching math at the school and not letting a single patient knock twice on his door during the night.
The most admiring part of the movie was the scene where he was thinking of building a school:

" I asked myself, what would Jesus build here, a school or a church? He would definitely build a school. "

To me, this attitude is unique among men of God and that was most striking of all.
The movie is made during several years, documenting the building of the first clinic which became the first hospital, the first school and the first brass band in Tonj.

Although the life of a priest is destined to be devoted to church, the director's intention is obviously not advocating religion but rather focuse on the humanitarian aspect of Lee's life and that is the most compelling aspect of this movie.

However the narrator's story telling style throughout the whole movie was bothersome, in that, it didn't match the ambiance of the movie as if she is telling a jolly story.
This, together with some unnecessary graphic scenes, were the only negative side of this movie.

Movie's page at AmerAsia film festival website