From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Sarai Film Series V Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2001 00:12:53 +0530 Asian film cultures: Iranian cinema The Sarai weekly film screenings resume with a second series on Asian Film Cultures from August 24th 2001. A series of seven Iranian Films will be screened, as always on every Friday at 4:30 pm, in the Seminar Room, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi- 54. We are grateful to the Iranian Cultural Centre and Vijay Tankha, St. Stephens's College Cine Club for making this series possible. August 24th 2001 The White Balloon 1995, 85 minutes? Director: Jafar Panahi The White Balloon tells the story of a young girl's desire for a pretty goldfish to start her New Year's holiday. Snake charmers, a distracted dry cleaner tailor, a lonely and talkative soldier and other assorted adults get in the way of her goal. Screenplay writer Abbas Kiorastami noted that `the screenplay dealt with the Iranian New Year and people who for whatever reason cannot celebrate the setting in of the New Year with traditional ceremonies. The screenplay focused on marginal characters who gradually replaced the major characters and actually had the say. August 31st 2001 The Cyclist 1989, 75?minutes Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf The cyclist of the title is Nassim, an Afghan refugee in need of money to pay his wife's medical expenses. With work difficult to come by, a sleazy promoter suggests he undertake a bicycle marathon. Touting him as the Afghani superman, the huckster wagers that Nassim will circle a small area on the outskirts of town, day and night, for a week. While he rides, a carnival of society's dispossessed grows alongside the desperate cyclist. Gamblers, bookies, buskers, food vendors, and leprous gawkers watch from the sidelines, cynically using Nassim's suffering for their own purposes. September 7th 2001 Marriage of the Blessed 1989, 75 minutes Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf Makhmalbaf's controversial take on the Iran-Iraq war concerns a shell-shocked veteran struggling to readjust to civilian life. Haji (Mahmud Bigham), the recently discharged protagonist, is a photojournalist engaged to the daughter of a wealthy family. Tormented by nightmarish visions of his time at the front, obsessed with famine in Africa and the chaos in Lebanon, and unable to cope with the everyday indifference to poverty and injustice on the streets of Tehran, he hurtles towards another mental breakdown as his wedding approaches. September 14th 2001 Close-up 1990, 90 minutes Director: Abbas Kiorastami Close-up is based on actual events, and tells the story of Ali Sabzian, an unemployed young man who insinuates himself into the life of a wealthy family for a week by passing himself off as the well-known film director Makhmalbaf. The impersonation was ultimately exposed and Sabzian was arrested, charged, and tried as a confidence man. After reading of the case in a magazine, Kiarostami gained permission to film the court proceedings, and then afterwards managed to convince the principals -- the real-life Sabzian and his alleged victims-- to play themselves in a dramatic reenactment of the events leading up to trial. The director then blended the verite trial footage with the dramatic reconstructions; the result is this remarkable, ironic, one-of-a-kind, house-of-mirrors film. September 21st 2001 Where is my friend's home, 1987, 90 minutes Director: Abbas Kiorastami In a village in the mountains-to which Kiarostami would return for two more films-Ahmad returns from school to begin his homework, but realizes he's taken his pal's notebook by mistake. Teacher has decreed that homework always be done in the same book. Escaping his mother's eagle eye, he sets out to return it to his friend-but en route, remembers he doesn't know where the kid lives.? September 28th 2001 And life goes on 1992, 91 minutes Director: Abbas Kiorastami Amid the rubble of the '90 earthquake, actually reconstructed for the film, a man who has lost a sister and five nieces, still busies himself rigging a TV antenna because, as he says with a smile, the World Cup comes only every four years. A film director and his son keep bumping into characters from Where Is My Friend's Home, even as they anxiously search for the two boys who were its stars. OR Maybe Some Other Time, 1987 Director: Bahram Bayzai Maybe . . . Some Other Time is the story of a pregnant middle-class woman, Kian, a foster child in search of the reasons for her uncertainty about her own identity. In a scene orchestrated by her jealous husband, she encounters a replica of her biological mother in a painting laid aside on the floor of an antique cellar. In a quest for answers she also finds her previously unknown twin sister Vida, an accomplished restorer and painter who is married to the owner of the antique cellar, Hagh-Negar. October 5th 2001 Children of Heaven 1997, 90 minutes Director: Majid Majidi A little girl can't go to school without her shoes in Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven. Little Zahra's older brother, Ali actually lost the shoes during an expedition to the local grocer. This perpetually worried boy, who doesn't want his parents to find out about his lapse, eventually comes up with a makeshift solution to the problem. His sister will wear his sneakers to school in the morning; he will take them in the afternoon. Naturally their attempts to synchronize their schedules lead to complications. Later, Ali enters a race, promising his sister that he will finish in third place - the third-place prize being a pair of sneakers. -- Sarai: The New Media Initiative Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29,Rajpur Road, Delhi - 54 Phone: 91-11-3951190 Fax: 91-11-2943450 www.sarai.net ------------------------------------------------ The mailing list archives are available at http://lists.linux-india.org/cgi-bin/wilma/linux-delhi
