According to Khabaronline news agency, from the public relations of the Iranian Cinema Documentary Association, after the screening of the documentary “Where will it lead”, a review meeting of this work was held with the presence of Pirouz Kalantari and Seyed Mohammad Beheshti, hosted by Zagros Zand.
At the beginning of this meeting, Seyyed Mohammad Beheshti stated: In my opinion, there are several important points that I would like to point out. In feature film, we have people who are educated filmmakers and have made good films, but the majority are not our filmmakers. In other words, if we collect all the filmmakers, the number of those whose films have something to say is not many, but we do not see this issue in the field of documentary cinema. In other words, documentary cinema is a manifestation of cinematic culture and Mr. Kalantari belongs to this part of cinema. I have not seen all of his films, but the few films I have seen from him confirm my words that we are dealing with one of Iran’s cultured, painful and concerned filmmakers, and in other words, it can be said that the employer of Mr. Kalantari’s films is his heart.
Beheshti noted: The movies I saw of Mr. Kalantari, especially this movie “Where Does It Take You” show that Mr. Kalantari’s antennas are sensitive to something that is very rare among documentary filmmakers who have such sensitivities, and that is something. which I refer to as eligibility. The subject of his film is about eligibility; Ehilit is a syntax, knowledge and knowledge and it has one characteristic and that is that it is existential. Anyone who belongs to something or a place has a relationship with that thing as if he is the continuation of that thing’s existence. For example, I remember Kahan Kalhor and Kamanche; The ratio between him and the fiddle is the ratio of competence, and when he plays the fiddle, the two cannot be separated. The relationship between the women of the house and the house is the same, the house is their continuation and they are the continuation of the house. Eligibility is of intelligence.
He added: “Unfortunately, intelligence must be explained today; Consciousness means knowledge, and knowledge is not the same as literacy. The beginning of our unconsciousness, or in other words, the disturbance of our competence, started in 1335 and has continued until today, and there are few people who are still intelligent and from this land, and because of this, they know and understand something. They are not abnormal, we are abnormal and we are incompetent.
Beheshti said about the correction of the disturbance in the eligibility, he said: Today, we are in a situation where our land rejects us and responds. In the next 20 years, a large part of Iran’s population will be forced to relocate due to the aggressive behavior we had with our land. Today, Hamedan is facing a water problem, an area that has very good rainfall. The reason for this is the excessive extraction of underground water, so according to Hamedan governor, if we want to seal all the wells, it will take 800 years for the underground water level to reach the desired level. Gorgan, Yazd, Isfahan, etc. are also facing this problem, and all these incidents are the result of a disorder in eligibility. AhlĂ®t remains like a flame and this wick can be lit with something that has a flame. In fact, this problem cannot be solved by education, this ability must be reawakened in us.
He added: I always emphasize the point that we have suffered from a disorder of competence, an instrument that is out of tune, they do not throw away this instrument and tune it again. We either need a tuning fork or a tuning fork, and in the movie “Where Does It Take” it talks about a tuning fork, and this is one of the great things that should be done, and everyone in their field should look for a tuning fork. look to tune the instrument of his existence and it doesn’t matter what field you are in; Even our doctors have to correct their incompetence because we all face this problem.
The former head of the Cultural Heritage Research Institute further stated: First of all, we must be convinced that we are facing a disorder of eligibility, that Mr. Kalantari’s film does this to us so that we see a person and the desire to remove the disorder of eligibility awakens in us. And fall into the trap of tuning the instrument of our existence. Artificial intelligence, metaverse, etc. are not the solution to our problems, the land of Iran is the first land in the world where colonization has occurred and has continued until today, and now this colonization is endangered. In these 70 years, we have inflicted wounds on our land that, like Hamadan, we need 800 years to rebuild it. Until 1335, we had many luxurious houses in Iranian cities, these rich families did not get rich from oil and gas, but they got rich through industry and trade, and today you cannot find a rich person who did not get rich from oil money. Oil money has been injected into all of us and we are alive through this money, and this is a disorder in our capacity.
Beheshti emphasized: Citizenship in our land guarantees our survival and keeps us away from threats. Our biggest wealth was being Iran. Being Iranian has been so important that our land has been occupied by foreigners several times, but the entire civil system was composed of Iranians because no one but an Iranian can rule Iran. In my opinion, what Mr. Kalantari did is a work in progress, the restoration of eligibility is more important to us than night bread. We are at a crossroads; Either we become the people of our land again or we die.
In the continuation of this meeting, Pirouz Kalantari said about the reasons for starting his documentaries from the 1960s and choosing Mehdi Aghaz to make the documentary “Where does it take him?” He said: In the 1980s, I worked mostly in Tehran, and in the 1990s, most of the works I made were in the desert areas. Contrary to the view of documentary cinema that the filmmaker is a kind of employer or medium of transferring knowledge from somewhere to the audience, I came to the conclusion from the late 1970s that the film can be tied to the personal and existential concerns of the filmmaker and he can address his issues more directly as To express questions, approaches and references that demand a kind of dialogue and relationship with the outside, of course, this dialogue can be non-physical.
Referring to the production of the film “Baluchi Variety” in Sistan and Baluchistan in 2015, Kalantari noted: When I made this film, I was concerned that when we enter a place we don’t know, why do we want to see it instead of wanting to see it? We care to know there. It seems that knowledge is the main issue, if understanding is the main issue, then man becomes the main issue. Maybe “Baluchi Variety” is a tourist film at first glance, but in this film I am following a serious concern and issue. Baloch people still listen to Indian music. We have not had a border with India for seventy years, and the relations that existed before are still there because it takes a lot of time to pass through history and culture.
He added: It seems that the pocket of us documentaries should always be full of topics, ideas and relationships. In 1976, when we founded the Association of Documentary Makers, we did not call it the Association of Documentary Directors and used the title of Documentary Makers because the documentary maker must constantly be in a relationship and maintain his connection. I don’t accept research as the beginning of documentary work, the beginning of a documentary is about having a connection and an idea, and research revolves around that idea, and it’s not like the more you know, the better you will make a film.
This documentary maker continued to emphasize: The documentary maker must have many questions and demands in order to achieve his effect in terms of occasions and proportions and even in relation to orders. Many of my films are made to order, but I have turned the orders into my own universe.
He added: Before the movie “Mei Bered Ta Ba Kaja” I made the movie “Homayoun Saneti” in Kerman and there I met Mr. Aghaz. Mr. Aghah raises an important issue and says that modernity is not an issue for me apart from Iranianness and Islamism. Renewal is important for our Iranian and Islamic identity, and we can definitely get this renewal from the West, but why should the model be modernism and why do we not define this as renewal? Renewal is a flow that originates from within and receives many influences from outside, but modernism is a model.
Kalantari stated: Margin has two sides, the thing that lives on the margin and we don’t notice it, or what it has goes to the margin and we don’t notice it. Both are important. In this movie, I say from the beginning that I saw Mr. Aghaz as a man of concepts, while he is a man of economics, and I did not say anything about this in the movie. What I follow in documentary cinema is what I see in Ibrahim Golestan cinema.
He added: We have two beginnings for our documentary cinema; In 1937, Ebrahim Golestan started the Golestan Studio, which in terms of production and establishment could be the beginning of our documentary cinema, and six years later, the Ministry of Culture and Arts started and invited filmmakers who go there, get paid and make documentaries. The beginning of our documentary cinema is related to 1343 and the role of people in this history is very important.
In the continuation of this meeting, Mohammad Beheshti pointed out that there is no place in the planning system of the country to deal with the context, and he clarified: “Since the time of Reza Shah, when the modern government was formed, until today, we no longer know the context of our land, we only know the land.” In the plains of Tehran, during the time of Shah Tahmasab Safavi, when Shiism became dominant, the shrine of Hazrat Abd al-Azim became important, and Shah Safavi wanted to visit from time to time. For this reason, they were looking for a place with good weather for the residence of the Safavid Shah, and they turned one of these nearby villages into a city, which is called Tehran. There are two big faults in the plain of Tehran, one is the Niavaran fault and the other is the Kahrizak fault, and there are seven valleys through which floods flow, and these are two big threats to Tehran, but Tehran in the Tahmasbi period is immune from both threats because it is the farthest It has the distance to faults and channels.
He added: During the period of Naser al-Din Shah, the city of Tehran was expanded. The last big earthquake that occurred in Tehran was related to the period of Muzaffaruddin Shah, but there were no reports of destruction in Tehran and all the reports were related to villages. Until 1340, we didn’t know the ground of the Tehran plain and we didn’t know where the faults were, while after that we have the Geological Organization, the Geophysical Organization, etc., which monitor the earthquake situation daily. We know the land of Tehran very well, but we don’t know the background of Tehran, and since the 40s when these organizations were formed, Tehran has expanded and we have expanded this city exactly in areas one, two, three and four, without fail, and at the front of the roads. . This means that we are literate but not intelligent and we have a disability.
Beheshti emphasized: One of the requirements of living tradition in every land is to become contemporary because otherwise it will die. Modernization has two aspects, one aspect is connection to the roots and one aspect is flexibility towards variables. Renewal is one of the pillars of the tradition, and what understanding did we find in the new period that we understood the tradition to be anti-renewal? Maulana has repeatedly talked about renewal and the Quran has blamed those who do not want to renew. Contemporization is not the same as modernization, modernization is a type of contemporization in Europe. Instead of becoming contemporary, we tried to become modern and this has caused us to have no knowledge of our land. We look at our land from a European perspective.
He added: Europeans live in a land where all biological benefits and barriers are actual, and we live in a land where all biological benefits and barriers are potential. We lived in this land in a way that was suitable for living in Europe. Our economic indicators were on par with France during Safavid era, China was the richest country in the world before it was colonized and it got these riches based on its own indicators because it became miserable after it became a British colony. The way of our salvation is to become contemporary. The best word in Iran, which means prosperity, is growth, while our economists have taken this word to vulgarity. When a plant grows, this growth is from within and all-encompassing, from potential to actuality. We must use the title of growth and if this is going to happen in our country, we must seek to become contemporary and know that when we do not know the context, we are in the dark. We live as if we are the first humans to live in this land and we have nothing to do with living experience in this land and we are denied the context.
In the continuation of this meeting, Kalantari said about the impact of documentary works on the formation of a current for the spread of Iranology: I am thinking about our documentary cinema apart from filmmaking. I am critical and pessimistic about the growth of documentary cinema in our country. In my opinion, this cinema has not progressed well, which of course requires a detailed discussion and I have no hope for the future of documentary cinema for years. My strong skepticism is basically for Iranian art, the more we have come forward, the birth and mortar of this art has subsided. We are faced with two elite and rentier arts. Elite means a current that has lost its social context and interaction with society, and the title of greenhouse art can also be determined for it.
The director of the documentary “On Unfinished Streets” emphasized: “If I have hope for documentary cinema, this hope lies in the young people who, by the way, in the last two decades have cut off their relationships, belief and connection to what they call economic, political, cultural management, etc. have done and this can be a platform to create a power. I have hope for active minorities who do not give in to affiliations and take new paths, and I also hope for the role of families in the formation of their children’s culture. I hope for a rebirth without attachment to injuries and strays.
The meeting continued with questions from the audience.
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