Trust cinema Kamran Mushfaqarani wrote in Etemad newspaper: The 5th of December, that is, the birthday of the great man of cinema and theater of Iran, has arrived, and this has become a good excuse to express the longing of people of art and cinema. For eighteen years, our waiting eyes have been staring at the door of a house in Tehran that no longer has an inhabitant. For eighteen years, the director’s chair of our theaters, our films, and our theaters has been crying out for a man whose name was once linked to the history of art in this land.
Bahram Baizaei, this living treasure of Iranian culture and art, is now far away, at Stanford University, teaching students who may have never experienced watching “Basho, Little Stranger” in Iranian cinemas. Instead of staging deep and meaningful plays in the theater of Tehran, he talks about ta’ziyeh and curtain reading in American university halls.
But the question is: why no one is trying to bring him back? And even worse, why are we used to this long sojourn? Isn’t it that Iranian art needs the presence of masters like Baizai today more than ever?
We know very well that Baidaei is not only a director and playwright; He is a treasure of Iranian history and culture knowledge. He is a researcher who has spent a lifetime exploring the hidden layers of the culture of this land. His absence is not only the absence of an artist; Absence is part of our cultural memory.
Maybe it’s time to ask ourselves: have we, as the artistic and cultural society of Iran, done all our efforts for the return of this great master? Is it not possible to provide the conditions for Bayzai to create art once again in his homeland?
Every day that passes, a new generation of artists and students of theater and cinema are emerging in this land who have only heard the name Baizai. They have been deprived of the direct experience of being in his classrooms, of his penetrating look at ancient texts, and of his unique way of narrating Iranian stories. This deprivation is a wound on the body of our contemporary culture.
If we visit specialized theater and cinema libraries today, his books are still the most popular research sources. “Performance in Iran”, “A Study in Ta’zieh and Theater in Iran” and his other research works, like a bright light, show the way to researchers. But his own emptiness, the emptiness of face-to-face conversations with him and the emptiness of creating new works by him, is a pain that deepens every day. Maybe one day, when this long sojourn ends, when his voice resounds in the theaters of Iran, that day we can be proud that we have finally returned this missing link to the chain of our culture and art. Until that day, we will keep our eyes on the road, waiting for the master’s return.