Safar (Bahram Beyzaie, 1972)

Safar

The world premiere of the new restoration (from the camera negative) will take place on June 24 at 14:00, at Il Cinema Ritrovato XXIX.

A 12-year-old orphan with a habit of seeking out his potential parents takes his friend along on a journey through the wastelands on the outskirts of Tehran. Seemingly a children’s folk tale, Safar is so visually singular that it evades easy breakdown. It is allegorical, but allegory is the engine; visual density the result.

When one speaks of Bahram Beyzaie, one speaks of a maze of citations. While along the way, various forms of image-making are evoked – movie posters, peep show, photography – the search for parents becomes a search for the primal image from which the film has emerged: steps for Eisenstein, architecture for Murnau, a crippled man for Buñuel, wheels for John Ford. An agonizing dream bordering on a nightmare, the film overflows with excess. Objects and people multiply rapidly, growing like mushrooms in a landscape so devastated by dirt and pollution that it becomes an environmental plea. In the smoggy, hazardous zones of abandoned objects – old wooden doors, carriages – a country has discarded its history at a frantic pace without replacing it with anything new.  

Ehsan Khoshbakht

SAFAR

Iran, 1972 Director: Bahram Beyzaie | International title: The Journey | Screenplay: Bahram Beyzaie | Director of cinematography: Mehrdad Fakhimi | Cast: Sirus Hassanpour (Ta’leh), Abbas Dastranj (Razi), Parvaneh Massoumi (woman/mother), Khanshahri (man/father), Jamshid Layegh (uomo sulla scala), Siamak Atlasi (Jahel) | Prod.: Kanoon – Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults |  DCP, 35mins