Interview with Kamran Shirdel

Kamran Shirdel (right) on the set of The Night It Rained

Kamran Shirdel (born 1939)

One of the giants of Iranian modern cinema, Shirdel is mostly remembered for his clandestine documentaries about poverty and injustice as well as his Rashomonesque The Night It Rained (1967) which became an instrumental film in the birth of New Wave. It’s been hardly noted that he was also responsible for remaking À bout de souffle under the title The Morning of the Fourth Day (1972).

Shirdel today

• How conscious were you about the New Wave while making your “new” film?

In 1965, after finishing my film school in Rome (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia), I returned back home mostly for a family visit when I encountered the unbelievable and ridiculous socio-economico-political situation in Iran. No Iranian school of filmmaking existed and there were very few [educated] film directors – mostly graduated from foreign film schools trying to do their best at the only place existing for documentary filmmaking in Iran which was The Ministry of Culture and Art. And the filmmakers’ job was to satisfy The Ministry with their commissioned orders. Under these circumstances I had the rare chance to be called – quite accidentally - to make a series of so called propaganda films for the Iranian Women Organization (headed by Ashraf, the twin sister of the Shah!) The subject of the films opened the tightly closed doors of hidden worlds of, respectively, Women’s Prison and Tehran’s red light district (in Farsi, Shahre No) which I showed in Women's Quarter, as well as other poor slums of southern Tehran. I got hold of this rare chance and benefitted from this unexpected situation by relying on my zero experience in the field of documentary filmmaking which was balanced by my love to approach the socio-political problems. I directed them one after another and in a very short time.

Survival of the Unfit: On Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa’s Jerry & Me

Originally appeared on MUBI Notebook, June 2013. -- EK

Survival of the Unfit: On Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa’s Jerry & Me

CINEPHILIA & REVOLUTION

A familiar practice in Persian film literature is that of the “cinematic memoir”—personal reminiscences of the film culture of pre-Revolutionary Iran.

Bolstered by a nostalgic tone, these autobiographical texts deal with the themes of childhood, adolescence and encounters with cinema in a Westernized Iran. The authors of such memoirs frequently depict Iran as a haven for cinephiles. Considering the number of films that were shown in pre-Revolutionary Iran and the diversity of their origins, this may be taken as an accurate characterization.

Such melancholic documentations of the past echo the feelings of a generation lost, misplaced and confused after the Revolution; people who are utterly unable to re-situate themselves in the new post-Revolutionary nation and after the trauma of an eight year war. However, this longing for a paradise lost can function as a kind of subjective history of film culture in Iran; while by studying them one would also be able to draw a picture of how Iran responded to Western culture in the period between 1950s and the late 1970s.

Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, 1980s

Revolutions provide a clear point of reference for grasping the time and space in the nation’s psyche. History—otherwise obscure—becomes deceptively clear and classifiable. With a contemporary revolution written on the pages of a country’s history, everything becomes divided into two very distinctive and clashing modes of aesthetics: before the revolution and after the revolution. These are the terms most frequently used in a revolutionary country—more than “hello” and “goodbye”!

A Woman Under the Influence [On Jerry and Me]

زني تحت تأثير

دربارۀ «جري و من» مستند تازۀ مهرناز سعيدوفا

 كارگردان، فيلم‌نامه‌نويس، تدوين و گفتار متن: مهرناز سعيدوفا. 38 دقيقه، 2012، آمريكا. نمايش داده شده در فستيوال‌هاي ادينبورو (2012)، روتردام (2013) و گلاسگو (2013).

***

مجله‌هاي سينمايي ايران شايد تنها مجلات سينمايي باشند كه بخشي ثابت و محبوب براي چاپ خاطرات و نوشته‌هايي با زباني توام با حسرت و دريغ از گذشته دارند كه در قالب بهاريه‌ها و نامه‌نگاري‌ها ظاهر مي‌شود. اين آثار معمولاً براي كاركرد نوستالژيكشان منتشر مي‌شوند، اگرچه بعضاً مي‌توانند اعتباري هم به عنوان گونه‌اي از تاريخ شفاهي داشته باشند. اما وجه اشتراك تقريباً تمام اين نگاه‌هاي به گذشته، از چشم‌انداز سينما، حسي از غبن و شكست و گم‌گشتگي بهشتي ذهني است كه شايد هرگز وجود نداشته است. معمولاً تكيه به گذشته و تصوير بهشتي زميني در ذهن نويسنده‌اي كه آه و دريغ از گذر زمان دارد، نشانه‌اي است از عدم رضايت از زمان حال و به دنبال آن تلاش براي قرار دادن خود در نقطه‌اي كه وجود آدمي حسي از تعلق تاريخي داشته باشد. واضح است كه در شرايطي كه تنها يك زمان – حال – براي زندگي تعريف شده، حافظه تنها عنصري است كه اجازه دارد سفري آزاد به گذشته داشته باشد، بخش‌هايي از آن را برگزيند و گذشته آرمانيِ صاحبِ ذهن را رقم بزند. همۀ ما كمابيش چنين سفرهاي روزانه‌اي داريم، اما همۀ ما اين سفرها را مكتوب نمي‌كنيم و يا موضوع يك فيلم قرار نمي‌دهيم.

Strike [Zarbat] (Samuel Khachikian, 1964)

Bootimar (left) and Jalal in Zarbat

Zarbat
Iran, 1964, Director: Samuel Khachikian

International title: Strike. Script: Samuel Khachikian (uncredited). DoP.: Ghodratollah Ehsani. Editing: Samuel Khachikian. Art director: Hassan Paknejad, Ali Delpazir. Music.: Samuel Khachikian (selection). Cast: Arman (Jamal), Abdollah Bootimar (Dr. Kourosh Imen), Ghodsi Kashani (Shirin), Farzaneh Kazemi (Mozhgan), Jamsheed Tatar (Hossein Aghai), Reza Beik Imanverdi (Reza the Madman). Production.: Azhir Film Studio

The premiere of the film in Tehran

One of Khachikian’s most morbid thrillers, Zarbat actually begins as a melodrama – and a rather tedious one at that – in which most of Iranian cinema’s clichés of class conflict are introduced. Almost halfway into the film, however, Khachikian shifts to a meticulously designed spectacle of terror, as if in revenge for the preceding drama. Characters move into a dark territory of murder and mistaken identities. As in some of Khachikian’s other works, the setting of an ordinary house becomes a site of peril and a stage for perverse pleasures, as the director plays with filmic elements to the point of abstraction. Khachikian explains this as his attempt, after the 1950s, to “revive the alphabet of film” in Iranian cinema: “I wanted to save Iranian cinema from roohozi [a popular and vulgar form of theatre]. From the first day onwards, it wasn't the message or the content that I was concerned with. What I wanted was a precise cinema: action, correct editing, lighting and so on.”

Upcoming Screening: Abbas Kiarostami's Political Allegories

Solution No. 1

Playing tonight (June 14, 7:30 PM) at Close-Up Film Centre in London. Booking.



First Graders [Avvaliha]
Abbas Kiarostami
1985 | 79 min | Colour

“First Graders is best considered as a companion film to Homework. Both deal in the most explicit way with issues of primary school education, with deviations for the sake of meta-poetic or political commentary. This film serves less as a critique of the educational system, instead focusing on the role of the school headmaster, who resembles the judge in Close-Up. He is a patient, spiritual figure who restores order and with this portrait Kiarostami provides a subtle and somehow sympathetic image of a totalitarian leader, in which there is both ambiguity and irony.” – Ehsan Khoshbakht

Bread and Alley (1970) + Breaktime (1972)

Breaktime

These two shorts will be playing before The Traveller at Close-Up, London, June 5, 7:30 PM.

Bread and Alley [Naan va koocheh]
Abbas Kiarostami
1970 | 10 min | B/W

Based on a real-life incident experienced by Kiarostami’s brother, Taghi, the director’s first film sets the template for his cinema until the late 1980s. It concerns a young boy who is unable to return home with the bread he has bought, due to his fear of a stray dog in an alley. The film’s jazzy soundtrack, which pretty much dictates the editing, is based on the Beatles’ Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

Breaktime [Zang-e tafrih]
Abbas Kiarostami
1972 | 14 min | B/W

Famous for its non-narrative approach and its open ending, this story of a schoolboy who is dismissed from the classroom after breaking a window presages not only The Traveller, but also Mohammad-Ali Talebi’s film Willow and Wind, scripted by Kiarostami.

The Traveller (Abbas Kiarostami, 1974)

The Traveller is playing at Close-Up, London, June 5, 7:30 PM.

The Traveller [original title: Mosafer]
Abbas Kiarostami • Iran 1974 • 1h14m • Digital • Persian with English subtitles • Cast: Hassan Darabi, Masud Zandbegleh, Mostafa Tari.

Kiarostami’s first feature film, and arguably one of his best, The Traveller was made for Kanoon (The Centre for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults). A suspenseful, witty story of a young boy’s determination to travel from his small town to Tehran to attend a national football match, it combines realism with the economy and precision of a visual artist (the director’s first occupation before turning filmmaker). Featuring brilliant performances by a cast of non-actors, the film has one of the most gripping, unforgettable endings in film history.

The Shah of Iran on the Set of a George Cukor Film

The Shah of Iran and the Empress Farah visiting Fox Studio (probably) in 1962, dropping by the set on which George Cukor was directing his ill-fated Something's Got to Give, starring  Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse. Martin and Monroe (with the latter the Shah rumored to have an affair) are not seen on this short and mute British Pathe newsreel, but Van Johnson, Bob Hope, Cary Grant, and Charisse are among those received by HRH!

Jazz Film in Iran - A First Time Retrospective

The centenary of jazz is being celebrated in a place you would least expect: Iran. 

A mini retrospective of jazz films, currently playing at the Cinematheque of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, is the first time ever in post-revolutionary Iran.

The Museum famous for its priceless collection of modernist art (including works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Kandinsky, Pollack and many more) and also recently in the news due to cancellation of a major exhibition in Berlin, hosts a cozy, popular cinema inside its stylishly beautiful building. The cinematheque, shut down for 7 years, was reopened recently, with an array of nicely curated seasons.

A Conversation with Tina Hassannia

Asghar Farhadi: Life and Cinema (The Critical Press, 2014) is the first English book about the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, a filmmaker often overrated by most people, underrated by some.

Written by critic Tina Hassannia, the book is a dialogue of sorts in which the Iranian Canadian author, by means of Farhadi’s films, engages with her own cultural roots. The approach of the book is quite simple, yet effective: summing up the current critical reading and reception of each film in the West (and to a certain extent in Iran), supplemented by a lengthy interview with the filmmaker.

The interview below was conducted via email, a prologue to a video interview, with slightly different questions, and lots of films clips, which was done later and can be viewed on Keyframe.

Miniatures in Motion: Stan Brakhage and Iran

IRAN IN COLOR DREAMS AND VISIONS OF STAN BRAKHAGE

How can we approach Stan Brakhage’s world? Shall we return to his inspiration drawn from the poets of San Francisco and the New York experimental filmmakers of the 1950s? Should we consider his inadequate filmmaking facilities which shrank every year, eventually reducing him to scratching negatives with his fingernails on the hospital bed at the end of his life? Besides all his sources of inspiration, from Eisenstein and Dreyer to Gertrud Stein and Rilke, I intend to examine rather an obscure source material for 18 short films of Brakhage, which most probably hasn’t been taken into consideration yet: Iran and its classical arts.

These 18 short films, called Persians, and made between 1999 to 2001, are among his last films, and based on years of studying Iran’s art and culture. They have been made by the methods of painting and scratching on the film strip; the method Brakhage first employed in Dog Star Man (1961).

The Persians is like a voyage through the architecture, miniature, calligraphy and that unique inner rhythm of Iranian culture in dynamic and spontaneous abstract forms. All of these elements have been intently studied by Brakhage, therefore watching them is a cinematic meditation entering a time-machine of hundreds of years of Iranian culture.

Return to Uncertainity: Geoff Andrew on Kiarostami

An Interview with Geoff Andrew
Return to Uncertainty


Geoff Andrew is one of the most famous Kiarostami defenders in the current scene of film criticism, though the 72 year-old filmmaker hardly needs any defense now. But there is something different, a new perspective in Andrew's approach to Kiarostami that makes his writings and his views something of a discovery even for someone from Kiarostami's homeland, like me.

His very carefully structured book on Ten, from BFI Modern Classics series, represents a distillation of his thoughts and feelings about Ten, and about Kiarostami in general. Also a great part of this brilliant book comes out of the interviews with Kiarostami that he conducted during the past 7-8 years.

Mr. Geoff Andrew is the senior film editor for Time Out London, head of programming of the National Film Theatre, and author of numerous books, including The Films of Nicholas Ray: The Poet of Nightfall and The 'Three Colours' Trilogy.

This interview about Kiarostami’s cinema took place at National Film Theatre, London, April 2011. First it was published in Iranian Film Quarterly (Farsi translation in Film Monthly), and later the general parts of the interview appeared on Aslan Media website which can be read here. These are Q&As that didn't fit in the Aslan Media post.

Geoff Andrew on Kiarostami: An Interview

سينماي كيارستمي در گفتگويي با جف اندرو

بازگشت به عدم قطعيت

جف اندرو يكي از بزرگ‌ترين مدافعان انگلوساكسون سينماي كيارستمي است. از اين منظر فقط جاناتان روزنبام از او پيشي مي‌گيرد. او در راي گيري 2002 سايت‌اند‌ساند باد ما را خواهد برد را به عنوان فيلم دهم زندگي‌اش انتخاب كرد، در كنار نام‌هايي چون ويگو، دمي، هاكس، ولز، دراير، اوزو، رومر، كيتُن و افولس. او كتابي دربارۀ ده نوشته است (محمد شهبا در نشر هرمس آن را به فارسي برگردانده.) او كه مردي است ميان سال با موهاي سفيد و با لبخندي ملايم بر لب، در پيراهن تابستاني آبي رنگ و شلوار خاكي از پله‌هاي دفترش در طبقه بالاي بي اف آي پايين مي‌آيد. اين جا قلمروي اوست. او يكي از سعادتمندترين آدم‌هاي دنياست كه مي‌تواند فيلم‌هايي را براي نمايش انتخاب كند و هر شب صدها نفر به تماشاي آن‌ها بنشينند. پوستر فيلم‌هاي برتولوچي و ترنس راتيگان (فيلم‌نامه‌نويس بزرگ انگليسي) روي ديوارها نويد فصلي كامل از نمايش آثار آن‌ها را مي‌دهد. با او به طرف كافه سالن انتظار مي‌رويم كه خود يك فيلم سينمااسكوپ است: گستره‌اي افقي از كاناپه‌هاي قديمي و صندلي‌هاي كوتاه، درست مثل اطاق نشمين شلوغِ يك خانه، با آدم‌هاي ولو شده روي كاناپه، ليوان‌ها و فنجان‌ها و گيلاس‌ها و كاتالوگ‌هاي رها روي ميز و خانواده بزرگ سينما كه يا منتظر نمايش فيلمي هستند يا از نمايش فيلمي بازگشته‌اند. در اين سالن تاريك، به تاريكي سالن سينما اما منهاي سكوت آن، فيلم‌ها در روابط و گفتگوي بين آدم‌ها دوباره زنده مي‌شوند. هنوز ساعت سه بعدظهر است و تا شلوغي اين‌جا دو سه ساعتي زمان باقي مانده، اما به محض اين‌كه ما روي يكي از كاناپه‌هاي مي‌نشينيم صداي موسيقي بلند مي‌شود و مجبورمان مي‌كند كه به سالن مجاور نمايشگاه بي‌اف‌آي برويم. او لبه صندلي چرم قرمز سالن مي‌نشيند، دست‌هايش را در هم گره مي‌زند و روي پايش مي‌گذارد و با منتظر اولين سوال مي‌ماند. پرسش اين است كه اين انگليسي آرام و موقر را چه چيزي به سينماي كيارستمي جذب مي‌كند؟

Notes on Abbas Kiarostami

اين نوشته قبلاً به عنوان مقدمۀ گفتگوي من با جف اندرو در ماهنامه فيلم منتشر شده بود. به زودي خود گفتگو هم در پي اين پست خواهد آمد

بازگشت به عدم قطعيت

بهاري كه به تابستان مي‌ماند. نور درخشاني كه از لابلاي برگ‌هاي درختان صدساله بلوار «مال» خود را به روي زمين‌ مي‌رساند و نقاط گرم و درخشاني روي خاك پديد مي‌آورد كه مثل هزاران پرتوي نور تابانده شده از اتاق پروژكتور سينماست. اين پياده‌روي طولاني براي رسيدن به انيستتوي فيلم بريتانيا در جنوب رودخانه تيمز و مصاحبه با يكي از بزرگ‌ترين دوست‌داران سينماي عباس كيارستمي، جف اندرو، بهانه‌اي است براي مرور دوباره مسأله ساده، اما بي‌جهت پيچيده شدۀ كيارستمي در ايران؛ آميزه‌اي از تضاد بين تعاريف و خواسته‌هاي سياسي و اجتماعي مردم با هنر، وارد شدن خصومت‌ به كار حرفه‌اي، حركت بر مسيرهايي كه از فيلم‌ساز فقط يك نام باقي مي‌گذارد و آثار او را فراموش مي‌كند، تندروي‌هايي از هر دو سو كه معمولاً از حسادت، شووينيسم، خوش‌بيني مهارنشده يا بدبيني محض ناشي مي‌شوند.

Lezione di Cinema: Interviewing Ebrahim Golestan

Friends, colleagues, and fellow cinephiles from all around the world gathered in Bologna. The reason was Il Cinema Ritrovato, the 30th edition. I was there to witness Gian Luca Farinelli blowing the candles, celebrating three decades of cinephilia of the highest caliber, but also to show films by the godfather of Iranian modern cinema, Ebrahim Golestan.

Sala Scorsese, the cinema in which the Golestan Film Studio retrospective was held was packed for every single screening, with those who couldn't get a seat, standing on the aisles or sitting patiently on the floor. I was overwhelmed. Probably the 95 year old Golestan, too, even if he is a master in concealing his emotions when it comes to his films.

Brick and Mirror being screened at Sala Scorsese, June 27, 2016

Golestan Film Studio, Between Poetry and Politics

Introduction to the Golestan Film Studio tribute at Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2016. A selection of films either directed or produced by Ebrahim Golestan will be played during the festival with Mr. Golestan in attendance. Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and I will interview him on stage on June 28. All the screening and events at Sala Scorsese.


Golestan Film Studio, Between Poetry and Politics

Time to celebrate the first Iranian independent documentary film studio, which during its 10-year run managed to produce some of the most remarkable entries (both documentary and fiction) in the history of Iranian cinema. One man is responsible for this enterprise: the filmmaker, producer, writer and translator Ebrahim Golestan; a figure of special importance to Iranian culture, without whom the notion of an Iranian art cinema would have been an unlikely prospect.

If Golestan's literary oeuvre has been widely discussed, his contribution to cinema remains underrated and the films largely inaccessible. Upon their release, all were received negatively, even with hostility, by Iranian film critics. Though Brick and Mirror, a pioneering work of Iranian New Wave, came to be seen as a misunderstood masterpiece, the documentaries were left largely unseen.

Born in 1922 in Shiraz, Golestan began his encounters with the cinema at an early age, being taken to screenings by his newspaper-owner father. Initially he became a journalist, and joined the Communist Party of Iran, but, disillusioned with the Party’s treatment of the current affairs, retreated to literature. He wrote novels, and translated Ernest Hemingway and Mark Twain into Persian.

The Contemporary Iranian Cinema, a Course in Cambridge

With every possible international award harvested within the last two decades, Iranian cinema remains one of the most richly complex and remarkably innovative national cinemas in the world, even if its stories tend to be deceptively simple. It’s a cinema of subtle, often symbolic and humanist observations which manages to marry poetry and politics.

The CONTEMPORARY IRANIAN CINEMA is a day-long course, offering both general history and close analysis of a wide range of Iranian films, from state-sponsored industry to lively underground scene. Accompanied by an abundance of film clips, the course will tackle on keys subjects such as narrative styles of Iranian cinema, genres, women’s cinema, and documentary films. Focusing on both the prominent figures and the younger and emerging talents, the course goes beyond the geographical borders and traces Iranian cinema in exile or in international co-productions which are becoming part of the new identity of Iranian films.

It was only last year that Jafar Panahai’s Taxi Tehran, shot entirely with a small digital camera fixed on a taxi’s dashboard, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, a prize given to a filmmaker who was not even allowed to make a new film. But why Taxi and similar Iranian films have been so successful? The course is a journey through Iranian art, culture and recent history to answer that question.

BOOK HERE.

The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969) | Il Cinema Ritrovato

GAAV (The Cow)
Iran, 1969 Regia: Dariush Mehrjui
T. int.: The Cow. Sog.: Azadaran-e Bayal [Gholam-Hossein Saedi]. Scen.: Dariush Mehrjui. F.: Fereydon Ghovanlou. M.: Dariush Mehrjui. Mus.: Hormouz Farhat. Int.: Ezzatolah Entezami (Mash Hassan), Mahin Shahabi (Hassan's wife), Ali Nassirian (Mash Islam), Jamshid Mashayekhi (Abbas), Jafar Vali (Kadkhoda). Prod.: Ministry of Culture (uncredited).

The Cow (1969)

There are other films about men and cows (La vache et le prisonnier, for one) but unlike The Cow they can hardly be called love stories, nor are they works that so powerfully explore madness, solitude and obsession as this film does. This milestone of Iranian New Wave cinema tells the story of a poor villager (played by stage actor Ezzatolah Entezami in one of Iranian cinema’s greatest performances) whose only source of joy and livelihood is his cow, which provides milk for the village. (Not surprisingly, when the film came out, the milk was viewed by the left as symbolic of oil.) One night the cow is mysteriously killed and that’s when the madness, or rather transformation, begins.

Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015) - LFF Review

TAXI (in the UK: TAXI TEHRAN)
Director: Jafar Panahi; Iran, 2015
Reviewed by Kiomars Vejdani

Following This Is Not a Film and Closed Curtain, Jafar Panahi's Taxi Tehran seems to be first and foremost his reaction to imposed restriction. In his new film (winner of Golden Bear at this year's Berlin Film Festival) the restriction is a self imposed one by limiting himself to the confined space of a taxi. By playing the role of taxi driver Panahi beaks the boundary between cinematic illusion and reality of life. Although taxi runs though streets of Tehran there is nothing specific about places visited. The main purpose of using a taxi is for Panahi to express his feelings and views through encounters with a series of passengers, showing two extreme lines of thought in the society such as in the scene when a heated argument between a fanatic man and a liberal-minded female teacher is depicted. Other passengers include: a man selling copies of pirated DVDs; Two women carrying goldfish in a bowl, highlighting the grip that religious superstition can have on people; Pleasant encounter with a friend (human right lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh) voices social restrictions which Panahi himself has gone through.

But most interesting of all is Panahi's niece, a delightful little girl who is trying to make a film as a school project and is confused between restrictive instruction given by school and advice given by his uncle about how to search for reality. The film ends (or rather interrupted) by someone breaking into the taxi while Panahi is away for a short while. It is implied that it could be an act of surveillance rather than burglary. Panahi's final message seems to be he is prepared (and able) to work under any restrictive condition.

KVIFF#50 - Part I: Mise en scène with Arthur Penn

 يادداشت‌هايي دربارۀ چند فيلم از پنجاهمين دوره فستيوال فيلم كارلووي واري، جمهوري چك، 2015

امسال در كارلزباد

احسان خوش‌بخت

كارلووي‌واري، شهري كه پنجاه سال پيش اولين دوره يك فستيوال بين‌المللي فيلم در آن برگزار شد، تركيب خيال‌انگيزي از معماري اتريشي-مجار و تغزل كوهستاني شهري سوييسي است كه با انبوهي هتل‌هاي پنج ستاره و چشمه‌هاي آب معدني محاصره شده. شهري كه از بتهوون تا شاهان قاجار را مجذوب خودش كرده از سوي غرب آن قدر به آلمان نزديك هست كه نامي آلماني هم داشته باشد: كارلزباد.

بزرگ‌ترين و معروف‌ترين هتل شهر، هتل بزرگ پوپ، كه مركز پارتي‌هاي شبانه فستيوال هم هست، اگر به جاي سفيد صورتي مي‌بود مي‌توانست همان «هتل بزرگ بوداپست» باشد. مردم كارلووي واري، يا به طور دقيق‌تر مردمي كه از جاهاي ديگر جمهوري‌هاي چك و اسلواك و كشورهاي ديگر به اين شهر مي‌آيند، تحت تأثير زيبايي مكس افولس‌وار شهري كه با هر پيچ رود جاري در دل دره به رقص درآمده عادت به نونوار كردن و به‌تن كردن بهترين لباس‌هايشان دارد. كارلوووي واري، جلوي غيرحقيقي و بيش از حد رتوش شده دارد، و اين چيزي است كه يك فستيوال سينمايي مي‌تواند بهره‌هاي بسيار از آن ببرد.

از طول اصلي فستيوال من حدود دو سوم آن را در كارلووي واري گذراندم و به جز فيلم‌هاي بد و مأيوس كننده‌اي كه حتي نوشتن يك خط درباره‌شان بايد با ماليت سنگين كاغذ و جوهر موازنه شود (و به همين دليل بهشان اشاره‌اي نخواهم كرد) اين چند فيلم آثار قابل توجهي‌اند كه در پنجاهمين دوره فستيوال ديدم.

ميزانسن با آرتور پن: يك گفتگو (اميرنادري؛ آمريكا/ايتاليا، 2014)

براي ساختن چنين فيلم ديوانه‌واري نياز به دانستن چيزهاي زيادي دربارۀ سينما نيست، فقط مقدار زيادي عشق و اعتماد به نفس لازم است كه امير نادري به وفور از هر دو بهره برده. اما براي بهتر شناختن زمينه‌هاي نمايش و توزيع چنين پروژه ديوانه‌واري كه سه و ساعت و نيم از گفتگوي تقريباً اديت نشده‌اي با آرتور پن را به يك فيلم سينمايي تبديل كرده لازم است كه حداقل يكي از پشتيبانان پروژه را شناخت: برنامه سينمايي تلويزيون سوم ايتاليا (RAI3) كه به نام Fuori Orario (به معناي ديروقت) مجموعه‌اي حيرت‌انگيز از سينماي كلاسيك، مدرن و تجربي را از نيمه شب تا صبح در طول آخر هفته‌ها نمايش مي‌دهد.