30 April, 1, 7 & 8 May 2003
Westbourne Studios, 242 Acklam Road, London W10
7pm-11pm
Admission Free.


Portobello Film Festival is
proud to present an
Iranian Film Festival

Running on 30th April and 1st May, and the 7th May and 8th May between 7pm and 11pm the Portobello Iranian Film Festival features a feast of new Iranian short films by modern masters such as Bayram Fazli, Farshad Hekmat, G. Reza Razavi and Saeed Nouri.

Admission to all sessions is free.

The Festival was inspired by the excellence of contemporary Iranian Cinema, far more sophisticated than much other contemporary product. The films have grace, pace, poetry, and wit, mostly filmed on digital in natural light with spare dialogue and small casts they are an object lesson in low budget film making.

Themes range from a farmer who loves his cow more than his wife (‘Joining Up’/Ebrahim Saeedi) to several timely works on the Iran/Iraq war (‘Trench On The Other Side’/Bayram Fazli and ‘Like All Human Beings’/Saeed Tarazi). Mysticism is never far from the surface (‘Parhoodeh’/Rozetter Ghadery). The titles alone conjour magical worlds (‘Nobody Thinks About Fishes’/ Ali Esmati, ‘The Well Of Whispers’/Mostafa Jalaiffakhr, Dervish Of Metals’/Mahmoud Yarmohamadlou, ‘Solar Eclipse Narrated By Wind’ (Javad Emami), ‘A Timeless Moment’/Farshad Hekmat).


Wednesday 30th April
(7pm-11pm)

Resurrection
(Farshad F.Hekmat)
14 mins. Drama. A film about Jacobs ladder.

Parnanian
(Orod Atarpoor)
30 mins. Documentary. A tale of a dying wife and son.

A Timeless Moment
(Farshad Hekmat)
48 mins. Drama. A woman’s mystical relationship with the sea.

Reattachment
(Saeed Nouri)
12 mins. Drama. Two contradictory stories of a young couple who cannot watch a film together accompanied by a suicide and a dubbing of the last scene of Godard’s “Alphaville.”

The Smell Of Fresh Bread
(Muhammad Arzang)
46 mins. Drama. Story of a young and confused student who is about to lose his girlfriend due to his chaotic lifestyle.

The Windows Of Heaven
(Mehdi Parizad)
20 mins Mohammad, an African boy who works with his master in an Iranian mosque, faces problems on his return to Afghanistan.

Nobody Thinks About Fishes  
(Ali Zamani Esmati)
17 mins. Drama. A story of hope amongst the chaos and degradation in an Iraqi/Kurdish refugee camp.

Good Soil
(Ali Zamani Esmanti)
16 mins. Drama. In a desert without any water an Afghan boy has fallen in love with a girl who is looking for water with her blind grandfather.

The Well
(Bayram Fazli)
10 mins. A tragic love story woven metaphorically around a seemingly dry well.

Night Under The Sky  
(G. Reza Razavi)
14 mins. Drama. An ageing man visits his grandchild for the New Year ceremony but falls out with his daughter-in-law and returns home in a taxi at midday.

The Trench On The Other Side  
(Bayram Fazli)
14 mins. Drama. During the war disillusioned soldiers come to know who the real enemy is.


Thursday 1 May (7pm-11pm)

The First Iranian Actress
(Madjid Faadaii)  
25 mins. Documentary.
An Iranian film actress rejected by religious society for her acting recalls her bitter memories.

Caravan
(Moshen Amir Yousef)
15 mins. Documentary. A look at a very special religious ceremony in Isfahan.

The Dairy
(Mohammadali Safoura)
6 mins. Art. In the Spring of 2002 six little girls were drowned in a Tehran city park pool. This is an experimental chronicle of that tragic event.

Rule Of The Game
(Nadear Tarighat)
2 mins. Animation. Peace in Chess play.

Passion Of Killing
(Alimohammed Ghasemi)
22 mins. Documentary. A forester who feels a deep sympathy with nature and the native animals is given a job guiding foreign hunters during the season of the hunt.

Whisper Of Waves
(Azam Najafian).
30 mins. Documentary. In Southern Iran fishermen are listening carefully to the sea in the middle of the night. Hearing some special fishes that are making love they find the hunt is on.

Lost Windows
(Masoud Bakhshi and Majid Hamidian)
50 mins. Documentary.
The Iranian experience of searching for the “European Dream.” A cautionary tale about the realities of seeking asylum in European countries.

Dervish Of Metals
(Mahmoud Yarmohamadlou)
20 mins. Documentary. A look at the works of Ali Zarifi, the Iranian maestro of Ghalamzani, the art of carving on metal.

The Daughters Of Sunshine
(Medhi Naderi)
28 mins. Fictional Documentary. A true story of two sisters who live together but are completely different.

The Colour Of Voyage
(Nader Tarighat)
20 mins. Documentary. A look at the works of a village artist who is inspired by the colours of nature and paints with his fingers.

Joining Up
(Ebrahim Saeedi)
22 mins. Fictional Documentary. An old man prepares a memorial ceremony for his dead wife. He buys a cow  but before the slaughter he finds he has affectionate feelings towards the cow.


Wednesday 7 May (7pm-11pm)

Infinite
(S. Saffaee)
42 mins. Documentary about the making of “Resurrection”.

Moonlight Pastoral
(Farshad F. Hekmat)
30 mins. Art.

Parhoodeh
(Rozetter Ghadery)
22 mins Drama A woman on a trip with her friends and her husband gets lost in the jungle. During her wandering she discovers a cottage belonging to a painter. She experiences strange feelings about the painter who it turns out was a past lover from a former life.

The Songs Of The Grey Man  
(Amir Shahab Razavian)
35 mins. Fictional Documentary. Bittersweet romance between two old people.

Nightmare  
(Shahab Mirzaei)
5 mins. Drama. A filmmaker is searching for a subject to make a film about. During his search he faces some problems.

Solar Eclipse Narrated By Wind
(Javad Emami)
16 mins. Documentary. Nader Tabrizi is an 80-year-old man living alone in Southern Iran. He earns his living by charging local boys to use his airgun to practise their shooting. The neighbours tell us frankly what they really think of Mr Tabrizi.

Like All Human Beings
(Saeed Tarazi).
45 mins. Documentary. The human consequences of the 1980 Iran/Iraq war. This film has a new  look at the lives of both sets of captives.
 
 
Thursday 8 May (7pm-11pm)

Unfinished Poem  
(Farshad F. Hekmat)
19 mins. Art.

Born To Be A Soldier
(Fairbourz Kamkari)
28 mins. Fictional documentary.
In Kurdistan on the Iran-Iraq border young boys do military service to earn their family’s living.

Pors
(Iradj  Salavarvand).
12 mins. Documentary. A true story about death in Southern Iran.

Milkan
(Mino Kiani)
30 mins.  Documentary. A look at the Gooran Gholkani and Banzardeh tribes of the Zargros mountains in Dalahou, portraying aspects of tribal life in which women have most of the responsibilities. In Dalhou, woman means life.

Rolling Master Vali
(Mehrdad Goudarzpoor)
11 mins. Fictional Documentary. After Taliban  a young Afghan soldier searches for a girl who he was in love with since childhood. This leads us to the story of Rolling Master Vali.

Between Shadow And Light
(Khosro Sinaii)
25 mins. Documentary. Through four paintings of Iranian artist, Farah Ovsoli, this experimental documentary reveals the eternal aspects of life: Birth and Death, Good and Evil.

The Well Of Whispers
(Mostafa Jalaliffakhr).
20 mins. Documentary Not far from Qom, Iran’s most religious city, there is a Well  that people believe to be a Holy Site. Here they write demands and wishes, putting them into the well to be picked up and read by Eman e zaman, the last Shi-ite Iman.     

Image
(Farshid Azari)
10 mins. Art. Hearing human voices, a statue decides to change into a human being. On finding out more about this human world, the statue prefers to remain a statue.

The Wall Of Life
(Javad Mozdabadi)
20 mins. Documentary. An eight year old girl does a highly dangerous job for her ill father to earn money for the family.