Monday, November 9, 2020

Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Mohsen Makhmalbaf
1)Makhmalbaf has worked in a variety of styles including neorealism and Expressionism.
2)He is the subject of the Abbas Kiarostami film Close-Up (1990) in which a man
    who in real life impersonated Makhmalbaf reenacts how he duped a family
    who takes him in.

Translation: There is space for all of you in Cinema! 

In Salaam Cinema (1995)
1)Makhmalbaf shoots in a documentary style and shows the audition process of a film
    he is casting.
2)He puts an ad in the paper and thousands of people show up.
3)They think they are auditioning for his next film and are unaware that the film is the
   "audition."

In the following scene, Makhmalbaf asks a group of men auditioning for a role to replicate an action scene. One man explains his preference for melodramas over action films.

Salaam Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1995):

This is exactly what we saw Click Here


Link to the whole film Click Here oh no in Portuguese - i translated the whole thing while i watched it in google translate. 

Wikipedia plot:
A well-known Iranian director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, plans to make a film for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of cinema. He placed an advertisement in a newspaper in order to hire one hundred actors. He has prepared 1000 application forms, but 5000 people show up. The result is a riot in which the applicants are trampled on and wounded. Mohsen Makhmalbaf auditions dozens of men and women in front of the camera; their statements, which are by turns funny and touching, reveal the reality of life in Iran. Thus, the director enables us to see and understand those intellectuals, students and children and above all the women, who can not normally be heard or seen. It shows, once again, that cinema is of vital importance in countries such as Iran.



Here's the ending bit


Written on clap board - Laugh

Laugh 2 - she finally smiles
What? We choose?

                                        Maryam Keyhan and Azadeh Zanganeh 

A New York Times article on the film Click Here

Some people became famous in the film:
Shaghayeh Djodat was one of them. Unfortunately not the two girls above. 


My question to teacher for Denah Johnston: 
 I was fascinated by the topic of Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Salaam Cinema. I stayed up all night and watched it on YouTube in Portugese, using Google Translate to understand the key parts. 

Do you have any information as to what happened to the unprofessional actors in the film and if any continued in a film career? I am so curious.

Thanks,
Ida

It looks like you can rent Salaam Cinema with English Subtitles for $3 on Vimeo

This has English subtitles but seems to be a cropped version?

Not sure what happened to the actors (not a lot of opportunity in Iran for this under the challenging political landscape) but I found this an interesting and fairly recent post out of an Indian publication

I also found a version of a more recent film The Afghan Alphabet (2002)

Best,

Prof. Denah A. Johnston
Cinema Department Chair | City College of San Francisco
50 Frida Kahlo WayC126 | San Francisco, CA  94112
Voicemail: 415-452-5840

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