Mehrdad Oskouei

mehrdad oskouei
مهرداد اسکویی
Personal details
Born September 12, 1969 Teheran, Iran
Tehran

Mehrdad Oskouei (Persian: مهرداد اسکویی‎‎)is an Iranian independent producer, director and screenwriter of documentary films and film educator.

Biography

Mehrdad Oskouei (Born in Tehran, Iran in1969)

Iranian filmmaker, photographer and researcher. MFA in film directing from the Department of Film and Theater of Tehran University of Fine Arts. Most of his films have been shown at respected festivals both at home and abroad with many receiving critical acclaim. His films being shown at over 400 national and international film festivals in over 50 countries and having won over 90 awards makes him one of the most outstanding Iranian documentary makers. In 2010, Oskouei received the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands for his achievements.[1]

Oskouei has attended various international film festival studies programs including The Berlin Talented Campus, The German Academy of Fine Arts, The Amsterdam Academy of Documentary Festival(IDFA) as well as film workshop in France, England, Poland, Switzerland, the UAE under such esteemed filmmakers as: Albert Maysles, Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman, Edward Mills-Aslim , Richard Leacock, Ross McElwee, Nick broomfield, Kim Longinotto, Viktor Kossakovsky, Wim Wenders, Anthony Minghella, Yemane Demissie, Manuela Migoshco, Leonard Retel Helmrich and Walter at Murch, Germany.[2]

In 2010, Oskouie received the life-time achievement in documentary making from the Iranian Documentary Filmmakers Association at the House of Cinema awards ceremony.In January 2015, The Gilan province Islamic Cultural Center awarded him for his archival research and pictorial history of their province.Oskouei directed the Iranian Cultural Special Documentary Committee from 2004 until 2008. His film "The Last Days of Winter" was screened in France in 2013. He was a founding member of the Institute of Anthropology and Culture, where he interviewed many prominent Iranian and foreign filmmakers and artists.[3]

Oskouei has been a judge at over 100 renowned film festivals, as well as being a cultural ambassador for the United Nation's humanitarian committee UCHA.[4] Oskouei is also a on the board of; Iranian Short Film Association, Documentary Filmmakers of Iran, The National Iranian Photographers Association, European Documentary Network EDN, International Documentary Association IDA. He also teaches at film schools around Iran as well as being active in the Tehran Arts and Culture Association.

Oskouei's students are now recognized as the next generation of Iran's documentary filmmakers. Their films are studied at universities and have won many awards at national and international film festivals.

To name of few of Oskouiei's students; Loghman Khaledi, Mehdi Bagheri, Shahrouz Tavakol, Majed Neisi, Atieh Attarzadeh, Sahar Salahshur, Sarvnaz Alambeigi, Azadeh Mousavi, Mohammad Ali Hashem Zehi, Morteza Payeshenas, Ali Hamraz, Mohammadreza Shams, Yaser Kheyyer, Mehdi Shamohammadi, Kourosh Ataei, Shirin Afrand, Noosha Saeedi, Roozbeh Farazmand, Rezvan Sarmad, Narges Falahpasand, Kimia Hendi, Keyvan Mehregan, Nasser Vafi, Mohsen Shirzaei, Mohammadsadegh Jaffari, Mazyar Moshtagh Gohari, Sadegh Souri, Sadegh Dehghani, Hossein Rigi, Ehsan Amidian, Siavash Jamali and Ata Mehrad.

Oskouei has been awarded many prizes. Here is a partial list; The icon from IDFA Netherlands, Icon for best film at Hot Docs festival/ Canada, Golden Dragon award best film, krakow festival, Best Documentary at Munich/Germany, Best film Documentary Festival Montreal/ Canada, Special Award Montevideo Bulgaria,Best Documentary Voladero, Mexico.

Filmography

Oskouei made dozens of documentary films such as:

International Film Festival & Awards

Oskouei and the Media

Many articles have been written about Oskouei, in both the national and international media. The New York Times wrote an in depth article about Oskouei on May 7th, 2011

He is best known outside Iran for his 2006 film, “Nose, Iranian Style,” about the prevalence of nose jobs in Iran, a world leader, per capita, with 60,000 to 70,000 operations a year. That reflects in part the fierce competition among young women for marriageable men after the 1980s war with Iraq, in which 400,000 Iranian men died. But the film’s real target, Mr. Oskouei says, is the consumerism and nihilism of contemporary Iran, compared with the years after the 1979 revolution, when people were prepared to die for their ideals. In his 2004 film, “The Other Side of Burka,” Mr. Oskouei’s camera captures the hurried night burial of a young bride who hanged herself from a ceiling fan in a fishing village on the Persian Gulf island of Qeshm, an all-too-common occurrence in a traditionalist society where young women can feel trapped.[10]

"The women in the film tell their stories which generally have details that resemble each other's lives. Not one story can be found that stands alone. No one character can be singled out whose story is different from the others, but what gives the film variety is Oskouei takes the opportunity to give the women a new point of view in describing how they deal with both major and minor events. While some women breakdown under the strain others are made stronger. It is interesting to see how Oskouei enters into a dialog with his subjects. Women who are restricted in every way are willing to sit down in front of the camera and tell the untold secrets of their lives. This speaks to the director's technique in making such a film. He has succeeded in gaining their trust and their attention and puts them in a situation that they remove the 'burka' from their lives and speak truths that have been buried deep beneath the 'burka'."[11]

A segment from anthropologist Dr. Nasser Fakouhi's analysis of the film. "…the film clearly shows the willingness of women to put their bodies in the hands of surgeons, surgeons who are actually representatives of mythical magicians who "correct" the body according to the will of a male dominated society and to use the modern adage "I give them a chance to be reborn and to use life". In the film one of the surgeons is asked if he would operate on his own daughter. He says, "I have done surgery not only on my daughter but my son and my wife." The doctor speaks for society. He is no more than a tool of society. A mythical magician on a mission to reform creation and transcend society, and as a representative of this transcendent will that he creates, he is paid well for his services. In the beginning of the film, when a classroom of girls is told that Iran is number one in the world for nose jobs, they celebrate and are proud. These shouts of joy come from deep inside; their hatred for the noses they were born with that, according to society as well as themselves, ostracizes them. The foreign noses in the magazines in the doctor's office is what they have to choose from (another scene) and is what they don’t have. This nose in the center of their face (the center of the world, the center of mythical existence on a personal and subjective level) is at the center of their bodies as opposed to the brain, heart, lungs and although it is not necessary for existence, it is necessary to be an accepted part of society. The central position of the nose is a curse of non-conformity and a pattern of reference and shows that this historical curse has become a natural one; those damned noses![12]

Meghan Bantle looks at the film It's Always Late for Freedom in the US independent newspaper William's Record

Translated by: Mohammad Tahaminejhad

" It’s Always Late for Freedom out of the three Oskouei films that were being screened that day. At just under an hour long, It’s Always Late For Freedom was a documentary that highlighted the lives of young boys placed in the Tehran House of Correction. Oskouei also questioned them about their family life, at which point the film revealed that many of the boys were afraid to go home because they might be beaten. New York Times writer James Yong said in his article profiling Oskouei in May, “His knack, experts say, is to capture these deeply personal scenes almost as if neither he nor his cameras were in the room.” It was obvious even without an expert’s opinion that Oskouei’s films give an empathetic view into the lives of his subjects. While I did not get the chance to see Oskouei’s other documentaries, my experience with It’s Always Late For Freedom suggests that those other films also dealt with Iranian issues with the informative sensitivity that Oskouei has perfected. Those who saw him speak or saw his films are lucky to have been a part of art that is both socially powerful and revolutionary for its time and subject matter.[13]

"Our social responsibility is much greater than our other responsibilities and for me it presents with my documentaries. At some point I decided to use my experiences like a framed photograph and hang it up on one of the streets this train of life passes by so that everyone can see. These framed photographs have to be good enough so that they don’t get ripped down and thrown away! So many films have been made and then discussed but the judgment of time that comes for us all is what counts."

While complexity may be seen as the most significant characteristic of the beginning of this century, simplicity is doubtless the last refuge to uphold the illusions and utopias that we have retained from past centuries: indeed, this constitutes the only hopeful option, and it gives us the strength to go on, along paths leading toward – probably ambiguous – goals, which we deem fair and valid. We often claim to know what we are doing and where we are going. Most of the time, we are quite assured that we are able to shoulder our responsibilities. But it isn’t like that. As time goes by and events unfold, we find ourselves locked into dead ends, in a cruel world, full of despair. Of course, one has to exit these dead ends – so as to survive – but it isn’t as simple as it may seem. If we look at things more closely, however, we realise that the paths of complexity often take us – paradoxically – through the framework of simplicity.

This, to me, is the framework within which we should conceive of Merhdad Oskouei’s cinema: stemming from his photographic work, it is an unexpected combination of fulfilling aspects, of passion and love, both wildly unleashed and serenely experienced, intelligent as well as spontaneous. The viewers are unable to avert their eyes as they face a world both imaginary and true. On the one hand, pain, despair and sadness; on the other, childish happiness, youth and easy laughter.

His work, as I see it, is above all a kind of magical syncretism, combining the real life of a young and stubborn artist – determined to change the way of things, following his own course in a rather hostile environment – with the virtual existence of his creatures – able to roam freely beyond the rigid enclosing frames of their ‘creator’s’ filmed shots, wherever and whenever they want, and quite frequently. And Oskouei’s new delight in collecting and publishing ‘historical postcards’ from Iran no doubt displays an inclination further to seek similar ‘actors’. Oskouei lives with his ‘actors’ or his ‘characters’ more than with his films: the ‘actors’ aren’t necessarily real actors and aren’t even tempted to live the life that is actually theirs; it’s as if they were living – in a rather contradictory way – and imposing on the filmmaker a double life, graphic and imaginary, on both sides of the screen, a life flowing in the stream of images projected in our eyes and playing with our senses. And it is probably there that the mystery of this depth resides, the place where pain and worry can so ‘naturally’ join happiness and nonchalance on a bed of bewitching silence and motionlessness. Still, Oskouei’s cinema seems a sort of iconoclasm, as found in experimental films, but it is far removed from those – historically much repeated – instances that lack any sense of reality, are full of narcissism, and are as well manipulating and manipulated by the law of the market and the snobbish rules of the artistic field. With him, by contrast, we are dealing with a rather spontaneous and lively iconoclast. It is a fact that the value of Oskouei’s documentaries doesn’t follow an even course; we can’t position them on a rising curve in terms of aesthetic or intellectual achievement, but instead on the ever-changing ‘electrocardiogram’ of a heart that refuses to beat regularly. That is why we can claim without exaggeration that his films are simply and continually being created, re-created and reinterpreted within the cognitive space of their projection and performance. In my opinion, it is such a ‘virtue of simplicity’ which makes up the core of Oskouei’s œuvre.[14]

Translated by: Mona Dorrani

They are ten to fourteen years old and watching soccer on TV, each one is holding a rag doll. They are young but they are addicts or thieves. The film begins with a group of filmmakers who have received permission to shoot film in a juvenile correctional facility in Tehran. Mehrdad Oskouie, Iranian Documentary maker and photographer is in the center and is deciding on scenes to shoot from the children's daily lives. In the next scene the children are acting out their trials in their sleeping quarters, using correct legal language; it is impressive. He calmly interviews each one and they respond with clear answers about situation and themselves; it is a moving scene. The children use adult words like 'regret' and 'hypocrite' and believe that god is punishing them. The director asks, "Why are you crying?" and one girl answers, "What else can I do?" seriously, what can she do?! She holds tightly onto the rag doll, having run away from an abusive father after her mother died. Those of them who have families can more easily accept a life sentence since they can look forward to visitors. A miracle opportunity arises. The girls are taken to the Caspian seashore. The watch the waves and build sand castles and are transformed into regular excited children. At the end of this documentary there is a refrain, "Heartaches are bored with us."

Performance Art

Mehrdad Oskouei performance art directorial debut at Shirin Gallery in Tehran, Nov. 2015 along with Sarvnaz Alambeigi as well as Atieh Atarzadeh and Loghman Khaledi.[15]

A conversation is a dialog that happens between two or more people. In documentary filmmaking there are many ways of entering into a dialog with the subject and the result is recorded. What the audience sees in the end is the product of these dialogs. In the collection of films shown at Shirin Gallery, the artists struggle to attain this concept of dialog in documentary film through various approaches with this dialog, and then by removing the documentary itself enter into a dialog inside the gallery in different ways. Oskouei explains this performance as "…We have created an atmosphere where adults could imagine what laws they could have broken as children that would have sent them to a juvenile correction institute. We created a minimal setting that resembled the detention facility, volunteers confessed, filled out forms and were given uniforms, they were weighed and measured and were quarantined. Finally they were told that the documentary was about to begin and asked if they were they ready to be interviewed. Most agreed to be interviewed. What took me unaware and made this performance unique for me were the reactions of the participants. Their discomfort and anxiety was enough to transform them into real criminals.

Bibliography

Yasavoli Publishers, Tehran, 1997

Yasavoli Publishers Tehran, 1999

Yasavoli Publishers Tehran, 2001

Nashre Honarmand Publishers, 2013

Realized by Oskouie Ilya Publishers, 2014

Narration

Tehran, 2014

Novin Talkng Book Publishers, Tehran, 2014

Photography

Oskouei is also a documentary photographer. He travels throughout Iran giving seminars on this art. He is undoubtedly one of the hardest working artists in this field.

Group Exhibitions

With Mohammad Tehrani, Koroush Shabgard and Babak Forutani, Green Gallery, Tehran, 2001

With Mohammad Tehrani, Koroush Shabgard and Babak ForoutaniPhoto House of Iran, Tehran, 2001

Pardis Mellat Gallery, Tehran, 2013

References

  1. ↑ http://www.princeclausfund.org/en/news/mehrdad-oskouei-in-ny-times.html
  2. ↑ http://www.cinemakhabar.ir/NewsDetails.aspx?ID=42001
  3. ↑ http://www.anthropology.ir/node/3996
  4. ↑ http://www.khanehcinema.ir/fa/indexfa.aspx?mid=27&NewsID=882&type=8 خانه سینمای ایران
  5. ↑ http://www.dreamlabfilms.com/mehrdad-oskouei/
  6. ↑ http://www.dreamlabfilms.com/mehrdad-oskouei/#more-3111
  7. ↑ http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/przyznano-nagrody-6-festiwalu-filmowego-planete-doc-review/ye2dp
  8. ↑ http://www.edn.dk/video/its-always-late-for-freedom/
  9. ↑ http://www.molodist.com/en/submition
  10. ↑ http://old.anthropology.ir/node/5941
  11. ↑ http://www.anthropology.ir/node/3154
  12. ↑ http://anthropology.ir/node/1036
  13. ↑ http://anthropology.ir/node/12415
  14. ↑ http://www.princeclausfund.org
  15. ↑ http://www.shiringallery.com/exhibitions/conversation-installation-fim-performance/
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, February 14, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.