This film, released in 1987, won the classics section at the Venice film festival last year.
It was written and directed by the Iranian … Bahram Beyzai, who died just after Christmas this year.
He also wrote plays…was a master of Persian literature, mythology, and Iranian studies…and did much else besides!
About half a century ago in a big London teaching hospital I asked a lady if she could find a patients’ x-rays for me. She wrote down the details on a pice of paper and I was amazed at the beauty of what appeared from her pen …she explained that it was Persian script…
I haven’t watched a film for a long time, perhaps this was the link that made me write down the name of the play when I heard of Bahram Beyzai’s death on the radio…
I am glad that I did… and maybe you’d also find it a very heart-opening experience…
You can watch the entire film on YouTube.
I don’t like to know much about the details or what others have seen in a film, play, place or whatever, beforehand…so I can see it freshly…but to know that the people of the south are generally of much darker skin colour than the north was helpful in understanding some of the reactivity that Bashu encounters…and to know that the language each area uses at home is very different… was helpful.
The film reveals itself …no doubt uniquely to each of us, through our conceptualising lenses, filters… mood attention and so on … and perhaps more universal themes emerge the less clearly the film is pinned in time and place.
If you’d like to read more about it afterwards [or before ] here is a very sensitive, perceptive and appreciative in-depth review by Bijan Tehrani
There is a sangha film-club started by Ben Goddard and others…which offers the opportunity to meet together and discuss a film, exploring with and through others eyes and dharma perspective…
Do get in touch with him if you are interested… …. through connectivity and openness there’s so much that can help facilitate the widening and deepening of our narrowed views…
Praying in these turbulent times for naturally occurring bodhicitta to arise in the minds of those in Iran and all beings caught up in the suffering of samsara…so may all be free of aversion to enemies and strangers and clinging to friends and relatives..
