Friday January 16 2004, 7:30PM ( Buy ticket )
> CRIMSON GOLD
(Talaye Sorgh)
(2003) Directed by Jafar Panahi
A dark drama based on a real-life incident, CRIMSON GOLD is director
Jafar Panahi's superb follow-up to THE CIRCLE (2000). The film begins
with a robbery gone terribly wrong, and then backs up to patiently
outline the steps leading to it. Working from a script by his mentor
Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi employs a dramatic visual style that is both
dazzling and hard-edged. Together, the two filmmakers have fashioned
a subtle yet devastating portrait of social inequality and urban
alienation in contemporary Tehran. They are aided in their task by
Hussein Emadeddin, an affectingly natural nonprofessional actor, who
plays the exasperated pizza deliverer driven to violence by hard
times and despair. Producer/Editor: J. Panahi. Screenwriter: Abbas
Kiarosta
Producer: Jafar Panahi. Screenplay: Abbas Kiarostami.
Cinematographer: Hossain Jafarian. Editor: Jafar Panahi. Cast:
Hussein Emadeddin, Kamyar Sheisi, Azita Rayeji, Shahram Vaziri.
Presented in Farsi dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 97 min.
CRIMSON GOLD is scheduled to open at the Music Hall Theater, 9036
Wilshire Blvd., on Friday, January 31.
>>> UCLA PERSIAN FILM FEST
1.7.04 - 2.11.04
UCLA Film and Television Archive & The Bijan Amin and Soraya Amin
Foundation present
14TH ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF IRANIAN CINEMA
Like the nation it reflects so vividly and thoughtfully, Iranian
cinema is at a crossroads. Iran has an overwhelmingly young
population, and almost all of the selections in this survey of recent
Iranian filmmaking concern a generation of young people dissatisfied
with their present situation and uncertain about the future. In very
different ways, LETTERS IN THE WIND and DEEP BREATH movingly and
excitingly depict protagonists caught between adolescent rebellion
and the search for a place in society. Similarly, a new generation of
filmmakers is emerging as the trickle of titles distributed
independently grows to a flood. Like LETTERS IN THE WIND, TEHRAN,
7:00 A.M. is a first film from this independent movement, and like
DEEP BREATH, it represents a break with the kind of filmmaking that
foreign viewers typically associate with Iranian cinema. Instead of
pastoral lyricism or poetic neorealism, these films focus on the
pleasures and displeasures of everyday urban life.
The tradition in Iranian cinema of combining keenly observed realism
and symbolic allegory continues with another first film, DANCING IN
THE DUST. Yet another first feature, BLACK TAPE, combines two
concerns of recent Iranian cinema-the place of women and the place of
the dispossessed Kurds-but with a harsh contemporary edge unusual in
the films from the 1990s that put Iranian cinema on the map. Our
opening night film, CRIMSON GOLD, is a collaboration between two
acknowledged masters, Abbas Kiarostami (TEN) and Jafar Panahi (THE
CIRCLE). This film too is concerned about dehumanizing forces in
Iranian society. It is a concern with global resonance.
Special thanks to: Mark Amin; Bo Smith, Lori Donnelly-Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston; -Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago; Tom Vick-Freer and
Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution; B鲩nice Reynaud-REDCAT;
Zareh Arevshatian.
All films in Farsi with English subtitles.