Movie: LETTERS IN THE WIND

Saturday January 17 2004, 7:30PM ( Buy ticket )

> LETTERS IN THE WIND
(Namehay Bad)
(2001) Directed by Ali Reza Amini

In the great Iranian neorealist manner, Ali Reza Amini's lyrical
debut feature focuses on a group of young men at a military training
camp in the mountains. Drawn mainly from the country's most remote
provinces, the conscripts must cope with the punishing routine and
harsh discipline designed to transform them from callow youths into
soldiers. Two of the young men become friends by sharing the tape
recorder one of them has smuggled into boot camp, listening to
recorded female voices from the world outside. Soon the tape recorder
becomes the focal point for the entire barracks, allowing the
recruits an outlet for their homesickness, loneliness and desire.
Amini combines sly humor and near-documentary dispassion to transform
this simple story into moving poetry.

Producer: Ali Reza Amini. Screenplay: Bayram Fazli. Cinematographer:
Ali Reza Amini, Mohammad Taghi Hashemi. Editor: Behroz Kahali. Cast:
Faramarz Hashemzadeh. Presented in Farsi dialogue with English
subtitles. 35mm, 76 min.
>>> 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.

Reviewed/approved by ahmad.