Pars Arts

BBC News – Five Minutes With: Omid Djalili

BBC News – Five Minutes With: Omid Djalili.

Celebrities and news-makers are grilled by Matthew Stadlen in exactly five minutes in a series for the BBC News website.

This week, comedian and actor Omid Djalili talks to Matt about getting nerves on stage, playing with cultural stereotypes, how an exploding goldfish helped his early career – and tells Matt he would have bullied him at school.

(He also talks about his Baha’i faith.)

The Fruit House

The New York Times Home & Garden section goes to Gorgan.

It’s Not Easy Being (A) Green (Revolutionary)

It’s not easy being green / try to blend in with the others in the mob /

Plainclothes police will run you over / drag you over to Evin prison /

Or maybe just beat you with electric baaa-tons

(via mariamjaan.tumblr.com and seaofgreen.tumblr.com)

5 Questions for Angella Nazarian, Author, Life As a Visitor

Angella Nazarian is a writer and psychologist in Los Angeles. Her book, Life As a Visitor, chronicles her family’s emigration from Iran and is available now in stores. For more info, see her website at AngellaNazarian.com.

1. Your book traces your emigration from Iran and subsequent life and travels. Tell us about the process that brought the book to print.
Angella Nazarian: Life as a Visitor was inspired by my two sons, Philip and Eli. I wanted to give them a glimpse at what it was like for their parents’ generation and our emigration from Iran. Heritage and roots are our gifts to our children.

2. In addition to your work as a writer, you’re also a psychologist. How does this background inform Life As A Visitor?
AN: My training in psychology has taught me to be self-reflective and more aware of how my feelings and experiences affect who I am. I definitely think that my writing is more intimate and I truly wanted to offer a genuine piece of myself to the reader, knowing that it will resonate with the reader.

3. I particularly love the title of this book; do you still feel as though you are a visitor? What does this mean to you?
AN: The title has many different interpretations. I do think philosophically, we are all visitors that life is a short and beautiful visit. But I also wanted to highlight the fact that our 2-week visit to Los Angeles ended up becoming our 31-year stay. As I discuss in the book, I consider Los Angeles to be my home now. It is where my husband and I have made our life together and where we have raised our sons. My travel experiences have shaped my point of view and helped me work through my feelings of living my life as a visitor. The challenges I face help me to grow and change in every aspect of my life and every role I play. That’s part of the beauty of life it s about the journey rather than the destination.

4. Throughout the book, you write about your relationship with your sons. How do you think living life as a visitor has influenced your parenting?
AN: I think that for most parents, having a child is one of the most amazing experiences in life. In Life as a Visitor, I discuss my feelings when Phillip turned eleven the same age that I was separated from my parents and how my kids natural process of growing up and separating from me compares to my own forced separation from my parents. Also, I think my experience of being separated from my parents at such a young age has positioned me to really connect with my kids, embrace their youth, and appreciate all of the joys of childhood.

5. Tell us about the personal growth seminars you teach in Los Angeles.
AN: The personal growth seminars came about out of my own need to dig a little deeper to uncover my true potential as an individual. I am firm believer that different stages in life demand different skills from us and it is only with a positive attitude and commitment to growth that we can blossom into who we are meant to become. In my personal growth seminars, we talk about the psychological underpinnings of why we at times feel stuck and how to change our lives in a positive way. These kinds of discussions in the seminars have been one of the greatest rewards for me as a facilitator and teacher.

Interview with Amir Motlagh, Filmmaker

Amir Motlagh is a writer, filmmaker, and musician who recently released “Whale,” a feature film that follows Cameron, a young, unpublished Iranian-American novelist (played by Motlagh) who has just returned home to Orange County. We interviewed him about “Whale” via email. 

whale_feature film trailer_director Amir Motlagh from Amir Motlagh on Vimeo.

Pars Arts: Your new feature, “Whale,” is about an unpublished Iranian-American novelist who comes home to the OC to find his friends haven’t really grown up, and neither has he. Where did the idea for this story come from?

Amir Motlagh: The story is really my sentiment towards a generation of people who are lost in a sort of middle-class vacuum. I had been noticing a mass of mid- to late-twenties people moving back to their parents’ homes, without a concrete sense of direction, with financial problems, somewhat disillusioned, without the family responsibilities that, say, my parents had when they were my age. Maybe they’re educated, maybe not, but they’re frozen because of circumstance. There is a certain belated sense of growing up that might be a generational zeitgeist. At first I thought that this might be somewhat related to Diaspora, but I think that might not be the simple explanation. 

So I wanted to present a story based in that type of backdrop, but without placing importance on those talking points. The film is really about the characters, with the region serving as a backdrop and possibly another functional character.  

PA: The dialogue in this film feels really spontaneous and natural. Since your actors were also your friends, was there a lot of ad-libbing in the film?

AM: Whale is both scripted and improvised. Also, there was a mix of both professional and non-professional actors (predominately amateurs), some of whom I have known for a long time. I cast the film in a way that would create a comfortable and safe setting, enabling a sort of realism to emerge based on personal history, and that way I could maneuver the fictional elements in a less constricted way. But the film is first and foremost a fiction, so the truth lies in fiction. Which elements are “real” and which are not is not a pressing concern as far as the film is concerned. And the ad-libbing that was done all came out of a script and was staged in a way that served the story being told.

PA: You play the main character, Cameron, and your real-life parents play Cameron’s parents in the film. I loved hearing them speak Persian. What was it like working with them?

AM: They have had to deal with their son carrying a camera around for many, many years. But as actors, my mother was very difficult. She is the biggest sweetheart and one of the biggest influences on my own cinema, as she introduced me to many independent and international cinemas early in my life, but nevertheless, our working relationship might be over. As far as my father, he took direction very well. It was a funny experience, but I think they thought of it in a very innocent way, and maybe, they didn’t really feel a movie was being made. I feel that the process of the film allowed me to get into places and use people that would otherwise freeze in front of a larger production.

Amir Motlagh

PA: How do you think the Iranian-American background of your film’s main character colors the film, if at all?

AM: This is a very good question, and a difficult one to answer, but the main character’s heritage affects the film in what it doesn’t do or show. This film is about a type of ethnic assimilation into a suburban setting. You are only aware of Cameron’s ethnicity from one scene in the film, and maybe from some off-handed remarks made throughout the film. I’m not sure if I have seen this treatment of cultural elements in a fictional narrative film that uses an explicitly Iranian-American lead, but maybe the culture itself will start to dissect the process of identity in a more subtle way. 

Cameron is certainly “whitewashed,” and this in itself colors the notion of the film on a subterranean level.  And the film’s cast is a mix of races, something that you would certainly see in the suburbs of Orange County. Suburban culture leads to a type of homogenization, which in some ways is an American ideal. In that regard, Whale is a completely American film, in the context of a melting pot type of scenario. 

PA: I have to be honest – I was a little wary when I read the description for “Whale” because I thought it was going to be like Garden State. It has a similar basic premise – failed artist coming home – but “Whale” is not like Garden State at all, and I think what really surprised me about “Whale” were Cameron’s interactions with his friends – I think viewers would really get the sense that these guys, who are all kind of lost and floating through life, really care about each other. I don’t think men are ever depicted this way in films – at least, not earnestly. Is this something you were thinking about consciously?

AM: Oh God, Garden State, I didn’t even think that the synopsis would elicit a memory from that work. But now that I think about it, I can see where the inference comes from. This might just be a vocational hazard.  This film is as far away from that type of cinema as can be. 

I was thinking heavily about the relationships in this film, which was largely a reason I cast the way I did. And since the work is largely based on a realism paradigm, there is a large sense of objectivism present (not fully, of course);  the viewer has to decide how they ultimately feel about these people, but the men in the film, no matter how disillusioned, share a camaraderie and brotherhood with their fellow “homies.” Certainly, it’s not a mainstream ideal to present male characters in this fashion, but historically it has been done on the independent level.   

PA: We recently posted an interview with Shaghayegh Azimi, a young Iranian who distributes Middle Eastern films. Can you tell us a little about your experience with distribution as a filmmaker?

AM: Well, since my function is filmmaker, my interest is in film production, and I’m trying to get my next project of the ground. Someone else should handle the distribution end. My job is to get people interested in the work, so that someone hopefully comes and acquires the work. 

I only engage in distribution when its my only option, since independent film is a fickle business, and in today’s state, in many ways jeopardized, and many filmmakers will be forced for better or worse to function as distributor as well, but this is not a sense of joy for me. I would rather make movies, build an audience, screen to an audience and engage. As far as Whale is concerned, since it’s a new work, I will approach the film festival as its first route, then take it from there. As far as my other work, some titles are handled by a distributor, and others are not. Eventually, my goal would be to release a DVD of those neglected titles soon – hence, taking over the distribution by necessity. The hope is that by that time, I would have generated enough interest so that the process wouldn’t feel excessively painful.

It’s Been Too Long

Iran is still complicated. Hope you’re keeping up on everything over at Tehran Bureau. A couple of art/culture interviews will be posted here soon.

Iran Election News Sources

Here are some sources for following the Iranian election results and protests. 

Up-to-the-minute: See Twitter – the trending tag #IranElection is on fire – click that link and you’ll get a firehose of news (and some rumors) from people inside Iran and out. Also follow twitter.com/TehranBureau and twitter.com/Change_for_Iran and twitter.com/mousavi1388. The same sort of rapid, crowd-sourced spread of news is happening with Iranians on Facebook.

Photos: The Mousavi campaign’s Flickr feed, TehranLive.org, the NYT, the LAT.

News: BBC Persian and live BBC Persian TV. Andrew Sullivan’s blog on The Atlantic website, The Daily Dish. And Tehran Bureau is cranking out thoughtful, illuminating pieces even as they post constant updates from inside Iran.

Ann Curry’s Inside Iran

Nice job, Ann Curry!

Persian Food in the New York Times

A couple of months ago, right around Norooz, I played tour guide to a food writer, Sara Dickerman, who was working on a story about Tehrangeles’s culinary offerings for the New York Times. We went to House of Kabob and Q Market in Reseda, and Mashti Malone in Hollywood. It was fun and delicious, and she was really cool and open and excited about Persian food and culture. She asked great questions and wanted to try everything.

The story was published today (”Persian Cooking Finds a Home in Los Angeles“). Sara’s a fantastic writer and she did such a great job of capturing the food and people of Tehrangeles. I love that Persian food is finally getting the press and props it deserves, and I love that Sara wrote about the Valley and included House of Kabob, my favorite Persian restaurant anywhere, and I love the above photo of its owner, Agha Mehdi, who has the best mustache in the world. 

Anyway, I think this is so exciting. Please also check out the cute slideshow by Stephanie Diani that will warm your heart.

Thirty Years On: SOAS Conference on the Iranian Revolution

SOAS conference Thirty Years On: The Social and Cultural Impacts of the Iranian Revolution will be held in London this Friday and Saturday, featuring films and panels that delve into the aftermath of the revolution. Here’s a schedule, and if you can’t make it, there are abstracts on the SOAS site that are definitely worth a read.

(Thanks, Leili!)