Although
Zamani Barayé Masti Asbha (A Time
For Drunken Horses) is his first feature film
and a contender for Camera d'Or honors, Bahman Ghobadi
is an all-around talent on the Iranian film scene.
Born in 1969 in Bané in northeast Iran, he
has made several short films and documentaries,
assisted Abbas Kiarostami on The Wind Will Carry
Us (a Venice competition entry last year), and can
be seen acting in Samira Makhmalbaf's Takhté
Siah (Blackboards) in this year's Cannes
competition selection.
In
fact, Bahman Ghobadi plays the lead role in Blackboards
as the teacher Reeboir, who wanders across mountainous
paths with a blackboard on his back as he attempts
to attract students to attend makeshift classes
and learn to read and write. A Time For Drunken
Horses and Blackboards
have much more in common than first meets the eye
both were shot in Iranian Kurdistan with
its austere landscape, impoverished people and politically
sensitive cultural issues.
Ghobadi
began making short films at 26 That Man Has
Arrived (1995), Again Rain With The Song (1995), Dang
(1996), Part Of The Notebook (1996), God's Fish (1996),
Like Mother (1996), The Reception (1996), To Live
In A Fog (1998), and Melodies Of A Girl From The Steppes
(1998) all were socially oriented with an eye
for the human and the personal. The best known of
these, To Live In A Fog, won awards at several international
film festivals. Along the
formed
his own production company, Bahman Ghobadi Films,
to write, direct and produce A Time For Drunken Horses.
Shot
in and around Bané in the language of the inhabitants
(Kurdish and Persian), A Time For Drunken Horses is
the poignant story of children having to provide for
themselves in Iranian Kurdistan near the Iraqi border.
When the younger of two brothers falls seriously ill
and needs an immediate operation, the older sister
who provides for the family agrees to marry an Iraqi
on the condition that money will be given for the
operation. When they reach the border, however, the
future husband's family refuses to have the sick
sister.
Instead, the boys are given a horse that will help
them earn a living. For
this neo-realist film, constructed around actual
events, Bahman Ghobadi has chosen non-professional
actors from the same family Nezhad, Amaneh
and Madi Ektiar-Dini to play the lead roles,
together with inhabitants from the villages of Sardab
and Bané.
Ron
Holloway
