Bahram Baizai; The one who carries the burden of being Iranian

“Don’t talk about failure, sweeten your mouth.” – Dialogue from the movie Passengers

Bayzai and Iran

Baizai may be carrying the burden of being Iranian alone. He wrote so many plays that he could not perform all of them, he wrote many screenplays that he made only a few of them, and he researched about Iran all his life and wrote about Iran and worked and did not work for Iran.

The show in Iran is perhaps still the most important book about the country’s show history, which he wrote at the age of twenty-five. He also wrote the show in China and the show in Japan. He did not write without research; His dozens of plays and screenplays are all research projects, all of them are Iranian history books. As an employee, he used to write under the scornful gaze of his colleagues. At a time when everyone was angry and depressed, he staged plays and made movies. When they told him not to work and sit and watch, he just worked and worked.

In response to the stabbings of Qaiser Masoud Kimai, who was applauded and whistled by everyone and called a rebel against the oppression of the time, he made the barrage. The story of a simple and kind teacher who falls in love with his student’s sister and wants to perform a play with the school children. Played by Khodabyamarz Parviz Fenizadeh who became a pity in his youth. A teacher doesn’t draw a knife and play lotteries in the face of oppression, he puts his head down and leaves and says, “You are cheap; Just like his fate, who died in exile.

Ovality and its cinema

He started making films from short films; From the center of intellectual development of children and teenagers, like many others, such as Kiarostami and Taqvai. Uncle Sibilo’s short works and travel about marginalization and vagrancy and unemployment of the nation in those last years of the government. His first feature films Regbar and Gharibeh and Meh and Kalag in a strange and confused mood were confused by the eerie situation of the confused middle class of those years until he reached Tara’s guerilla and became a revolution and made his first banned film like many other firsts.

The condition of the oval was strange. Before and after the revolution, it was ignored and sealed, it was supported and won an award, it was banned and not released. Just like his next film, Death of Yazdgerd, which was made on Do Sedavsima channel in 1960, but was banned. A film from the heart of his era. From the defeat of the king and the people turning away from the government and waiting for the next government to come. The film based on Roy’s play starring the charming Sosan Taslimi, which is said to be the most important film in the history of Iranian cinema, is actually a theater.

This is actually a double ellipse; It is half of theater and half of cinema. In these days when the war between Iraq and Iran had started, he wrote Salander for his old friend and colleague Varozh Karim Meshii, which was about the invaders to Iran; Mongol invaders who killed an Iranian dervish. His films all came out of the heart of the day, but they have no expiration date. During the days of the war, Basho made the small stranger, I was young when I saw the film on TV, and that scene where Susan Taslimi, in the role of a northern woman, beats a southern black boy fleeing from the war, maybe his color will turn white, and that memorable monologue of the boy, who says that we are all children of Iran, had a great impact on me at that young age.

Then maybe he made another time when people had placed behind the cinema door the night before to watch it in the Fajr festival of that year and were sleeping there in the movie ticket queue. until we reached the passengers and safe from the passengers. A new era has begun and Baizai’s happiness and mourning are together, and it is in this film that he discovers the good news of Shamsai and stays with him for the rest of his life.

Passengers is about death, and life is about mourning, weddings, theaters, movies, and a ta’zih assembly in the heart of the cinema. In the new decade, money comes first. Business and company and repair and construction. Putting money on money. Embezzlement, theft and escape born from the heart of new programs. Baizai’s answer to these people is to kill a dog, played by Mojdeh Shamsai in the role of a woman in love with her profession, who has to fight with all the men in the society, each of whom bears the sins of the society of those days, in order to free her husband.

Little by little, the oval becomes grumpy and the result of this complaint is in the 80s when we were all asleep. Movie in a movie in the style of Japanese Kabuki theater; An irony about his own situation and the cinema and society in those days of the new government, which, of course, was also screened during Nowruz. Apart from writing and directing, let’s also mention his editing. In addition to his own works, Baizai also edited the films of Hatamikia, Masoud Kimiaei, Warozh Karim Meshii, Shahram Asadi and many others.

It was after this movie that he went to California. He held a class and held a meeting and worked with a few other theaters that did not show up to the extent of the works he did in the homeland and mostly remain in the mouth. It is as if Baizai has nothing to say about Iran; Just like Tarkovsky’s films in exile, about which Von Trier says that without the shackles of the Soviet Union on Tarkovsky’s neck, his films no longer had the same strength as before. Talk about oval and theater.

Baidaei and his plays

Baizai’s writing is influenced by ancient Iranian texts. Avesta, Ardavirafnameh, Yadgar Zariran and other Sasanian texts, as well as the tone of the translation by Ibrahim Pourdaoud. Baizaei has worked a lot on Iranian and Asian myths and has interesting opinions about them, which he has discussed in most research texts and plays.

Baida’i language and literature is as if we are reading a Sasanian Pahlavi text. Each of his plays is a readable literary work about Iran; Ancient Iran, Middle Ages Iran and Contemporary Iran.

He starts his playwriting with three texts of Arash, Azhdi Dehak and the work of Bandar Bidakhsh, which become three readings. When I saw the theater film of Bandar Bidakhsh’s work, I realized how different Bayzai is in theater from cinema, and his main work is in his theater. The actors of this work, Mehdi Hashemi and Parviz Pourhosseini in the roles of Wazir and Jamshid, were about to fly and set the stage on fire.

The oval plays show off the history of all of Iran. From ancient times to the caliphate of Imam Ali, from the Mongol invasion to Tehran today. All of them come from the heart of research and give information with sweet and readable prose. Beizai has so many plays that it does not fit in this space, but if you want the best of them, listen to me and read them, write down these titles somewhere:

• Mr. Asrari’s press world
• snake king
• Four boxes
• Nadeba
• Memories of the second role actress
• Fathnama Kalat
• Ghulaman war book
• Maple, or the day passes
• beating assembly
• Three readings
• Death of Yazdgerd

Beidai and his women

The woman has always been in the center of attention. Women always stand in the middle of odd jobs. In general, his plays are published by a publication called Roshangan Publications and Women’s Studies. Beidai women tell stories, shout on the theater stage and create incidents and controversy in their films. He has immortalized the most attractive women of every era in his films with unforgettable roles. Young Parvaneh Masoumi with her black hair, Susan Taslimi with her steadfastness, and Mozhdeh Shamsai with her passionate look.

Almost all of Baizai’s films and most of his plays have been about Iranian women.

last word

Baizai wrote, worked and taught from his youth until his last years. He never got tired. It is as if writing, theater and cinema are like drinking water and breathing for him, and a trace of himself can be seen in all his works. Word by word and frame by frame and sequence by sequence.

Read his plays and watch his movies.