A Film by Javier Tolentino

TEHRANA FILM BY JAVIER TOLENTINO BLINTRODUCINGUES ERFAN SHAFEI CLOSING FILM QUATRE FILMS & EDDIE SAETA PRESENT TEHRAN BLUES JAVIER TOLENTINO | SPAIN | 2020 | MUSICAL DOCUDRAMA | 80 MIN | FARSI | 5.1 | 1.85 | COLOR | +7 DIRECTOR JAVIER TOLENTINO SCREENWRITERS JAVIER TOLENTINO / DORIAM ALONSO DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JUAN LÓPEZ EDITOR SERGI DIES SOUND DESIGNER AND EDITOR VERÓNICA FONT ORIGINAL SCORE TERE NÚÑEZ COMPOSER ORIGINAL THEME “NOSTALGIA EN TEHERÁN” WALTER GEROMET PRODUCTION COMPANIES QUATRE FILMS / EDDIE SAETA PRODUCERS ALEJANDRA MORA / LUIS MIÑARRO EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS JUAN LÓPEZ / SERGIO SANISIDRO / CARMEN FERNÁNDEZ WITH SUPPORT FROM WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF IN COLLABORATION WITH SYNOPSIS Iran is presented as a country with many different faces where tradition and modernity coexist and come face to face. Through music and its peoples, our main character, Erfan, guides us to discover an unknown but sophisticated country. He is an amusing and ironic young Kurdish man who hopes to become a filmmaker. He also sings, writes poetry, lives with his parents and his parrot, but knows nothing about love… DIRECTOR’S NOTES Why Tehran Blues? The first films in the new Iranian cinema had a strong impact on me: the sophistication of their scenes, the unhurried pace and a different concept of cinematic time. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Dariush Mehrjui, Bahman Ghobadi and Mohammad Rasoulof all mesmerized me with a realist approach to filmmaking that didn’t shy away poetry, but rather conveyed a natural philosophy, the day-to-day expression of the Persian people. One day I traveled to the Iranian desert, walked the streets of Tehran, bathed in the waters of the Caspian Sea, stargazed from Kurdistan and perceived that their verses and music were very familiar to me and reminiscent of Europe. I couldn’t understand where the East-West divide had been born. Tehran Blues is born from that fondness for a country that has been cultivating knowledge over thousands of years, and I wanted to convey through film that I was shown an Iran that goes far beyond power and oil. But viewers will have the last word. Erfan Shafei at the home of the late Nosrat Azam Samiei (Rasht) The Caspian Storms There’s an age-old debate on the Caspian coast, whether it’s a sea or a lake. The contro- versy isn’t at all trivial, depending on the answer, international legislation varies and the countries that enjoy its waters today - Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmen- istan - could encounter other countries interested in exploiting the Caspian Sea’s riches. Asghar, an old fisherman in these deep and mysterious waters, reveals how he was on the verge of losing his life several times in these very waters and how American destroyers or aircraft carriers could end up at the bottom of the Persian Sea if they insist on invading Iran. On these Caspian beaches, partitioned for the use of women and men, the sunsets are made of gold and honey, of prohibition. There’s little light and where there is prohibition and sin there are furtive escapades and clandestine rendezvous. In the Caspian Sea there are less and less sturgeons, more crude oil and more tensions, more refineries and less sea. Iranian music and poetry “I can’t understand,” says Golmehr, “that we women are forbidden to sing in my country. Whoever makes those laws must have heard their mothers, their grandmothers, their sisters sing.” Tehran Blues is also a musical; through its music, both traditional and contemporary, some of the keys to Iranian society are unveiled. We made an appeal to invite musicians to participate in the film and the response was wonderful. An old building in ruins, with walls bearing the heritage of an entire civilization, was home to our castings. Amidst the chords of ancient songs and the humor of young musicians, they shared their desires with us. Erfan or Don Quixote of La Mancha in Kurdistan Erfan Shafei is the closest thing I’ve ever come across to the ingenious Cervantine nobleman. His eyes tell you that he’s lost and his own mother confesses it: “Son, you weren’t born in the right country.” He’s humble and divine at the same time, he’s a filmmaker with the soul of an actor, but he gets along better on stage with a musical instrument. When I met him, I thought of Elia Suleiman’s films and wanted to make him the atypical narrator ofTehran Blues. To me he symbolizes the face of the Iran that I love, an ancestral country, steeped in culture, but trapped in its defeat. Don Quixote believed that only his love for Dulcinea would save him and Erfan knows that this feeling is the most prohibited feeling in his country. The great book of birds There’s a Persian book about birds, there are poems in Farsi about the free and unrestrict- ed feeling of the flight of birds of paradise. I’m not sure if the birds themselves are familiar with this free feeling that they convey to us humans. The afternoon goes by, alongside the Caspian Sea, on that beach that’s partitioned and divided into plots for men and women, and flamingos and herons fly over its waters, oblivious to all the vetoes and secrecy. The birds perch, take flight again, leave behind beautiful silhouettes and images against the sunset and the waters that might possibly flow from the Volga. The seagulls with their red beaks make a poetic brushstroke on the waters, allowing the camera to relax and wait almost until night falls. Klasra rice fields (Talesh) INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR - Diego Salgado (Dirigido por Magazine) Diego Salgado.- I liked your film, Javier To- lentino. It has fragments, moments, that are particularly brilliant. And I have several ques- tions, if you don’t mind. The first is if Tehran Blues, in the nooks and crannies of its images, conceals other possible films. Javier Tolentino.- Yes, of course. The images are totally free and contain as many stories as the publishers, screenwriters or directors who have access to them. The editing, as you are well aware, soars over the filmed material until it becomes the genuine film screenplay. Even the discarded images could also have a second chance and a right to their own story. From the forbidden beaches of the Caspian Sea, in the film we see a series of big, black, violent dogs attacking a lonely, helpless and frightened little dog that’s looking for a way out that doesn’t exist, with the sea on one side and barbed wire on the other. What to do? Overcome its fear and show those dogs that its defeat is going to cost them dearly. I’m not going to disclose how that story ends, a handful of images that by themselves, bring the audience closer to one of the great themes in films from the East and Asia. There are many other possible stories in Tehran Blues, including other cities that fall into the subtext of this film, such as Beirut and Trieste. D.S. Watching your film, the confluence of judging, just observing. It’s a beautiful in its images of tradition and modernity, thing that chance plays its role, but the yesterday’s musicians and today’s re- professionals working on the project also formulations, everyday life and poetry, offer their vision, their opinion and their seems organic, very well-reasoned. But structure so that everything, everything one can’t help but ask, what is the narra- seems to be coincidental. But it’s not. tive seed of the film, if it has one, or was it the process of filming itself that led to some of the topics you address? D.S. In line with the previous question, I feel that at no point have you hidden J.T. I believe Tehran Blues was born from what your creative references are, but I’d the mystery, the beauty and even the de- like to know to what extent your influence feat that Persian culture conveyed to me, can be traced to the idiosyncrasy of the from its stories, from its music, its poetry images or to your shooting experience. and, let’s not forget, its cinema. The writ- er and historian Carlos Tejeda wrote the J.T. I’ve never liked the idea of a story first script and Cuban director Fernando imposing the ups and downs or the cir- Pérez also collaborated in the final stretch cumstances of a shoot. So the images of my literary screenplay. But there was a are gradually constructed and generated fundamental change, a natural evolution from a preconceived idea, and it’s true in the think tank at the San Sebastian Film that filming proposes a truth and gives Festival’s Zinemaldia work in progress. you its own vision of the story you want- I’m telling you this because of what you ed to shoot, but these are elements that said about “whether it was the process of you expect to happen, you simply have to filming itself.” Apart from those characters be open to what you know may happen, (people who play themselves but using happening in front of the camera. The a prepared text as a starting point) that cultural references, not only the cinemat- we were searching for in Iran, I had a very ic ones, but those too, must be found in clear idea about the purpose of looking the language, in the intended film, in the to this country, what I wanted to explain atmosphere and even in the tone that the and, above all, what I wanted to convey to audience receives while making the film the audience, and that I had no intention their own.

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