Mohsen Makhmalbaf
One of the present day exponents of
Iranian movie-making, Makhmalbaf is also one of the most active artists
of the post-revolutionary period in his country. The winner of fifteen
international awards, Makhmalbaf has produced some 20 short and feature
length films, most of which have been shown at several film festivals
around the world. 
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 Available Films by Makhmalbaf (on
video/DVD)
- In Farsi with English Subtitles
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Following Films Are Now Available on Video & DVD (NTSC & PAL):
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Boycott
[Go Top] 
Iran 1985. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 85 mins.
Set in the years before Iran's 1979 revolution, Makhmalbaf's The
Boycott is the story of a young anti-Shah activist who forsakes his
family for the cause of leftist politics. His arrest by the Shah's
secret police imposes great hardship on his wife, and his new
acquaintance with Muslim opponents of the regime eventually leads him to
rethink his ideology. "Makhmalbaf's political aim of attacking a
soulless, atheistic left is uppermost in the story" (Deborah Young,
International Film Guide). The director's follow-up film was The
Peddler, which marked a creative turning point in his career, and proved
to be his international breakthrough.
Special Offer: $29.95 $17.95
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Peddler (dastforoush)
[Go Top]
Iran 1987. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 95 mins.
This disturbing and delirious anti-humanist feature was the film that
first exposed Mohsen Makhmalbaf to Western viewers -- and one could
almost hear the jaws dropping, the eyes popping, and the minds
blowing. The Peddler is a trilogy of stories set amongst
the urban poor of modern Tehran, and centered on the cycle of birth,
life and death. Each segment was shot in a different style, by a
different cinematographer. The first, based upon a story by Alberto
Moravia, is a wrenching, blackly comic tale of a destitute couple's
attempts to have their newborn daughter adopted. The surreal, sinisterly
funny second story tells of an unstable young man living alone with his
wizened old mother. The inventive final episode, told from the paranoid
point-of- view of a scared-to-death peddler, draws on the conventions of
American gangster films. Makhmalbaf has described The Peddler as
"a pictorial expression of my views on man's existential situation.
. Special Offer: $29.95 $17.95
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Cyclist (bicyclerun)
[Go Top]
Iran 1989. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 75 mins.
A riveting follow-up to The Peddler, his breakthrough work,
and continuing in the same vein of existential allegory mixed with
social critique, The Cyclist "confirmed Makhmalbaf's unique
ability to turn a grotesque subject into a rich and fertile film which
teases the brain while pulling on the heartstrings" . The cyclist
of the title is Nassim, an Afghan refugee in need of money to pay his
wife's medical expenses. With work difficult to come by, a sleazy
promoter suggests he undertake a bicycle marathon. Touting him as the
Afghani superman, the huckster wagers that Nassim will circle a small
area on the outskirts of town, day and night, for a week. While he
rides, a carnival of society's dispossessed grows alongside the
desperate cyclist. Gamblers, bookies, buskers, food vendors, and leprous
walkers watch from the sidelines, cynically using Nassim's suffering for
their own purposes". "With intense and profoundly affecting
films like The Peddler and The Cyclist to his credit,
director Mohsen Makhmalbaf has to be considered a major talent in the
world of cinema" (Vancouver I.F.F.)
Special Offer: $29.95 $17.95
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Marriage of the Blessed (Aroosie
Khooban) [Go
Top]
Iran 1989. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 75 mins.
"The cinematic flair which distinguished The Peddler and
The Cyclist is stretched to new heights in Marriage of the
Blessed". Makhmalbaf's controversial take on the
Iran-Iraq war concerns a shell-shocked veteran struggling to readjust to
civilian life. Haji (Mahmud Bigham), the recently discharged
protagonist, is a photojournalist engaged to the daughter of a wealthy
family. Tormented by nightmarish visions of his time at the front,
obsessed with famine in Africa and the chaos in Lebanon, and unable to
cope with the everyday indifference to poverty and injustice on the
streets of Tehran, he hurtles towards another mental breakdown as his
wedding approaches. "Makhmalbaf is nothing if not ambitious in the
thematic and visual aspects of Marriage of the Blessed: shot in
colour and black-and-white, with neo-realist scenes of the seedy side of
Tehran juxtaposed against hallucinatory scenes of Haji's memories and
nightmares, Makhmalbaf is. . . . The
film, a kind of Iranian Born on the Fourth of July,
elicited conflicting critical reaction in Tehran. Some considered it an
anti-war, and even an anti-Islamic revolution film, while others viewed
it as an elegy to a generation that suffered while others profited from
the war. There is no question that it is a profoundly shocking portrayal
of a man traumatized by the horrors of modern warfare"
Special Offer: $29.95 $17.95
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Once upon a time cinema (Naseredin
Shah Actore Cinema) [Go
Top]
Iran 1992. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Cast: Ezzatollah Entezami,
Mehdi Hashemi, Akbar Abdi. Colour, in Farsi with English subtitles. 100
mins..
Makhmalbaf's "love letter to the Iranian cinema" is a
free-for-all fantasia in the mode of Buster Keaton's Sherlock Junior or
Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, in which "characters
jump in and out of cameras, projectors and screens, time goes backward
and forward in melancholy leaps and actors appear in multiple
roles". At the dawn of the 20th century, a Chaplin- like
character known as the Cinematographer introduces the magic of movies to
the Iranian court. The pompous Shah, who has 84 wives and 200 children,
is dead-set against the pernicious influence of movies, but at the sight
of his first film he falls madly in love with its damsel-in-distress
heroine, and resolves to give up his kingdom and become an actor.
Makhmalbaf has described the work as a "1001 Arabian Nights"
of Iranian film history, and he pays fond tribute to his nation's cinema
by seamlessly and inventively weaving myriad clips from classic Iranian
movies into the screwball narrative. The film won major awards at the
Karlovy Vary, Istanbul and Taormina festivals. "Once Upon a
Time, Cinema almost defies description as the complexity and
imagination Makhmalbaf brings to it produce a dazzling visual
rollercoaster on which to sweep the viewer along. . . [a memorable]
cinematic fairy tale" (Sheila Whitaker, London Film
Festival).
Special Offer: $29.95 $17.95
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Images
from the Ghajar Dynasty (Gozideh Tasvir Dar
Doran-e Ghajar) [Go
Top]
Iran 1996. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 18 mins.
A documentary short exploring visual works from the Ghajar Dynasty
of a century ago, including the first photography and cinematography
shot in Iran.
The school blown away by the
wind
Iran 1996. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 8 mins.
The school for nomad childen seen in GABBEH is the subject of this
heartwarming short film. It begins as an old man enters the improvised
classroom. The teacher thinks the visitor might be an inspector, so he
allows him to question the children...
Special Offer: $29.95
$15.95
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Actor (Honarpisheh)
[Go Top]
Iran 1993. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 88 mins.
In his feature follow up to Once Upon a Time, Cinema, Mohsen
Makhmalbaf continues the cinematic horseplay with a "contemporary,
semitragic farce about a burly film actor who wants to play only in art
films but is forced by his family's economic demands to act in a string
of trashy commercial movies. . . [The Actor] is a comic allegory
about the rift between traditional and contemporary Iran, in which class
differences and cultural differences are equally pertinent"
(Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader).
Special Offer: $29.95
$17.95
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Salaam Cinema (Salaam Cinema)
[Go Top]
Iran 1995. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
NO subtitles. 75 mins.
Proof positive that revolutionary Iran is as movie-mad as anywhere
else in the world -- and that filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf is just a wee
bit of a misanthrope -- the sly and subversive Salaam Cinema was
intended as the director's tribute to cinema's 100th birthday, and was
one of the great revelations of the international festival circuit in
1995. Trickster Makhmalbaf placed an ad in a Tehran newspaper, inviting
people to addition for his latest project. Thousands of people heeded
his "cattle call" -- precipitating the rather alarming riot
which opens Salaam Cinema. Makhmalbaf then proceeded to film the
"auditions" of dozens of these hopefuls, many of whom are
convinced that they bear an uncanny resemblance to Paul Newman or
Marilyn Monroe, or that their obvious abundance of talent will soon have
them jetting off to Cannes. These supposed "screen tests"
became the stuff of Makhmalbaf's frequently edgy film, with the director
often badgering, hectoring and provoking his aspiring actors, insisting
that they cry on demand or leave, asking them to sing a song or mime a
melodramatic death, or simply getting them to talk about their lives.
The results are sometimes charming, sometimes cruel, but always
absolutely fascinating -- Special Offer: $29.95
$15.95
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Moments of innocence
(Noon va Goldoon) [Go
Top]
Iran 1996. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 75 mins.
Fact meets fiction in the most intriguing fashion in this Mohsen
Makhmalbaf's film . This captivating followup to his acclaimed Salaam
Cinema (1995), which told the stories of ordinary Iranians who want to
become movie stars, is based on an incident from the Iranian
screenwriter and director's youth. At age 17-while a member of an
anti-Shah militant group-Makhmalbaf attacked a policeman in an attempt
to steal his gun. He stabbed the officer with a knife and took a bullet
in return. The policeman went to the hospital; Makhmalbaf went to a
torture chamber hosted by the dreaded SAVAK secret police. He stayed
there until the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Twenty years later, the
filmmaker placed an ad in the paper to recruit actors for Salaam Cinema.
The same wounded officer responded to the ad. In A Moment of Innocence,
the victim and the assailant both get the chance to tell their side of
the story. In the process, they exorcise the demons of their past while
examining how film and memory shape our perceptions. The result ha s
been hailed as a sly, witty film with a script honed to razor sharpness
and carefully hewn characters.
Special Offer: $29.95
$15.95
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Gabbeh
[Go Top]
Iran 1996. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 75 mins.
The tale of a young woman's rebellious love for a horseman, Gabbeh
is pure "magical surrealism, an alchemy that weaves the passion
of a fairy-tale courtship into the very thread of film art. . . The most
otherworldly film at Cannes [and] also the most exquisite" (Mary
Corliss, Film Comment). "Gabbeh adds yet another jewel to
the crown of recent Iranian cinema. . . [It] unfolds imagery so
startling and beautiful that it will keep viewers rapt even when the
narrative tantalizes with poetic opacity . . . full of a master's
unerring confidence. . . [it confirms Makhmalbaf's] reputation as
filmmaker of remarkable daring and sensitivity"
Special Offer: $17.95
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Stardust
Stricken ( ,
Zendegi & Asare Makhmalbaf)
[Go Top]
Iran 1996. Director: Houshang Gholamkhani. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 70 mins.
A profile of the energetic and idiosyncratic Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and a
journey through his unruly body of work. Directed by Houshang Golmakani,
editor of Film Monthly, Iran's oldest and most important film
magazine, Stardust Stricken captures Makhmalbaf at home and on
the set of his films, including the Salaam Cinema and Gabbeh.
It also includes a conversation between Makhmalbaf and German director
Werner Herzog (himself the subject of a Pacific Ciṇmath¦que
retrospective in 1996). Stardust Stricken is dedicated to
Makhmalbaf's late wife and children, who died several years ago in a
house fire.
Special Offer: $29.95
$17.95
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Close-up (Namaye-e
Nazdik) [Go
Top]
Iran 1990. Director: Abbas Kia-rostamii. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 100 mins.
Based on real events, Close-up tells the story
of Ali Sabzian, an unemployed, recently divorced young film buff, who
assumes the identity of the famous real-life Iranian director Mohsen
Makhmalbaf , and enters the life of a wealthy family to make a film with
them. Through a series of tragi-comic events, the father starts
investigating. Within a few days, the imposter is arrested. At this
point, Kiarostami and his crew enter the story to film Sabzian's
trial... The result is a masterpiece about the mechanism of and the
relationship between cinema and the viewer, filmmaking and acting,
reality and fiction.
Special Offer: $29.95
$17.95
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The
Silence (Sokoot)
[Go
Top]
Iran 1998. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbafi. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 75 mins.
In
this poetic feature from one of Iran's greatest directors, a 10-year-old
blind boy travels to the market each day, where he works as a musical
instrument tuner. The boy's gift for sound extends well beyond this
duty, as he hears the music of life all around him. "Makhmalbaf
crafts the boy's world as a flip-book of gorgeous, lyrical images...Makhmalbaf
sees audiovisual magic as an alloy, which stretches the bounds of the
naturalism he is using in the name of a purely sensory experience"
(Wesley Morris, San Francisco Examiner). In Farsi with English
subtitles.
Special Offer: $49.95
$17.95
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Kandehar
Journey (Safar-e Ghandehar)
[Go
Top]
Iran 2001. Director: Mohsen Makhmalbafi. Color, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 85 mins.
Nafas is a young
Afghan journalist who has taken refuge in Canada. She receives a
desperate letter from her little sister, who has stayed behind in
Afghanistan and has decided to end her life before the imminently
approaching eclipse of the sun. Nafas fled her country during the
Taliban civil war. She decides to go and help her sister in Kandahar and
attempts to cross the Iran – Afghanistan border
Special Sale Price:
$14.95 video
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The
Day I Became A Woman (Roozi
ke zan shodam)
[Go
Top]
Iran 2000. Written by: Mohsen Makhmalbafi. Directed by: Marziyeh
Meshkini, in Farsi with
English subtitles. 85 mins.
The stories of three women enslaved by
love in Iran. On the morning of the day she turns 9, Havva is kept from
joining her friends to play outside of the house. She is warned by her
mother and grandmother that she has become a woman ....
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Check
out another 63 Award Winning Films
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Iran (with English Subtitles): Click
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