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| DAF |
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Written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi
Duration: 45 Minutes
Language: Kurdish
Colour
Iran, 2004
Beta SP
A Mij Film production
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| SYNOPSIS |
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A village in Kurdistan near the border with Iraq.
Faegh works with his wife and children making musical instruments called dafs. A daf is a famous Iranian musical instrument made from sheep's hide that has a special connotation for Kurds. The processes for making these instruments are as interesting as they are bizarre. Faegh and his family try to sell them for a little money, and they live in absolute poverty.
The film shows the pattern of life of this out of the ordinary family whose survival depends upon music. We enter into the life of this strange family through music.
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| Festival |
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1st Jeonju International Film Festival, Korea
The 3rd Kurdish Film Festival Berlin, Germany, 2004
The 20th International Munich Documentary Film Festival, Germany, 2005
The 19th edition of the Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland, March 6th to 13th, 2005, Section: DOCUMENTARY (OUT OF COMPETITION)
The 20th International Documentary Film Festival Munich, Germany, May 6 – 14, 2005, Section: in the competition of the Horizonte Programme
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| CREW |
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Produced, written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi
Programmer and first assistant to director: Bijan Zamanpira
Second assistant to director: Hamid Ghavami
Third assistant to director: Nahid Ghobadi
Executive manager: Behrouz Ghobadi
Director of Photography: Shahriar Asadi
Sound: Hossein Mahdavi
Editor: Hayedeh Safiyari
Production crew: Abedin Aliveisi,
Motasem Naghshbandi,
Omid Rastbin
Daf (Tambourine) players directed by Seyed Bahaedin Hosseini
Delivery: Khaled Rajabi
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| CAST |
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Hamed Mohamadi
Monire Zamani
Elham Bahmani
Saman Bahmani
Maryam Abasi
Faegh Mohamadi
Ayeshe Azarneitoor
Fathollah Saedi
Allah-morad Rashtiani
Dervish Crew: Karim Zandian, Yadollah Malek |
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| A review on the documentary "Daf", made by Bahman Ghobadi
9/16/2004 |
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If timing is everything, then Marooned in Iraq is sitting on top of the world. Acclaimed Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi's follow-up to 2000's heartrending A Time for Drunken Horses once again traverses the treacherous border between Iraq and Iran with a trio of nomadic Kurds, although instead of Drunken Horses' child protagonists, his new film concerns an elderly singer named Mirza (Shahab Ebrahimi) and his musician sons Barat (Faegh Mohammadi) and Audeh (Allah-Morad Rashtian) in post-Gulf War Iran. The three bickering gentlemen are looking for Mirza's ex-wife Hanareh (Iran Ghobadi), who deserted her husband and their musical group years earlier to marry one of the troupe's members and continue her singing career in Iraqi Kurdistan, where she is now believed to be living. Mirza, scared by the news that Hanareh might be in trouble, coerces his two sons to go despite their misgivings, and the three set off across the barren and harsh Iranian countryside in search of news that will lead them to her.
What they discover is a people brutalized by the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, who is engaged in 1991-1992's relentless campaign of bombing both Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan's destitute villages as retribution for trying, with the first President Bush's encouragement, to rise up against him. As Mirza and his sons make their way from town to town, what they discover is a trail of blood and misery - most of the settlements are abandoned, with the men having been summarily killed by Saddam (frequently with chemical weapons) and the women forced to flee into the snowbound mountain ranges. Yet unlike his oppressively bleak debut, Marooned in Iraq is not bereft of levity. From their encounter with a matchmaker trying to appease a dissatisfied customer to Barat's blossoming love for a grieving woman and Audeh's constant complaining about his abandoned seven wives and 13 daughters (and his attempts to find yet another wife who will finally bear him a son), Ghobadi portrays the Kurds as full of resilient courage and liveliness, qualities that have helped sustain these browbeaten minorities during Saddam's reign of terror.
While the threesome face numerous obstacles on their journey to Iraqi Kurdistan and Hanareh - including thieves who steal their motorcycle, clothes, and musical instruments - it is their indefatigable optimism that eventually leads each man to acquire the very thing they've been seeking. Ghobadi once again uses a cast of phenomenal Kurdish citizens with no prior acting experience, and his directorial maturation is reflected not only by Marooned in Iraq's balanced temperament, but also by its more traditional visual approach - the handheld cinematography that gave A Time for Drunken Horses its documentary realism has been replaced by graceful compositions that transfix our gaze on the characters' weathered, expressive countenances. Still, one occasionally wishes that the film were an even more drastic departure (both in terms of narrative and style) from Ghobadi's prior effort. The director revisits a number of striking images from his previous film, including a group of desperate Kurdish smugglers fleeing Iraqi aggression, as well as that film's final image of a young boy carrying his sickly brother across the two countries' border in search of relief. One hopes that by the time this humanistic director finishes his next film; such haunting imagery will finally be a thing of the past.
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| About Bahman Ghobadi |
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Biography:
Bahman Ghobadi was born on February 1st, 1969 in Baneh, province of Kurdistan in Iran. He was the first son of four. He lived in Baneh up to age 12, and got his B.A. in film directing from the Iranian Broadcasting College. Because of civil disputes, his whole family emigrated to Sanandaj (Center of the Kurdistan Province in Iran).
He recieved his diploma in Sanandaj & he came to Tehran in 1992 for his advanced studies. Ghobadi started his artistic career in the field of industrial photography from 1998. He was never properly graduated because he believed everything he had learnt was from his short films. All this experience helped him to expand his individualistic vision of the world. He started filmmaking with 8mm. He made a few short documentaries as a starting point.
His short films, as of the mid 1990's, received many foreign & domestic awards. "Life in Fog" (1997) opened a new opportunity in his career. This film won many different international awards & became "the most famous documentary ever made in the history of Iranian cinema."
With the making of the full-length feature “A Time For Drunken Horses” (1999) he became a globally recognized director. This was the first full Kurdish feature film in the history of Iranian cinema, and Ghobadi is the first Kurdish director in the history of Iranian cinema.
Filmography:
Ding (1996), short movie: writer, director
Life in Fog (1997): writer, director
A Time for Drunken Horses (1999): writer, director, producer
Blackboards (2002): actor
Marooned in Iraq (2003): writer, director, producer
Daf (2004): writer, director, producer
War is over (2004): director, producer
Turtles Can Fly (2004): writer, director, producer |
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