A movie that teenagers love/ Seventies cinema was ahead of society

Charso Press: The movie “Gijgah” directed by Adel Tabrizi is the director’s first experience in feature cinema, which was recently released in the cinemas of the country and has sold more than two billion Tomans.

In “Gijgah”, whose story is told in the 1370s, Hamed Behdad, Baran Kothari, Behrang Alavi, Soroush Sehat, Amirhossein Rostami, Nader Soleimani, etc. have played roles, and the summary of the story reads: Hasan Khoshnoud is a karate instructor, the book adaptation of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh with He gives the martial arts that he wrote as a gift to one of his students, but he regrets it and wants to take the book back.

On the pretext of the release of this movie with Adel Tabrizi We had a conversation that you can read below:

The movie “Gijgah” can be a risky and difficult choice for a director’s first cinematic experience. What were the features of this script that inspired you to make your first film?

I wanted to make a film that was not in the current state of cinema today, and that my personal identity and my own point of view were also present in that film, and that I did not just make a film, but that my interests, my state of mind, my emotions, and my feelings towards cinema could be seen in it. .

“Gijgah” was a difficult film in every sense, including the number of locations, the number of actors, and other production issues, as well as in terms of feeling. When you want to direct an action sequence, even if you are weak in directing, montage and sound are up to the director and can make the weaknesses of the director less visible, but in a film where human relations are very important and with a classic decoupage. It is made in a cross-sectional manner and if feeling, human relations and look are important to you, directing becomes much more difficult and you, as a director, must pay attention to the arrangement of plans to convey feelings and emotions.

This film was really a difficult task for me as the first film and even Mr. Jirani told me when he saw the film at the festival that making this film was a difficult task especially in the second half as the first film. “Gijgah” had a script that I really liked and it gave me the energy to make this movie from within myself.

Referring to the past in our cinema during these years in the form of comedy creates a superficial look at the film, as if this work, like other similar works, is only focused on comparing this era and making the audience laugh. Were you not worried about this comparison?

“Gijgah” has nothing to do with movies like “Amber Whale”, “Millipedes”, “Fossil” or even “Bomb, A Simple Romance”. In the same days of the festival, I decided a motto for this film, and that was that “Gijgah” is not nostalgic, but it is not anymore. My goal was not to make a nostalgic film, and this film is not a comedy at all, and above all, it is a joyful film that can make you laugh in some situations, and in some situations, even I have seen people cry with the sequence and this reaction in many audiences. i have seen I’ve seen.

It is wrong to compare “Gijgah” with the movies we mentioned and it is a wrong way to enter the movie. Hamed Behdad also said the same thing and emphasized that if this film was just a nostalgic film, I would not have acted in it at all, it is important for me what the film wants to do for today and “Gijgah” with Hamed Behdad’s analysis was that We have to see how this movie is useful for today’s society.

In my opinion, if we want to analyze this movie, by the way, “Gijgah” is related to our society today. It was important for me that this film be a moral and humane work and that we see morality and its effect in society; That people should treat each other properly. Even the presence of Mr. Hashempour was not just for a religious service and we had in mind the discussion of the influence of literature and cinema on the public spirit of the people. Maze has nothing to do with those comedies, although I have to say I really like Amber Whale 1 and Fossil.

On the other hand, the story of “Gijgah” is from the 1370s, and most of the films that refer to that era are from the 1360s.

Why did you choose the 1370s?

Although most of the films deal with the 1360s, in my opinion, the transition of Iranian society took place in the 1370s, and that is when, for example, video was released, society changed, “Titanic” had an impact on Iranian society, and Khatami concluded the documentary. The presidency is sitting and the society has shed its skin socially in this era.

Why did you search for moral and human space at that time? According to the slogan you have considered for your film, do you mean these moral and human characteristics?

I have talked to many critics, experts and people. What the character of Soroush Sehat does with the child at the end of the movie, the way Hamed Behdad confronts Soroush Sehat, when Mehtab wants to get married, she goes to her ex-husband in prison, the form of Hamed Behdad’s courtship in the barbershop, etc., shows many moral lessons and by the way When today’s audience watches “Gijgah”, it seems to me that they are shocked by how complicated people we have become today and how much human and moral behaviors have become weaker in our society and how much simpler everything was in the past.

The form of romantic relationship that you see in “Gijgah” and how two people are tied together is very different from our society today, and the viewer of “Gijgah” from 20 years ago can look at his present day and understand that today we need sacrifice, love and humanity. Are. In this movie, our imprisoned character, played by Soroush Sehat, is a respectable person, and even Shah Rukh, the negative character of the movie (Behrang Alavi), is not like the negative characters of the society, and his badness is similar to the bad men of the cinema, and it is as if he entered the story from the heart of the cinema.

As we see in the film, did cinema have a special place in people’s lives in the 1370s?

Cinema has been intertwined with our society since before the revolution until the end of the 1370s, and people used to learn from cinema and imitate it. A work like the “Green House” series had an impact on the married life of many people, and we learned justice, anthropology, etc. from the heart of cinema, and for sure, cinema no longer has such a function for society.

In your opinion, who is the main culprit for the fact that cinema is no longer related to society as it used to be?

Everyone is to blame for this. I know the reasons for this and this discussion is so detailed that I cannot fully express it in this conversation, but I must say that today’s cinema no longer has a moral and humane function for society, because we are far behind society. Examining the fact that cinema lags behind society requires a detailed discussion, which cannot be discussed in detail in this conversation, but in the past, we had films that were not only not behind society, but were ahead, and this feature was even present in our action films. . When a hero defeats a badman in a movie and people clap and whistle, it means that the energy of the movie is ahead of the energy of the people. In fact, people cheer for a hero who is thrilled by his extraordinary work because they cannot do it themselves. Even social films like “Nargis” that people didn’t applaud or whistle for are still a film that is remembered by people because it is full of emotion and poetry and has a spiritual impact on its audience.

When we have a positive look at the past, we usually face criticism that we have not been able to adapt ourselves to the requirements of the day and accept that we have passed that era.

We have not passed; If you look at the same Iranian films in the past and today from any aspect, social, political, artistic, etc., the weight of the scale is heavier on the side of the works from the 1370s or 1360s.

Look at movies like “Hamon”, “Lead”, “Nargis”, “Captain Khursheed”, “The Doll Thief”, “The Last Curtain” etc., look at these works in any way, even from The psychological and sociological aspects of these films are ahead. In my opinion, even technically, these films are ahead, you look at the filming of the movie “Talisman”, the room of mirrors sequence or “Bicycle Run”, how they were filmed with negative without a monitor, or a movie like “Angelica’s ship in the middle of the sea” was filmed with a negative camera. It is wonderful. If we examine the cinema in any way, we realize that at that time the cinema was ahead of its society, so I do not have a backward view and this issue is shown by the expert view.

Why can’t cinema today be so forward like in the past?

There are many different reasons. Visit cinema universities right now, talk to those who are undergraduate and postgraduate students of cinema and ask how many of them have seen the films I mentioned; Have you seen “Talisman”, “Last Curtain”, “Runner”, “Nar and Reed”, “Snake’s Teeth” and…? I promise you that maybe fifteen percent of people have seen these movies. These same people will become the filmmakers of this cinema in a few years, and one of the biggest pathologies we can have depends on this.

The presence of hope is well felt in the movie “Gijgah”. By showing this space in the society of those days, did you intend to tell your audience that we have gone from hope to despair and emptiness?

The description of “Gijgah” for me is like Friday, when you wake up on Friday morning, you are fresh and energetic, you go to the mountains, have fun and… but when you reach Friday evening, even though you may be in a good mood, there is sadness in your heart. It is formed, which is probably due to the arrival of Saturday and the loss of the day that passed.

“Gijgah” starts with euphoria, we even laugh with it, but the end of the film ends with a sadness that, in addition to the current hope in the film, the audience probably feels sorry for itself. Hope is an important element in cinema, when a hero wins in a movie, you find hope for your situation in society, and we can see this even in our social movies, and in Masoud Kimiaei’s most bitter movies, we can see streaks of hope, love, and family. This vision and hope has been absent for a long time in the general public and also in the atmosphere of our cinema. My film does not want to tell its audience that they should have hope, but at the end, a sadness is formed in the heart of the audience, which I think is related to their present day, and they look at the past when they were better.

Did you pay attention to the teenage audience, who may not be familiar with the concepts of your film, when making “Gijgah”?

I saw a lot of examples where the new generation audience of the 80s came up to me and said how funny and interesting your movie was, and it seemed to me that the teenage audience connected with the work.

The interesting thing is that our film was screened at the Moscow festival, and the director of the festival told me that the fans of your film were teenagers, and when I went to the cinema, I realized how much teenagers connected with the work, and this was an interesting point for me. From the feedback I got from the young generation, I realized that the film was able to find its fans.

What are the differences between the released version of the movie “Gijgah” and the version that was shown at the Fajr Film Festival?

The version that is being screened now has some differences with the festival version in terms of editing, and in my opinion, there is better rhythm and music in this version. Anyway, during the Fajr Festival, we had to deliver the film quickly to the festival, and for this reason, it was necessary to make corrections to the film after the festival, and on the other hand, in order to obtain a screening permit, some corrections were made to the film, which, of course, were not too many and to The story did not harm. In general, it is a livelier and better version than the one released in the festival.

Are you satisfied with the screening conditions?

Unfortunately, the screening conditions are not satisfactory at all. When I found out that my film was going to be released with the movie “Hotel”, I thought that the release of the movie “Fossil” was going to end, but it didn’t happen like that and “Gijgah” and “Hotel” went to other previous movies.

Of course, I must say that this film was helped a lot to be released and I thank everyone who stood by this film to be released.