Bahram Bayzai

بهرام بیضایی Bahram Beizai
Born	December 26, 1938 (1938-12-26) (age 68) Tehran, Iran
Occupation	Film director, Theatre director, Screenwriter, Playwright

Bahram Bayzai (also spelt Bahram Beizai, Bahram Beyzaie, Persian: بهرام بیضایی , born 26 December 1938 in Tehran) is an Iranian film director, theatre director, screenwriter, playwright, film editor, producer, and researcher.

Bayzai is part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and includes other pioneering directors such as Abbas Kiarostami,Khosrow Sinai, Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Shahid Saless, and Parviz Kimiavi. The filmmakers share many common techniques including the use of poetic dialog, references to traditional Persian art and culture and allegorical storytelling often dealing with political and philosophical issues.

Early career

Bahram Bayzai as a young man in the early 1960s during his period of Perisan artistic study

Bayzai was interested in the arts from a very young age. In high school he wrote two historical plays which went on to become his preferred method of writing. He studied literature at Tehran University, but started skipping school from around the age of 17 in order to go to movies which were becoming popular in Iran at a rapid pace. This only fed his hunger to learn more about the cinema of Iran and the visual arts. At the age of 21 he did substantial research on the traditional Persian plays, Book of Kings (Shahname) and Ta'zieh and by 1961 he had already spent a great deal of time studying-and researching other ancient Persian and pre-Islamic culture and literature. This in turn led him to studying Eastern Theatre and traditional Iranian theatre and arts which would help him formulate a new non-western identity for Iranian theatre. He also became acquainted with Perisan painting. He taught theater and drama at the University of Tehran and was one of the most active writer/directors for the stage. The number of plays he has published is in the hundreds.

By late 1961 he had already published numerous articles in various arts and literary journals. In 1962 he made his first short film (4 minutes) in 8mm format. In the next two years he wrote several plays and published "Theatre in Japan".

In the next eight or so years of his life throughout the early to late 1960s, Bayzai dedicated to writing in various publications about Eastern art and Persian literature enabled through his extensive study and also wrote a number of essays about Iranian cinema which later became the subject of one of his books. It is during this period he write the popular books which are often regarded as masterpieces; The Eight Voyage of Sinbad, Banquet, Serpant King, Dolls, The Story of the Hidden Moon and many more.

In 1968, Beyzai became one of the first people to join the Iranian Writer's Guild, a highly controversial organization in Iran in the face of censorship, known as the Kanun-e Nevisandegan-e-Iran.

Theatrical career and playwriting

The Marionettes puppet play

Bayzai's early study and interest in drama and the theatre Less well-known is his early work as a dramatist. As a young man Bayzai had always been fascinated by the traditions of Iranian theatre, and this included the puppet theatre. His Seh Nemayesh Nameh-ye 'Arusaki ("Three Puppet Plays") was published in 1963, and The Marionettes was the first of these three plays. But for all that it is unmistakably based on the model of the traditional puppet theatre, The Marionettes is shaped by other traditions too. It is the work of someone au fait with the work of Pirandello and the Theatre of the Absurd. In the 1960s plays by dramatists such as Beckett and Ionesco were often translated into the Persian language and performed in Iran soon after their premieres in the West). Drawing on these varied influences, Bayzai's play is a little-known master-piece of twentieth-century drama.

The majority of his films such as Death of Yazdgerd have all been made into successful theatre/stage plays.

Cinematic career

Bashu, the Little Stranger (1989)

In 1969 he began his film career by directing the short film Amoo Sibilou (Uncle Moustache)followed by Safar in 1970.

Immediately after in 1971 he made his first feature film Ragbar ( Downpour ) which to this day is regarded by critics as one of the most successful Iranian films ever made. The successful film addresses the late Parviz Fannizadeh as its central character and protagonist..

Since then he has produced and directed 8 films including Stranger and the Frog (Gharibe va Meh) (1974), Ballad of Tara (Cherikeye Tara) (1980), Bashu, the Little Stranger (1986, released in 1989), Shāyad Vaghti Deegar (1988) and Travellers (Mosaferan) (1992). He has also written the screenplay to Rooz-e Vaghe'e (Day of Incident) in 1995 and Fasl-e Panjom in 1996, whilst also editing Minoo Tower (Borj-e Minoo).

Cinematic style

He is known as the most intellectual and conspicuous “author” in Iranian cinema. The main theme of his works is the history and “crisis of identity” which is related to Iranian cultural and mythical symbols and paradigms.

Reception and criticism

Bayzai has made significant contribution to the development of the Cinema of Iran and theatre and is regarded as one of the influential directors and innovators of the Iranian New Wave movement of cinema. He is also considered as Iran’s most prominent screenwriter in terms of dramatic integrity of his works, many of which have been made into films.

However, despite the popularity of his films and his substantial knowledge of the arts, like other Iranian film directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, the Government of Iran has never supported his career, neither before nor after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Even after some 20 years, his films such as Ballad of Tara (1980) and Death of Yazdgerd (1981) have never received a screening permit in Iran. Both films have been shelved due to the fact that they are not in accordance with the Islamic code currently in operation in Iranian motion pictures. Even Bashu, the Little Stranger almost reached the same fate in 1986 due to the fact the subject content of the film about a little boy orphaned by his parents lost in war. The film was only legalized after the end of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War and was released in 1989.