banifilm magazine interview with mohammad motamedi

– Say some thing about your interests to the cinema.

– I have academic study in the field of cinema. Although I should confess that music has been my first priority in my life, and that’s the reason I wanted to work on music after my education but I found that music has envolved me so much that I have no time to make a film. In fact the last film I made was a documentary film called “tib baz” which could get first grade in thesis festivals. It was of course my thesis and about an illustration of play pigeon(those who keep pigeons on the roof  of their home) and life of play pigeons. I liked that movie a lot.

– Name some films that you like.

– From Iranian cinema , films such as ” Mihmane maman” (the mother’s guest) by Mehrjooi , most films of Kiarostami and Majidi and Farhadi . Of the foreign films I like the works of classic cinema of U.S like “god father” or work of Krussava from the east cinema or work of new film makers such as Spilberg like his last work “the Destrier” which has a straight forward and simple story and  good acting even in animals.

– What kind of cinema is attractive to you ?

– If you ask me as a film maker, I like documentary ones, as I feel I am talented in making documentary genre , naturally. I usually like films which can be believed and understood well , has a good and direct story, has fewer stars or super stars while has good acting , generally, I ‘m a little hard on selection of films.

– How do you evaluate cinema befor and after the Islamic Revolution?

– Having a quick look at Iran cinema we see many years before the revolution some intellectual movements and changes had been appeared in Iran cinema.

Films like “the cow” by Mehrjooi , Qheisar by Kimiyi and works of Ali Hatami like               “Sootah Delan”. Of course most films were good in their genre before and after the revolution and even the musical effects appeared in Iranian cinema, was a sampling of Iranian musical cinema but

gradually a change was forming in artistic thoughts of some actors or artists on which, in my view, established the structure of our cinema after the revolution and I believe that Iranian cinema improved from a surface and dreamy style to a new standard and the taste of most of audiences changed, in turns.

– How was the sings in movies before the revolution and its effects on the atmosphere of our traditional or classical music?

– Ok, those films with those sings belonged to another genre , and we can classify them in the musical genre. Even today , good musical films are interesting to the audiences. Films such as “weep and smiles” or “my beautiful lady” or “Chicage” or “Artist” which could get Oscar reward.

But now regarding to the current conditions in our cinema and the current field in it, using sing  is not ideal enough, except if the singing would be a part of the story , it means that a film about a singer , and that ‘s also up to the talent or sense of the film maker how to use the sing in the film. For example, Ali Hatami (deceased), in my opinion, has already used the best way for singing in his works and Iranian cinema. In the film “Delshodegan” (Lovers) which was the story of the trip of some artists to the abroad to record the tapes.

In the cinema before the revolution, although Iraj’s sings are beautiful and vulgar in terms of technique and feeling, but are in low level in terms of the content of  poems or using the sings  in the films in some cases. But it had an advantage on one hand that sing, which is the original and principal forms of our music, got popular among people and those songs were such as a part of people’s life, but on the other hand it had a disadvantage that was the low level of musical and literal taste or sense of the society, of course in some cases.

In general, most of new audiences don’t select and like these kinds of films and making a change is a necessary work.

– Tell us about concert of “Delshodegan” .

– You know Delshekastegan was a concert of selected works of maestro Hossein Alizade by national orcherstra in which a new orchestration and design written for the orchestra. Some pieces of this work belonged to the film ” Delshodegan” by Ali Hatami (deceased) which was a great

experience for me, and was not an easy work. You know most of these works were performed by maestro Shajarian many years ago and its reperformonce was a little hard in terms of its performance as it could impair the people musical taste, specially for me as a singer, as in the first stage listeners compare the sing with the sing of original singer. Of course I had another experience like this with maestro Lotfi. Both when I had performance of ” Iran Ei Sarage Omid” with Mr. Lotfi and when I had a work with Mr. Alizade, I couldn’t accept any weakness in my work. As Alizade was not the one who I could get a common work with him easily, and I was really honored to be selected by him.

In my opinion, he is the “Saba” (The most famoust and esteemed musician in Iran) of his time and is one of the greatest names in Iran music.How ever , helping my dear friend Bardia kiaras and Mr. Alizade we had an acceptable performance.

– Regarding to your academic major, cinema, how did you see the effects of it on the music and specially singing?

– It may be interesting for those who read this interview how much my academic education, cinema, could affect my music activities. The most important factor is the comprehensive information a film maker should have. A film maker should know and have information in many fields even he/she should be a psychologist , sociologist , historian , graphist and have information in many other knowledge. In general, to be a good director you should learn to understand and recognize your society really well, the happiness and pains and problems, you should know people of your country really well. These are unfortunately the things that our musicians less consider. Today many of musical products can’t response the spiritual needs of the society and the reason is the blocked mind and perspective of composers, but of course we have many open mind musicians. So, what I brought from my experiences of cinema to the music were these subjects.

You should observe a musical product like a film and should have plans for its beginning , for the peaks and for the bottoms of it and you should be able to preserve the listener till end of your work. If the film loses its audiences during it or for a short time, it has lost its strength and the viewer will return to the film difficultly and that’s the thing may be happen in a concert, similarely .