Downpour (film)

Downpour (Persian: رگبار‎, translit. Ragbār) is Bahram Bayzai's first feature film in black and white made in 1971.

Downpour
Directed byBahram Bayzai
Produced byBarbod Taheri
Written byBahram Bayzai
StarringParviz Fannizadeh, Parvaneh Massoumi, Mohammad-Ali Keshavarz
CinematographyMehrdad Fakhimi
Edited byMehdi Rajaian
Release date
  • 1972 (1972)
Running time
122 minutes
CountryIran
LanguagePersian

Cast

About the film

Although the film circulated in various VHS and digital formats, mostly in poor quality, the only known surviving original copy of the film was a positive print with English subtitles in possession of the film maker; badly damaged with scratches, perforation tears and mid-frame splices. Restoration required a considerable amount of both physical and digital repair.

Restored in 2011 by Cineteca di Bologna/L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project and Bahram Beyzai, the film drew quite some international attention and was shown in Italy and the US. Martin Scorsese remarked:[1]

I'm very proud that the World Cinema Foundation has restored this wise and beautiful film, the first feature from its director Bahram Bayzaie. The tone puts me in mind of what I love best in the Italian neorealist pictures, and the story has the beauty of an ancient fable – you can feel Bayzaie's background in Persian literature, theater and poetry. Bayzaie never received the support he deserved from the government of his home country – he now lives in California – and it's painful to think that this extraordinary film, once so popular in Iran, was on the verge of disappearing forever. The original negative has been either impounded or destroyed by the Iranian government, and all that remained was one 35mm print with English subtitles burned in. Now, audiences all over the world will be able to see this remarkable picture.

And Bahram Beyzai noted about his revisionist attitude that,[1]

During Downpour, the equations of commercial and intellectual films were the same. The common morality of the action/drama films of the commercial cinema had a tone of political ideology and social activism. The intellectual films were praised for communicating with the mass culture. In that sense, I don't want to be popular. Many of these (popular) moralities, in my opinion, are wrong and we are all victims of them. So, I have betrayed my people if I endorse them. I have deviated from the morals of the political parties, hence they have labeled me (inaccessible), not the people. At the heart of my harsh expression, there is a love and respect, for the people, that does not exist in superficial appraisals of the masses. ... my audiences are those who strive to go one step further, not those who are the guardians of the old equations nor those who dread self-examination and self-reflexivity.

References
  1. "World Cinema Project". Retrieved 4 September 2016.
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