Bahrām Beyzāêi (also spelt Beizāi, Beyzāêi, Persian: بهرام بیضائی; born 26 December 1938) is an Iranian playwright, theatre director, screenwriter, film editor, and ostād ("master") of Persian letters, arts and Iranian studies.
Beyzaie is the son of the poet Ne'matallah Beyzai (best known by his literary pseudonym "Zokā'i").[2] The celebrated poet Adib Beyzai, one of the most profound poets of 20th-century Iran, is Bahram's paternal uncle.[3] Bahram Beyzaie's paternal grandfather, Mirzā Mohammad-Rezā Ārāni ("Ebn Ruh"), and paternal great-grandfather, the Mulla Mohammad-Faqih Ārāni ("Ruh'ol-Amin"), were also notable poets.[4]
Despite his belated start in cinema, Beyzai is often considered a pioneer of a generation of filmmakers whose works are sometimes described as the Iranian New Wave. His Bashu, the Little Stranger (1986) was voted "Best Iranian Film of all time" in November 1999 by a Persian movie magazine Picture World poll of 150 Iranian critics and professionals.[5] Still, even before the outset of his cinematic career in 1970, he was a leading playwright (as well as theatre historian), so much so that he is often considered the greatest playwright of the Persian language, and holds a reputation as "The Shakespeare of Persia".[6][7]
Beyzaie was born in Tehran, to a poet, anthologist and biographer father and a housewife mother. His father made a living through a legal occupation and could reasonably attend to his literary interests.
Beyzai attended the Dar'ol-Fonoun high school as an adolescent, where he did not spend a good time getting along, skipped classes and went to the movies, and in his late teens composed his earliest dramatic pieces.
The young Bahram did not seem very interested in his family legacy, poetry, which was pursued by his father, uncles and cousins. In high school, the Dar'ol-Fonoun,[8] he wrote two historical plays which went on to become his preferred method of writing.
At the age of 21, he did substantial research on the traditional Persian plays, particularly 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 study 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 Persian painting.
Career
Playwriting in the 1960s
In 1968, Beyzai was one of the nine founders of the Iranian Writers' Guild, a highly controversial organization in the face of censorship. In 1969, he was invited to teach at the Theater Department of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran. He chaired this department from 1972 to 1979. With his readership, many prominent authors and artists started teaching at the department and created the most fruitful period in the history of that department.
Beyzaie's groundbreaking A Study on Iranian Theatre (Namayesh dar Iran), published in mid-1960s is still considered the most important text on the history of Iranian theater. Beyzaie is also the first scholar in Iran to publish books on theatre of Japan and theatre of China.
His poetic vein is unmistakable. He writes as though he had a sad look in his eyes, a detached and philosophical understanding in his tone. A vague sense of destiny haunts his plays.[9]
Some of his plays, such as his masterpiece Death of Yazdgerd, have been translated into numerous languages and performed worldwide. Death of Yazdgerd has been performed in Iran, France, England, India and the USA, among other countries, and was made into a film of the same name by Beyzai in 1981. Death of Yazdgerd and Kalat Claimed have been translated into English by Manuchehr Anvar.
the 1970s and the outset of a cinematic career
In 1969, he began his film career by directing the short film Amu Sibilou (Uncle Moustache) followed by "Safar" in 1970. With these films, Beyzai is often considered to be a pioneer of the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that was started in the late 1960s.
Immediately after, in 1971, he made his first feature film Ragbar (Downpour) which critics regard to this day 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 Qaribe va Meh (Stranger and the Fog) (1974), Cherike-ye Tara (Ballad of Tara) (1979), Bashu, the Little Stranger (1986, released in 1989), Shāyad Vaghti digar (Maybe Another Time) (1988) and Mosaferan (Travellers) (1992).
Filmmaking in the 1980s
In 1981, the revolutionary leaders started the Iranian Cultural Revolution, as a result of which Beyzaie, among many others, was expelled from the university. He continued writing and making films, though. His screenplay Ruz-e Vaqe'e (The Fateful Day) was adapted into a film in 1995 and another screenplay was adapted into a film named Fasl-e Panjom (The fifth season) in 1996, while he also made four of his finest films. He also edited Ebrahim Hatamikia's Borj-e Minu (Minoo Tower).
1990–present
He married the actress and make-up artist Mozhdeh Shamsai in 1992. After Mosaferan, he failed to get a permit to produce several screenplays. In 1995, he left Iran for Strasbourg at the invitation of the International Parliament of Writers. Soon however, he returned and staged The Lady Aoi in Tehran.
In 2001, he made his best-selling film Killing Mad Dogs, after which he managed to stage three plays before he left Iran for the United States.
He left Iran in 2010 at the invitation of Stanford University, and has since been the Daryabari Visiting Professor of Iranian Studies, teaching courses in Persian theatre, cinema and mythology. He has given workshops on the Shahnameh, the history of Iranian performing arts, Iranian and Semitic myths, etc. He has also staged several plays, including his nine-hour Tarabnameh.
Cinematic style
... 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...[10]
Some people in our old and enduring culture assume iconic significance for reasons far beyond our crooked measures. Beizai is one of them. When the annals of our contemporary history are written, Beizai will have the same significance as Hafez.[11]
He is known as the most intellectual and conspicuous "author" in Iranian cinema and theater. The main theme of his works is the history and "crisis of identity," which is related to Iranian cultural and mythical symbols and paradigms. He is considered Iran's most prominent screenwriter in terms of the dramatic integrity of his works, many of which have been made into films.
Reception and criticism
Critics have often praised Beyzai above all Persian filmmakers as well as playwrights. He was voted the best Persian filmmaker in 2002, and his Bashu, the Little Stranger was voted the finest Persian film ever. All the same, his formalism has occasionally raised criticism, even from himself. Ebrahim Golestan, who had previously objected to Beyzai's style, praised him in a letter in 2017.
Beyzaie has over 50 published plays, some of which are as follows. These works have occasionally appeared in French, English, German and other translations.
"Gorob dar Diari Garib" (Evening in a Strange Land, translation into English by Gisele Kapuscinski)
"Chahar Sandoogh" (Four Boxes, translation into English by M.R. Ghanoonparvar and John Green)
During the making of Ballad of Tara in 1978, Beyzai and his crew in Lisar Castle started a troupe whose name remained in use until the 2000s: Lisar troupe.
^Two thousand verse lines by Zokā'i Beyzāie, of a total of six thousand, were published in 1978 (1357 AH) in a book entitled Yad-e Bayzā (The White Hand); Bayzā in Persian is the literary word for White. See Arash Fanā'iān, Gofteman-e Iran, 20 January 2008. [1][permanent dead link].
^Arash Fanā'iān, Gofteman-e Iran, 20 January 2008. [2][permanent dead link]. It is noteworthy that Adib Ali Beyzāie's son, Hossein Beyzāie, is also a poet; his literary pseudonym is Partow (Ray of Light).
^For an illustrated report on Dar'ol-Fonoun see: Hamid-Reza Hosseini, Dar'ol-Fonoun in want of Love ("Dar'ol-Fonoun dar hasrat-e eshq"), in Persian, Jadid Online, 22 September 2008, [4]. The pertinent photographs (15) can be viewed here: [5]. The following is the photograph of what used to be the amphitheatre of Dar'ol-Fonoun: [6].
Talajooy, Saeed (2023). Iranian Culture in Bahram Beyzaie's Cinema and Theatre: Paradigms of Being and Belonging (1959-1979). London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing (I.B. Tauris). ISBN 9780755648665.
Yar-Shater, Ehsan (1984). "The Modern Literary Idiom". In Ricks, Thomas M. (ed.). Critical Perspectives on Modern Persian Literature. Three Continents Press. pp. 42–62. ISBN0-914478-95-8.
Contemporary Persian and Classical Persian are the same language, but writers since 1900 are classified as contemporary. At one time, Persian was a common cultural language of much of the non-Arabic Islamic world. Today it is the official language of Iran, Tajikistan and one of the two official languages of Afghanistan.
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