1. Movies
   - Andre Tarkofski

2. Music
   

3. Literature
   - Foroogh Farrokhzad
   - Sadegh Hedayat
   - Some Children Books in Persian
   - Le Petit Prince

• Movies
• Andre Tarkovsky

When his parents separated, Andrei and his younger sister Marina continued to live with their mother. In 1939 his schooling in Moscow was interrupted; but he returned to the city in 1943. In addition to regular classes at school he bean to study music and drawing. In 1951 he joined the Moscow Institute for Oriental Languages, but he couldn't complete the course due to illness. In 1954 he successfully applied for admission to the prestigious All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. Here Mikhail Ilych Romm became his most influential teacher. His friendship with Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky led to the joint script for The Steamroller and the Violin, Tarkovsky's debut film which earned him the degree at VGIK, and which already reveals significant elements typical of his later work.

Tarkovsky's first major film was shown in Moscow in April 1962. Ivan's Childhood, based on a story by Vladimir Bogomolov (who was also involved in the filming), won the Golden Lion award in the very same year at the film festival in Venice. The international recognition following this success triggered off considerable ideological concern in his own country, which subsequently -- around the end of 1966, after the premiere of Andrei Rublyov, which was shown out of competition at the Cannes Festival in 1969 and won an award there , was cleared for export by the Soviet Film Department only in 1973. Similarly Mirror, an autobiographical film, which was completed in 1974 against strong bureaucratic resistance, reached west European cinema halls only years later.

With Solaris (1971/72), based on a science fiction novel by Stanislas Lem, Tarkovsky touched upon a subject that was still relatively innocuous in the Soviet Union at the time--man forging ahead into space-- but even here his approach generated a long list of criticisms and objections. Stalker Tarkovsky's last film made in the Soviet Union, is based on Roadside Picnic, a story by the Strugatsky brothers. It deals with themes underpinning the world view of the director: the rift between natural science and belief, the future of mankind in view of current atomic threats; and, ultimately, the dim slimmer of hope still left to man.

After a stage production of Hamlet in Moscow, Tarkovsky traveled to Italy in 1982 to shoot Nostalgia. A Soviet-Italian co-production, it is based on a script written jointly with the poet Tonino Gurerra. The them is , however, typical of the Russian dilemma: that of the artist abroad, smitten by homesickness, unable to live in his country or away from it -- a fate that befell Tarkovsky himself in the last years of his life.

In the autumn of 1983 he staged Boris Godunov with great success at the Covent Garden Opera in London. A year and a half later, in 1986, his widely acclaimed book Sculpting in Time got published. Around the same time he was carrying on preparations for his last film form Berlin, where he was staying in 1985 on a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service: Sacrifice, often referred to as Tarkovsky's legacy.

At the end of 1985, after completing the shooting of Sacrifice in Sweden, Andrei Tarkovsky returned to Rome, already afflicted by the disease to which he succumbed a year later, on December 29, 1986, at a Parisian cancer clinic. He is buried in a graveyard for Russian émigrés in the town of Saint-Genviève-du-Bois, France [click here for a picture of the grave].

• Solaris   

• Online Movie Poster Gallery of Solaris
• Pictures of movies
• Study Guide for Stanislaw Lem's Solaris(1961)

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• Music
• Litterature
• Persian
• Sadegh Hedayat


Sadeq Hedayat, the foremost short story writer of Iran, was born in 1903. He was of a highly educated aristocratic family. After finishing his primary education, he was sent to a French school to study French. He received his secondary education there, and was sent to Europe on a government scholarship to study dentistry. He shortly gave up dentistry for engineering, and engineering for the study of pre-Islamic languages and ancient culture of Iran.
 

In Europe, Hedayat was exposed to world literature, especially European literature, and read the works of Kafka, Poe, and Dostoevski. In his solitude, he became extremely self-conscious and devoted a great deal of his time to the problem of life and death. He studied the works of Rainer Maria Rilke and was impressed by Rilke's adoration of death so immensely that he wrote his own commentary on Death in 1927. He even tried to commit suicide in the same year by drowning himself in the river Marne, but he was rescued. He wrote collections of short stories and a novella, The Blind Owl, which is regarded as Hedayat's masterpiece and has been translated in many languages. It took him almost a decade to prepare this novella which he finally published in 1937 in India. It could not be published inside Iran until 1941.

Hedayat's language is both literary and scholarly. In addition to his novella and short stories, he was the first person to conduct serious and methodical research on the folklore of Iran. He also studied the ancient Iranian languages and wrote essays about archaeology, anthropology and linguistics. Satire was also Hedayat's language. In his fiction, he criticizes the social and political problems of his society - criticism which is very often expressed in satirical form*.

Hedayat gradually improved his writing skill and developed a talent for philosophical, social, and eventually political themes. His career reached its peak in the late 1930s when he finished preparing his novella. However, in the 1940s it was obvious that he could not produce anything substantial. He became increasingly frustrated to the point that abusive criticism replaced artistic criticism in his works. His inability to create the literary works his public expected, drove him deeper into depression. He finally decided to leave Iran and go back to Paris, where he had started his career. However, postwar Paris was not the Paris he had experienced in the 1920s.

He made his last decision. He attempted suicide again; this time he succeeded, on April 4, 1951. At the time of his death, he had become recognized as the foremost modern prose author of Iran.

His most famous work:



The Blind Owl
"Buf-e Kur"
Le Chouette Avugle
There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a canker. It is impossible to convey a just idea of the agony which this disease can inflict. In general, people are apt to relegate such inconceivable sufferings to the category of incredible...

His main theme:


Death
"Marg"
Le Mort

What a sensational and frightening word "death" is! Even mentioning it rends the heart, rubs smiles off of lips and cuts joy to the quick; it brings on dullness and depression and drives all kinds of troubled thoughts through the mind.

Life and death are inseparable. If not for life, there would be no death. Thus, there must be death in order for life to have meaning. Everything, whether the largest star in the sky or the smallest particle on the earth, will sooner or later die: stones, plants, animals -- they all come into existence and will successively be sent back to the world of inexistence. They will all turn into a handful of dust and fall into oblivion. However, the earth keeps spinning recklessly in the endless sky; nature resumes its life on the remains of the dead; the sun shines; the breeze blows; flowers fill the air with their fragrance; birds sing. All living creatures become excited. The sky smiles; the earth nourishes; the angel of death reaps the harvest of life with her old sickle... .

Death treats all living creatures equally and determines their fates impartially. It recognizes neither the rich nor the poor; neither the lowly nor the high. It puts human beings, plants and animals next to each other in their dark graves. It is only in the graveyard where executioners and the bloodthirsty stop acting tyrannically and innocents are not tortured. In the graveyard there is neither an oppressor nor an oppressed; young and old rest peacefully. What a peaceful and pleasant sleep! One will never see the next morning and will never hear the bluster and tumult of life. Death is the best haven, a refuge from pains, sorrows, sufferings and cruelties. With death the scintillant fire of lust and capriciousness goes out. All wars, disputes and killings among human beings end and their fierceness, conflicts and self-praise subside in the depth of cold dark soil and the narrow pass of grave.

If death did not exist, everyone would long for it. Cries of despair would rise up to the sky. Everyone would curse nature. How frightening and painful it would be if life were endless. When the hard and arduous test of life extinguishes the beguiling lights of youth, when the wellspring of kindness dries up, when coldness, darkness and ugliness befalls us, it is death which remedies the situation. It is death which puts our bent stature, our wrinkled faces and our afflicted bodies in their resting places.

Oh death, you lessen the sadness and sorrow of life and take its heavy burden off our shoulders. You put an end to the misery of wandering, ill-fated and unhappy men. You are the antidote for grief and despair. You make tearful eyes dry. You are like a compassionate mother who embraces and caresses her child and puts him to sleep after a stormy day. You are not like life - bitter and fierce. You do not drag man to aberration and depravity and throw him to a horrible whirlpool. You laugh at the meanness, lowness, selfishness, stinginess and greediness of human beings and hide their indecent acts. Who has not drunk your poisonous wine? Man has created a terrifying image of you. You, a glorious angel, are regarded as the raging Devil. Why are they afraid of you? Why do they double-cross you and accuse you? You are a shining light, but they take you for darkness. You are the auspicious angel of kindness, but they mourn loudly when you arrive. You are not the messenger of mourning and lamentation. You are a cure for sad hearts. You open the door of hope to the hopeless. You entertain the weary and helpless caravan of life and relieve them from the suffering of their journey. You are praiseworthy. You are everlasting...

Ghent, Belgium

Two short stories in Persian:
"Karevan e Islam"Meaning :" The Caravan of Islam"
"Afsaneh Afarinesh" Meaning:" The Myth of Creation"
A small storey of days with Hedayat by Sadegh Choobak


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• Forugh Farokhzad
Forugh Farrokhzad was born in 1935 Tehran into a middle class family of seven children. She attended public schools through the
          ninth grade, thereafter received some training in sewing and painting, and married when she was only seventeen. Her only child, the
          boy addressed in "A Poem for you," was born a year later. Within less than two years after that, her marriage failed, and Farrokhzad
           relinquished her son to her ex-husband's family in order to pursue her calling in poetry and independent life style. She clearly voices
           her feelings in the mid-1950s about conventional marriage, the plight of women in Iran, and her own situation as a wife and mother
           no longer able to live a conventional life in such poems as "The Captive," "The Wedding Band," "Call to Arms," and "To My Sister."
           As a divorcee poet in Tehran, Farrokhzad attracted much attention and considerable disapproval. She had several short lived relationships with men-"The Sin"
          describes one of them. She found some respite in a nine-month trip to Europe, and in 1958 met Ebrahim Golestan (b. 1922), a controversial film-maker and writer with
          whom she established a relationship that lasted until her death in an automobile accident at thirty-two years of age in February 1967.
 
Selected Poems in Farsi
Selcted Poems in English



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• A Collection of Children Books in Persian
I am sure that each persian child , raised in Iran has a lot of memories with the following authors and their lovely works:
 
• Samad Behrangi:
             Nokhodi
             The Little Black Fish(Mahi Siahe Koochooloo)
             The Little Sugar Beat Vendor
             24 Restless Hours
• Sobhi
                Namaki I put this link here as it reminds me of my Grandmother: "Maman Tehrani". She is wondefully kind and nothing but heart. When I was a child and she wanted to put me to sleep in her large bed that had lots of sprinkles and I used to jump on them, she always started with this storey.


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• The Little Prince

One of my loves!!! A creature that I have lived with part of my life and I still do!!! My love goes back to when I read for the first time: Shazde Koochooloo that my dearest mummy had bought for me. It was translated by Mohammad Ghazi, a powerful Persian author, yet still just making me think a bit about the little prince. Later, in my French class, we started going through "Le Petit Prince" and it was then at the age of 20 that I fell in love with him, his world, his planet, the rose, the fox . I created the "Le Petit Prince Utopia" for myself.
Later, my present love who was a good friend at the age of 25 for me, palnned to arrive right at my birthday party. I was so overwhelmingly happy by the "treasurous collection of le petit prince " that he had brought me from Paris that I guess I fell in love with him right then!!!!!!!!
Now, I have a lovely collection of books, bag, key chain, notebook, pencil case , box and tooth brush holder. I love themmmmmm!
When I started interviewing in US, I took my petit prince bag with me to the interview and I made some friends that way. AS obviously the friends of petit prince could recognize each other!!!!
Now.... Let me introduce to you: Le Petit Prince


 
 
 "It is only with one's heart that one can see clearly.What is essential is invisible to the eye." 

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