Described as the ‘The female Chagall of Iran’, self-taught artist Mokarrameh Ghanbari (1928-2005) began painting at the age of 63. The renowned director Ebrahim Mokhtari contributed to her popularity in Iran through this wonderful film made in 1999.
The director summarizes her story as follows: ‘A woman owned a cow. She was extremely fond of feeding it, fetching grass from a long way off. One day her children secretly decided to sell the animal.To overcome her grief she started to paint pictures on anything she could: the walls of the house, pumpkins, the fridge door… On his monthly visits from Tehran, her son brought her paper & paint and the old woman painted away tirelessly.’ |
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In Mokhtari’s film we meet her in her house, which overflows with her paintings. A sensitive, moving and astonishing portrait of a prolific artist and the world around her: simultaneously portraying the hardships of women in rural Iran. |
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Mokarrameh, khaterat va rohaya
Iran
1999
48 min. / BetaSP
Language: Persian
Subtitles: English
www.ebrahimmokhtari.com
Crew
Cinematography: Reza Jalali
Sound: Morteza Dehnavi
Editing: Ebrahim Mokhtari
Production: Ebrahim Mokhtari for Play Film
Director
Born in Babol in 1947, Ebrahim Mokhtari is a graduate of Tehran’s College of Film & Television and Universite de Paris-VIII. He started as an assistant director but soon began making documentaries for the Iranian TV stations and established himself as one of the prominent documentary filmmakers in the country. He made his first feature film, Zinat, in 1994, which was shown at the Critics Week Section of Cannes. He is the founder of the Iranian Documentary Filmmaker's Association in 1998. |