Majid Majidd is a figure in Iranian Cinema; he is a director that you cannot ignore him even if you do not like his works; he is officially accepted in his country while he is authentic in international scale too, his works are patterns in spiritual cinema, he makes big budget films and has a referable credit in children and young adult cinema; he is a polymath of cinema.
You can find religious attitude in his works simultaneously beside of intellectual narratives. He is one of those post-revolutionary film directors who knows cinema well and is totally familiar with technique and tactics of it, he has found his cinematic language in an identified world, so we can count him as an author filmmakers in Iranian Cinema who has his own school, also you can find poetic language in his films.
While he couldn’t win OSCAR like Asghar Farhadi but he is the first Iranian director who was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film among five other nominees in Academy Awards in 1998 with “Children of Heaven”; his works have been screened in various film festivals around the world and he is known as Iranian director globally.
In Iran he also has won lots of cinematic awards; with having four Simorghs from Fajr International Film Festival as the best director he has records. Majidi has made short films and documentaries besides making movies and has won many awards for them too from national and international film festivals, so, you can add his name to award-list directors of film festivals while his films are not really festival-like routine ones. He has even made ad-film for one of the candidates of presidential election of Iran while he has records of acting as one of the Iranian directors!
If we want to narrate his professional career in some short sentences, we should say Majid Majidi was born in 17 April 1959 in Tehran. After high school, he continued his education in Fine Arts faculty of Tehran University. Before Iran Islamic Revolutionary, he started his artistic activity with theatre. His first act was in a play named “Horoufiyeh Movement” directed by Davoud Daneshvar. Then after, he started to act in cinema in 80s and 90s.
In “Boycott” directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf he acted as a disillusioned communist, in “Fusillade”, he plays as Martyr Seyed Ali Andarzgoo and in “Two Unlighted Eyes”, he played as a Tudeh teacher. For “Baran” he was nominated for Satellite Golden Award in 2001. In next years, he started directing. His first works were short films and his first full-length film named “Baduk” won Simorgh in 1991. Until the end of 2006, he was the only Iranian director who was nominated for OSCARs. “Children of Heaven” was selected as one of the five nominees of Best Foreign Language Film in Academy Awards in 1998.
He also won twice the Best Film and the Ecumenical Jury Prizes in Montreal International Film Festival, which was unique happening in the history of the festival. He won honor diploma for “Father” from 14th London International Film Festival, also he won special prize of reviewing national jury for “Song of Sparrows” in 2009 and nominated for Golden Bear from Berlinale for “Song of in Sparrows” in 2008. Majidi also has worked as an actor in Islamic philosophy and art fields for Hoze Honari and Islamic Development Organization (IDO). Besides his film scripts which were published a story book named “Laleh and Pooneh” has published by him. For eight years, he was making “Muhammad” which is the biggest cinematic project in Iranian Cinema.
Now Majidi has made “Beyond the Clouds” as his first movie abroad in India to experience different genres and productions beside of content in his filmmaking. His career only has one shortage!; a TV series…then he will be a multi-media filmmaker! However, his critics counts his cinema as ideological one which is garnished by techniques; they criticized his ideology rather than his cinema. They say that in his symbolic world which is based on sin, punishment and evolution of sinners, we see undeveloped look to the relationship of man and god.
In his films, poverty, simplicity, and living villages are some reasons to be close to God. His propones believe that he is professional that he can make his ideas and religious concepts with using his artistic knowledge without falling in the trap of sentimentalism.
If we study his works under the light of different narratives, we still will have common elements in his works at least two elements of poverty and child are more colorful in them. It seems that they present his experiences which have been developed in his cinema and changed to his conceptual signature.
Without being interested to judge these narratives, we should say that we cannot separate his cinematic world from his ideology in Majidi’s Cinema, also we can say that all of his works without mentioning to stories, subjects and genres, have the color of heaven or at least they try to reach to oneness. “In my works, I have tried to deal with human natures. When I was making “The Color of Paradise” some of critics said that the film cannot communicate with foreigners because the subject is about seeking-god, but it wasn’t like that in west. I believe that its not possible to omit God.” He says.
Maybe we can call his cinema as a cinema of hope because of his beliefs. While social-pathological look is always in his works and some elements like poverty, and deprivation are colorful in them but he never looks for showing Iran as a black place and society to live and you always can find sense of hope in his tales and characters. In some years that many experts had no hope to Iranian cinema, in an interview he told; “In spite of all conditions, we should make hope for our youth and raise the half-raised flag of Iranian Cinema in the world; we should show that we are deserved for all songs we verse.”
Majidi In A Glance
Social-Pathological look is always in his works and some elements like poverty, and deprivation are colorful in them but he never looks for showing Iran as a black place and society to live and you always can find sense of hope