the stinging truth; Hashem Arkan's trap in the trap of addiction/the tragedy of eliminating elites in the documentary "Qaht al-Rajal"

The 59th program of the series of screenings of movie theaters at Cinematheque House of Iranian Artists was dedicated to the documentary "Qaht al-Rajal" (a documentary about the portrait of Hashim Arkan) directed by Mohsen Askarizadeh.

According to the report of Ambassador Arjan, quoting from Iran Artists House, this work was shown in the fourth and last program of a package of documentaries about Iranian theater with the joint cooperation of the Association of Critics, Writers and Researchers of Iran Artists House and the Cinematheque of Iran Artists House, and its analytical session was performed by Ali Afshar (journalist) with the presence of Mohammad Najari (teacher and theater critic).

By analyzing the content of the documentary "Qaht al-Rajal" by Mohsen Askarizadeh, theater critic Mohammad Najari evaluated the work as a valuable document of the pivotal role of the "theatre expert" in the surrounding regions and cities and said: "The arrival of a knowledgeable and academic theater expert in a province like Yazd was not just an administrative appointment, but a place of hope and a starting point for injecting science, modern knowledge and hope into the theater community of that region; A privileged position that led to the training of prominent figures such as Ali Asghar Dashti and Rashek Rad under the supervision of Hashem Arkan. Although this administrative position in the bureaucratic system of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance faced a lack of budget and infrastructure, the presence of its members turned it into an efficient command room. A center that was able to establish a strong theatrical tradition, establish a cultural trend, build a hall and connect the luxurious theater with the audience; A dynamic trend that unfortunately was not repeated in the following years even with the establishment of numerous university centers in Yazd, and the theater scene of that region moved away from that original tradition.

Referring to the rich capabilities of Hashem Arkan's portrait to become a dramatic and attractive subject in documentary cinema, this theater critic added: "Arkan has all the necessary features for a lasting portrait documentary; He was not only popular among his students and created an explosion of information in the classroom with his literacy, but he also had a tragic weakness that aroused the conflict and jealousy of those around him in a narrow-minded context and created a full-scale drama. However, in the field of narration, the film departs from causal logic and rather than remaining faithful to dramatic coherence, it moves around the filmmaker's personal preoccupations and fluctuates between character enlargement and the consequences of censorship or self-censorship; A situation that has caused the countless potentials of this historical background to not be realized in the narrative structure of the work.

Mohammad Najari, theater critic, during the screening and review of the documentary "Qaht al-Rajal" (a documentary about Hashim Arkan's portrait): The stinging truth that Asghar Dashti also touched upon was Arkan's trap of addiction; A ruinous weakness that might be manageable in a corner of the city as a director, but in the professional mechanism of production, especially in the field of acting, it immediately excludes a person from the official cycle of theater and cinema of the country with justifications such as disorder and cost cutting.

Najari complained about Hashem Arkan's professional position, the lack of visual references and the mere reliance on verbal statements, and said: "If Hashem Arkan had such a lofty and irreplaceable position in Iranian theater, this importance should have been manifested in the language of the image, rather than remaining at the level of claims about his friendship with Hamid Sargyan, Nasser Aghaei or Kazem Balochi." Documentary cinema is not a source of abstract beliefs or simple sanctification, but requires an objective and visual reward; When it is said that he was on the stage in the work of Sariyan, the audience should see at least two plans of that performance or traces of his presence on the screen, because even the breath of acting in a work by Sariyan alone does not imply the greatness of a face in the documentary structure of the portrait.

This theater critic pointed to the film's inability to convey the ironies and possible critical tone of the director, and said: "Perhaps the filmmaker intended to poke fun at his companions and contemporaries and remind them of their absence in the days of loneliness and need, but the visual language of the work in this part also remains incomplete; A weakness that has prevented the transformation of this critical idea into a tangible and effective form in the narrative as a whole."

Criticizing exclusionary mechanisms and the culture of exclusion in social and artistic life, Najari considered environmental narrow-mindedness as one of the main factors behind the isolation of figures like Hashem Arkan and said: "Pearls are never caught in lowly waters; It is in the big waters that the big fishes swim and in the small reservoirs, the frogs stumble. Our habit of sawing and cutting trees instead of rooting and resisting is a frequent tragedy of our culture; A disgusting tradition in which we easily remove elites with the tools of stigmatization and ideological, behavioral or physical labels. Although the work tries to highlight the role of the institutions by oppressing the family, the stinging truth that Asghar Dashti touches on is that Arkan was caught in the trap of addiction. A ruinous weakness that might be manageable in a corner of the city as a director, but in the professional mechanism of production, especially in the field of acting, it immediately excludes a person from the official cycle of theater and cinema of the country with justifications such as disorder and cost cutting."

This theater critic evaluated the existential value of the documentary beyond its technical flaws, in reviving a decaying memory and added: "Before watching this documentary, despite years of commuting to Yazd and spending time with the artists of that country, there was no name of Hashem Arkan in my mental geography, and the local community had forgotten him; Therefore, the production of this work, regardless of its cinematic values, has been successful as a cultural document for rereading oral history."

This member of the Association of Critics, Writers and Researchers of the Theater House continued: "However, if we want to treat the work as a portrait documentary, the lack of documents, brochures and archival images cannot be justified with excuses such as lack of evidence. Instead of being limited to the general words of the narrators, the filmmaker should have put under the microscope the type of actors, the subtleties of the director, the social context of the choice of texts and the way of directing the actors; Just like in the documentary review of a figure like Qutbuddin Sadeghi, we have to analyze the aesthetic evolution of his works and collaborations in different historical contexts.

Referring to the documentary's neglect of analyzing the course of professional evolution and technical features of Hashem Arkan's career, Mohammad Najari found the analytical approach of the work insufficient in representing his artistic life and said: "Just as in the analysis of the career of a prominent figure, different periods of his activity should be distinguished, from the way he interacted with students and directing actors to the way of adapting and focusing on epic and native texts, such a process should also be depicted in the documentary of Arkan; While the audience doesn't even notice anything about his tone, expression and performance details."

This university professor said: "Except for the honest narrative of Ali Asghar Dashti who consciously stood in the position of a student to become a teacher and the dramatic struggle of a student and Murad Hoyda, other statements have been reduced to emphasizing having a bachelor's degree; A title that may have seemed like a privilege in the past, but today it lacks fundamental value. University degrees by themselves do not guarantee artistic vision, analytical understanding or mastery of current world theater trends, and instead of stopping at the degree, the film should have explored the depth of his vision and knowledge.

This theater critic called the presence of famous faces in front of the camera not a lever for the richness of the film's structure, but a decorative element and added: "Inviting famous faces, each of whom is a part of the living history of the performing arts of this land, when a portrait documentary finds a structural value that serves to discover the hidden corners of the subject's life and art, not just as a decorative and adhesive preparation to fill The research and visual gaps of the work should be used."

Criticizing the mournful tone and the unbalanced sequence of events in the documentary "Qaht al-Rajal", Mohammad Najari considered the way of representing Hashem Arkan's life to prevent deep identification with the audience and said: "The film in its current format reduces Arkan's life to a mere tragedy; While he was a human being with all his ups, downs, shortcomings, and at the same time constructive activities. In a land where there is a strange desire to destroy, Arkan started to build; Even if the only achievement of his three decades of activity is the training of an artist like Ali Asghar Dashti, who has found a place as a master of style in contemporary theater with works like "The Little Prince", this one sign was enough to establish his heroic image.

He explained: "Unfortunately, the narration of the work, instead of showing the hero's desire and determination to achieve his goal and the obstacles that were cut on his way, postpones the critical parts, the narration of his failures, eliminations and life challenges until after his death; A structure that neither prompts the audience to admire the great dignity of a teacher, nor evokes a sense of empathy and deep impression in him.

Relying on the principles of dramaturgy of editing, this lecturer of literature and theater believed that the salvation of the film depended on the re-creation of the narrative structure and added: "The logical sequence of a drama requires that the path of Arkan's separation from his hometown, living among the leaders of the capital's theater, returning to Yazd for education, and then dealing with avarice, slander and dismissal during his life, is depicted so that the confrontation between the hero and fate can be understood. If the director, with the help of an editor familiar with dramaturgy, rearranges the rushes based on the rhythm of struggle and erosion, the audience would sympathize with this hard-working hero and stand against the suffering of the continuous removal of elites in the bio-cultural society; But the current output is just a temporary birth certificate that conveys the historical existence of a person named Hashem Arkan, without having the power to stay in the mind or create an emotional and epic connection with the audience.

Emphasizing the historical and documental function of documentary cinema in recognizing unknown heroes, Najari considered the production of the documentary "Qaht al-Rajal" as a valuable effort to record the long-lasting culture and art of this land and said: "We make the documentary to discover, record and sometimes learn from the lives of figures who have been influential; A character like Hashem Arkan, whose name was neglected even by researchers, is now being redefined in the geography of Iranian theater due to this work."

This critic stated: "The presence of history-making figures such as Ali Nasirian, who is a strong pillar of our dramatic literature, cinema and theater, along with great people such as Jalil Farjad and Ali Asghar Rasakhrad to pay respect to the pillars and accompany him in his ritual, is a clear proof of the importance of his position. Accepting the presence of these braggarts in front of the camera shows that the documentary has become an identity document; A document, every piece of which reflects a school of contemporary theater history, and even clarifies long-standing historical ambiguities such as the name similarity and the award of an actor with the same name as Mohammad Reza Shajarian in Yazd theater for researchers."

This theater critic, while appreciating the director's research effort and boldness in the narration of this subject, considered the quality improvement of such works dependent on deepening the structural view and added: "The effort of the film writer and researcher in recovering a forgotten identity is worthy of praise and appreciation, but one should wash the eyes and see differently; Taking advantage of expert consultations in the field of dramaturgy and visual structure could have taken this work beyond an average level and merely a report and turned it into a lasting documentary equal to the greatness of the figures present in it, so that in subsequent experiences, structural errors will give way to a more cinematic and effective expression."