Documentary 'Qahtol-Rejal' Reviewed: Reviving a Fading Memory

The documentary 'Qahtol-Rejal', directed by Mohsen Asgarzadeh, was reviewed in the 59th session of the film-theater screening series at the Cinematheque of the House of Artists of Iran.

According to Ambassador Arjan, quoting from the newsroom of Iran's Artists' House, the 59th program of the series of movie theater screenings at the Cinematheque of Iran's Artists' House was dedicated to the documentary "Qaht al-Rajal" directed by Mohsen Askarizadeh. 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 Theater Critics, Writers and Researchers and Cinematheque of Iran's Artist House, and its analytical session was performed by Ali Afshar, a journalist, and with the presence of Mohammad Najari, a teacher and theater critic.

Theater critic Mohammad Najari, analyzing the content of the documentary "Qaht al-Rajal" by Mohsen Askarizadeh, evaluated the work as a valuable document of the central and trend-setting role of the "theatre expert" in the peripheral climates 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. 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 has faced a lack of budget and infrastructure in the bureaucratic system of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, but 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 authentic 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 the logic of cause and effect, and rather than remaining faithful to the dramatic coherence, it moves around the personal preoccupations of the filmmaker and the fluctuation between the enlargement of the character and the consequences of censorship or self-censorship; The situation that has caused the countless potentials of this historical context to not be realized in the narrative structure of the work.

Pointing to the film's inability to convey the director's ironies and possible critical tone, Najari said: "Maybe 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, he considered environmental narrow-mindedness as one of the main factors behind the isolation of figures like Hashem Arkan and said: Our habit of sawing and cutting down 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 debilitating 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, 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 land, 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.

The member of the Association of Critics, Writers and Researchers of the Theater House continued: However, if we want to treat the work as a documentary portrait, the lack of documents, brochures and archival images cannot be justified with excuses such as the lack of evidence. Instead of being limited to the general words of the narrators, the filmmaker should have put under the microscope the gender of the actors, the subtleties of the director, the social context of the choice of texts and the way of directing the actors; As 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.

This university professor stated: except for the honest narration of Ali Asghar Dashti, who consciously stood in the position of a student in order to become a teacher and the dramatic struggle of the 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 the world's current 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 as a lever for the richness of the film's structure, but as a decorative element and reminded: inviting famous faces, each of whom is a part of the living history of the performing arts of this land, when in a portrait documentary, it 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 measure to fill the gaps. Research and visual effects are used.

Criticizing the mournful tone and the unbalanced arrangement 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 with 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 style master's position in contemporary theater with works like "The Little Prince", this one mark was enough to establish his heroic image.

This teacher of literature and theater relied on the principles of dramaturgy of editing, and 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, slanders and dismissals during his life, is depicted so that the hero's confrontation with destiny can be depicted. 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 bond with the audience.

In the end, Najari 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.