The Joy Makers
(Siah Bazi)

by Maryam Khakipour

Iran

Director: Maryam Khakipour

Cinematograher: F. Khosrowshahi, B. Monadizadeh

Sound: M. Youssefi, M. Mirghafouri, H. Javid

Editing: Louis Bastin

With: Saadi Afshar, R. Arabzadeh, A. Sohrabi, S. Panahi, F. Shadizadeh, L. Mohamadi

Production: Play Films / AB7

Play Films
14 rue du Moulin Joly
75011 Paris
France
Tel: 0033 1.40.21.09.90
Fax: 0033 1.40.21.88.44
Mail: [email protected]

Year: 2004

Beta, Colour, 45 min
OV Farsi with French Subtitles

Unreleased
World Premiere

In a street once dedicated to festivities and entertainment, the last theatre still echoes with laughing before collapsing or becoming a parking place. This is where a middle-class audience comes to see Teheran’s Harlequin improvising about sex and power. He does not wear any mask but has a simple make up of soot, hence his name " Black ". Neither him nor anyone in his troop is a "scientific " actor. They all began while they were children. Now the government has decided to close their theatre. They are made orphans.

"They have taken joy away from us, they have taken all". The joy workers talk of the need of people to laugh in a country in mourning, where tears are shed at every occasion. What happened to laughter in Iran ? This drifting theatre and its troop fighting to continue laughing, is somehow a small mirror of Iranian society today with its deadlock, frustration, desire and hope.