Iran’s Cinema Verite Plans to Honor Four Late Documentary Filmmakers

Cinema Verite, slated to be held online on December 15-22 in the capital Tehran, will pay homage to Manoochehr Tayyab, Khosro Sinaei, Akbar Alemi and Hamid Soheili, according to the event’s official website.

Tayyab, who was mostly known for his documentaries on Iran and its cultural heritage, died at a hospital in Vienna in August 2020. He was 83.

Born in Tehran, Tayyab moved to Austria in his youth to study architecture at the Vienna University of Technology .

After receiving a degree in architecture, he began studying filmmaking at the International Academy of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

He directed his focus toward Iran and its cultural heritage in his professional career, making his debut with “Pottery” in 1963 about the history of pottery in Iran.

“Persian Sea”, “Isfahan Jame Mosque”, “Iran, Land of Religions”, “Lorestan, Ancient Land of the Kassites” and “Architecture in the Safavid Period” are among numerous documentaries he made about Iran.

Veteran Iranian film scholar Alemi died of COVID-19 in October 2020. He was 75.

“Father left,” his son, Ardeshir, wrote in a post on his Instagram account. “He was not only my father, he was the father of several Iranian generations. His influence will remain for many years.”

Alemi was the dean of the Animation Department at Tehran’s Tarbiat Modares University .

He helped develop academic cinema during the years it was about to fade away in the country with his TV programs “Other Side of the Coin”, “Seventh Art” and “ Beyond Cinema ” during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Alemi was born in 1945 in Ahvaz, and was a graduate of cinema from the Dramatic Art College. He continued his studies in england and got his PHD in cinema.

He wrote and translated many books and was active as a jury member of several Iranian and international film and animation festivals.

He was also a member of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature.

Alemi was one of the pioneers of documentary making in the country and presented modern methods in the documentary genre.

He had also written several books on photography.

Prominent Iranian film director Sinai has died of the novel coronavirus at the age of 79.

Sinai, who is well-known for his film Bride of Fire, died at Tehran’s Amir Alam Hospital, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Known for Long Live, In the Alleys of Love, The Desert of Blood, he was the first Iranian film director to win an international prize after the 1979 revolution in the country.

Sinai has also directed several documentaries and was awarded "Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland" for The Lost Requiem in 1983.

He was born in Tehran in 1327 and during his 40 years of cultural and artistic activity, he produced and directed more than one hundred Iranian studies documentaries.

During his filmmaking career, he collaborated with some great Iranian artists such as Bahram Beizai, Dariush Mehrjoui, Aydin Aghdashloo, Nader Ebrahimi, Ismail Mirfakhraei and others.

In 1398, a 33-part collection of "Iranian architecture" by Soheili, which was built between 1362 and 1371, was registered by UNESCO.

tasnim