Famed Iranian Playwright Mahmud Dowlatabadi Condemns Israeli Attacks on Gaza Strips

January 3, 2009

by Suzan Abrams
in Dublin

Captions: Mahmud Dowlatabadi, below, a playbill for Mohsen Yalfani's In An Iranian Family 2 trailer pictures from Rafi Pitts' It's Winter. Credit (below post)

Persian: Tehran Times reports that veteran Iranian novelist and playwright, *Mahmud Dowlatabadi has openly voiced his compassion for the Gaza People during a drama reading of **Mohsen Yalfani's "In An Iranian Family" at the Iranian Artists' Forum on Thursday.

Iran's national newspaper writes that Dowlatabadi has expressed his solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians and confirmed his own name alongside an illustrious list of writers and artists who have signed petitions against the recent Israeli attacks on the Gaza strip.

He elaborated that creative people are loving by nature and shun crimes made against humanity. On December 29, Iranian cinematic figures signed a petition against the attacks and announced their support and sympathy for the oppressed people of Gaza. Last Wednesday, Tehran cinema halls and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art faithfully dedicated all of their ticket sales to help the people of Gaza.

*In 2007, 47 year old ***Rafi Pitt's highly-applauded film, It's Winter, was described by the Seattle International Film Festival as an 'elegant tribute to the working class.' Pitt is one of Iran's new wave of contemporary film-makers, who had based his script with its haunting signature tune, sung in Farsi, directly on a story called Safar (The Trip) written Mahmud Dowlatabadi, currently a professor in Tehran University and who was one of Iran's first writers, to support himself primarily through writing. Self-educated, Dowlatabadi worked as a shepherd boy and later as an actor for the stage and film. He was once famously imprisoned while performing on stage. Dowlatabadi is famed for his tales on village life.

**Mohsen Yalfani, an exile playwright who has produced a number of plays in France, is one of Iran's pioneer playwrights who introduced a new era to Persian drama in the 1960s. The essence of Yalfani's plays lie in underlying tensions set in various human relationships. Yalfani is known for at first announcing a typical young Persian revolutionary before zeroing in on him as an individual for a thorough self-examination by the audience.

***Thumbnails from It's Winter

Credit: Pictures from It's Winter is courtesy of Silenzio Films.