Widespread tributes have been shared for Bahram Beyzai, a giant of Iranian cinema and theatre, who has died aged 87 in the US.
The front pages of Iranian newspapers mourn his loss, with opposition voices and those who look back fondly on the Shah era also paying homage to Beyzai.
Prince Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah of Iran, described his passing as “a great loss for the the art and culture of our country”.
Although Beyzai’s later films were banned in the 1980s by the Islamic regime that toppled the Shah, a number of senior figures in the current government have also paid tribute to his contribution to Iranian culture.
Several of the current crop of Iranian filmmakers have acknowledged their debt to him, with Jaafar Panahi – whose latest film won the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival – saying that he taught them “how to stand up to oblivion”.
Beyzai avoided direct political references in his work, both as a playwright and a film director, and always said he tried not to trade in overt messages.
But his work over many decades sets historical, even mythic figures in conflict with oppressive religious and political systems.
From a family of celebrated poets, Beyzai was imbued in the deepest traditions of Persian culture from birth.
He first found fame as a playwright, drawing on Persian legend and ritual.
A lifelong fan of cinema, he moved into making films in the 1970s.
He won renown as one of the key figures in the new wave of Iranian cinema.
His most productive period straddled the era of the Shah and then the Islamic theocratic forces that deposed him – with both systems ever ready to sniff out hidden messages that could be interpreted as dissent.
As Jaafar Panahi has put it in his tribute: “Beyzai did not choose the easy way. He endured years of exclusion, imposed silence, and distance, but he did not give up his language and his beliefs.”
A few years after the Iranian Revolution, he produced what many regard as his masterpiece, Bashu, the Little Stranger, about a small boy who tries to take refuge from the Iran-Iraq war.
It was banned in Iran – as were other films he made in that period – but later voted by film critics as the greatest Iranian film of all time.
The film was shown in a restored version at this year’s Venice Film Festival, winning an award for best film in the classics section.
Beyzai finally left Iran in 2010, and spent his later years in the US where he taught Iranian culture.
Although he left his homeland, his wife, the actress Mozhdeh Shamsai, said just hearing the word Iran would still bring tears to his eyes – and he remained ever hopeful of a new culture and future for his homeland.
