MEMORY OF CRADLE (HASTI SAADI)

    I had a great opportunity to know  Hasti Saadi who is, for me, one of the most accomplished Iranian female short movie maker and scriptwriter. After having watched her stunning deeply journey to the memories 'Melody Of Cradle', I decided to know and interview with her.

She tried to express her own cinematic language on a woman who keep herself hiding in her memories in an enourmously memory house of her own which always let her to come in as sanctuary. She finds a way to see her passed-away childhood alive and those things tie her down in a good bond which she always used to do. The memories that she could not push down or keeps her alive.

It was a sophisticated and traditional motifs that I could find in Melody of Cradle and swept me away to the nooks where she will be facing her past just like looking into mirror.

Her way of making a movie is so naive and profound that I can't help myself admiring her characteristic nuances and read the subtexts of her movie.

We had a cordial interview with her and talked about her way of movie making and more than that;

Could you tell me how your movie making story begins?

Since I was 8 years old I had an interest in art, at the age 13 I had a passion for cinema, used to follow all news related cinema. I just followed my passion and studied photography and media. It is 4 years that I work and make short films and documentaries.

Let’s talk about Melody of cradle. What motives especially had an effect on you for making this movie?

 My own life and personal experience had a great effect to make "Melody of Cradle". When my brother came back to Iran after 15 years to visit the story became completed and I finished the script.

You like to make woman films  considering the inner diffusion had your character has made us feeling what and how strong memories were stuck in that woman and the reminds of day of her childhood, as well as the prostitute who performed in The Luminance. Well, can we say that Hasti Saadi will put the reflections of a woman life whilst making her movies?

Maybe you are right; but it's not just the reflections of a woman life, when it comes to the memories, the past, and the inner complex of human being, men and women getting involve emotionally but with different reaction and story.

What sort of techniques did you us for making Melody of Cradle?

While I was shooting the film just i tried to have all the images in a right frame and mostly shot on tripod but for editing i used filters to change the images look like an old pictures we all have in our childhood albums to make the nostalgia.

In general explanation, I see some kind of connection reflects your cinema is that putting realistic sensibility aside and taking the metaphoric mentality which points out what strongly you try to transfer. This sometimes happen from old to new, sometimes past to future etc. Is that what you have in your mind to make your characters speak with audiences?

What I believe and tried to transfer is a kind of pain that we all experience at a different level and a different period of our lives. There is a moment that we all face the reality of life and being an adult. say goodbye to our childhood and go on...

Could you tell me what Hasti Saadi have a language on making her personal movies and what direction she follows indeed?

Yes. As you have mentioned making a film is personal for me. So the direction I am going to follow will be my dreams and the questions cause by life.

On mentioning that the final scene of Melody of Cradle, can we come to the point of whatever we have things to live, we never put memories behind because it is hard to put things right what we did in our past, so have to keep it going?

Yes, the memories can't be deleted because they make us who we are today. But in the other hand nothing belong to us and we belong to our destiny. The memories are the reflection of our life's experience.

What movies or directors have an effect on you before you have started making movies and now?

I usually don't limit myself and I watch different movies from different directors. I have to admit all i have seen, it had an effect on me. But the only director who had an influence on me since I was so young I should say an Iranian filmmaker " Abbas Kiarostami " and after i have attended to his workshop he became one of the reason that I am working seriously in this field.

Any future new works on the agenda? If yes, what is it about and when?

Right now I am working on my next short film script which i am planning to make it soon. It's a story between a father and his son ... the missing relationship between them...

For a woman, how it is like making movies in Iran?

It's exactly how it's like for men. For making a film you have to get a permit to shoot like the most countries in the world. The time that I applied for permit no one stopped me because I'm a woman.

I want to thank you for giving me a chance to know Hasti Saadi and her way cinema which makes me feel there are  a lot of futuristic masterpieces of her  that I am gonna watch  soon.