Staff Pick Premiere: "The Kites" by Seyed Payam Hosseini
The Staff Pick Premiere will be Seyed Payam Hosseini's "The Kites," a poignant story through the eyes of a young boy, set in the war-racked border that separates Iran and Iraq.
What begins with a call-and-response that is distant A young boy has to figure out a solution to a kite that a little girl has thrown at him ends up on the opposite side of a mine-laden divide. There is a gap to be considered in the literal sense however, cross-border languages pose another hurdle. With the help of friends and an older person child, the young man sets out on the quest of returning the kite in one piece.
In various ways, this slice of life is symbolic for a kind of radical imagination: the palpable care for one another as well as the creativity in solving problems, the courage to reconcile what is lost. With "The Kites" Hosseini manages to image the film as an active ray of hopeful, even in the midst of a turbulent past.
We approached Seyed to talk about his motivation for making the film, challenges, and casting. Seyed's answers are written in prose below:
On inspiration:
"We live in a geographical timeline
Kurdistan is a country which is divided into four distinct parts
We live in the Kurdish region of Iran
Border is not something new for us.
And this is what looked like love, peace, and friendship
From the children's point of view
Connect the borders
To me, the tree is a sign of power, an indication of endurance
The kite for me is a sign of the freedom of being free to fly in the free world
This helped a lot to build 'The Kites.'"
On challenges:
"Making an animated short is not difficult at all
When a filmmaker wants to make an independent film
Everything gets difficult
The creation of a convincing border was the most important challenge facing the project
The place I've been searching for for a long time
Thank goodness, I was able to find the site in a border town that is remote that is a few miles from Iraqi Kurdistan
The joy of filmmaking eases all the problems and difficulties."
On casting:
"Choosing actors is extremely important and difficult for me.
And I always use people who are amateurs as my actors.
The people I invite to act have no knowledge of cinema and the process of making a film.
It was very important for the kites that the young actors would be credible.
Accept their geographic location and the story
This is the reason why I was searching for children from the countryside that I could choose from
until I could find children like these in the lower parts of the city (slum)
I tried them out, their IQ convinced me I had made the right choice.
I've read scripts with the scripts several times but I did it only to comprehend the plot in the documentary
The good news is that I was very pleased by the product of the film made by the children's four characters."
His advice to aspiring filmmakers:
" As a young filmmaker
Other than academics, HTML0 is a requirement which requires filmmaking
Watch movies, read and write specialized books and novel
A collection of stories in short form
And making low-budget independent short films
It will provide prerequisites to allow us to begin creating films for carnal filmmakers.
Learn how to create independent films
Write, read, and observe."
What's next?
"After 'The Kites'
I created two short films
Russian vodka film that has an unisex theme for children
A short non-mahram film (funded by 1000 women) This film is about violence against women
My next project will be the genocide of the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein called "Beyond the Hills" which is in the process of in the process of producing."