Caveh Zahedi posted by Darren at 1:58 PM

I first encountered Caveh Zahedi in Richard Linklater's Waking Life (2001), one of my favorite films of the last five years or so. Caveh appears just long enough to deliver this rambling, but oddly inspiring, lesson on the film theories of Andre Bazin. What most excites Zahedi is Bazin's peculiarly Christian film aesthetic, his faith in the cinema as a medium uniquely capable of recording and revealing God's active presence in our lives. Because God is manifest in all of creation, or so the argument goes, film by its very nature necessarily documents those manifestations, capturing them on celluloid or video and representing them to us in a darkened theater. For Bazin, the master filmmakers are those most adept at filtering out the mind- and soul-numbing white noise of life in the process, thereby offering us brief glimpses of the transcendent. Zahedi argues that, by revealing these "Holy Moments," film should (though it seldom does) reorient our perspectives not only toward the arts but also toward the beautifully varied and complex creation in which we live.

We walk around like there are some holy moments, and there are all the other moments that are unholy. But, this moment is holy, right? Then, in fact, film can let us see that. It can frame it so that we see this moment: holy. Holy, holy, holy, moment by moment. But who can live that way? 'Cause if I were to look at you and just really let you be holy, I would just stop talking. . . . I'd be open. Then I'd look in your eyes, and I'd cry, and I'd feel all this stuff, and that's not polite. It would make you uncomfortable.

When I first met Paul, I mentioned this being one of my favorite sequences from any film, and he told me that it works because Linklater "let Caveh be Caveh." This week, I'd like to show the Holy Moments sequence from Waking Life, followed by two of Zahedi's own films: The World is a Classroom (his contribution to the Underground Zero project to which Paul also contributed a film) and In the Bathtub of the world.

I've watched Bathtub several times over the past few weeks and am anxious to share/discuss it with others. I'm guessing that Zahedi's films will be polarizing, but whether you like them or not -- whether you like Zahedi himself or not -- they will give us a lot to talk about. This profile is a pretty good introduction to his life and work:

CAVEH ZAHEDI HAS found god, but I'm not sure: perhaps he is god. His presence in his films (most of which he stars in) is in many ways divine, an aura formed by an almost obsessive sensitivity, a complete and utter sacrifice to the camera. No matter who he's playing – and he's not only featured in his own movies but also those of Richard Linklater (Waking Life), Greg Watkins (A Sign from God), and Alexander Payne (Citizen Ruth) – Caveh Zahedi is Caveh Zahedi, who just happens to be a compelling cinematic character.

"I'm actually a very poor actor," he says. "I really can't do anyone else but myself." When Linklater, whom he's known since 1991, sent him a draft of Waking Life and asked him to appear, Zahedi told him he couldn't use the language on the page and offered the director alternate spiels; Zahedi's musings on metaphysics turned out to be the most universally praised, revelatory sequences in the film.

With the 2000 film I Was Possessed by God, Zahedi's documentary lens captures the most unreal of worlds, the convulsive spirituality of a major mushroom trip, channeling a Jean Rouch film from far, far away. Zahedi has often recorded himself in altered states; his most recent was a mushroom scene in In the Bathtub of the World (2001), a day-by-day video diary of an entire year. The film is his most elegant – and raw – visual achievement to date.

The term "raw" could be applied to all of Zahedi's films, as a compliment. With "The World Is a Classroom," Zahedi peels back the layers until there's no protective skin. The piece was his contribution to the 2002 "Underground Zero" program – the independent shorts collection he curated with Jay Rosenblatt in response to Sept. 11 – and in it Zahedi trains his camera on a San Francisco Art Institute class he's teaching, until the formerly peaceful group falls apart. Zahedi measures the power balance between himself and his students, and the process recalls the work of Mohsen Makhmalbaf and other Iranian filmmakers who, like Zahedi, mix fiction and nonfiction with self-revelation, reenactment, and an occasional touch of cruelty.

Zahedi has explored alienation and assimilation as the son of an Iranian émigré, particularly in 1994's I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore, but finds his cinematic connection with Iran a strange coincidence: he admits he hadn't even seen any Iranian films until well into his career, after he'd already claimed Cassavetes and Tarkovsky as his guides.

A few other links of use:
1. CavehZahedi.com
2. Another overview
3. Tripping with Caveh
4. Film Threat Interview