Interview: Amir Naderi

"The city is the first character"

Credit: Bitters End

Thomas Atkinson

Amir Naderi, a key figure in the Iranian New Wave but an anomaly amongst his middle-class, university educated colleagues, grew up poor in the port city of Abadan. After a period making films in Iran, including one based on his childhood poverty, The Runner (1984), he has made films in New York and Japan. Three of these screened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in early February.

The first, Manhattan by Numbers (1993), follows a news vendor looking for money in NYC. The third, Cut (2011), was filmed in Japan and has a Naderi stand-in played by Hidetoshi Nishijima discover that his financier brother has been executed by the mob after dirty dealings to get money for the protagonist’s new film (hilariously, Cut was inspired by Naderi’s relationship with John Cassavetes).

I sat down with Naderi in the ICA bar hours before the screening of the second film in the mini-retrospective, Sound Barrier (2005), a bildungsroman following a deaf homeless boy looking for a tape made by his deceased mother. At the ICA, Naderi came bounding up to programme co-curators Arta Barzanji and Shaghayegh Raoufi with a giant, albeit upward-reaching, hug: he stands at just over 5 foot, but with a giant smile and huge hands for high-fives, of which I get several over the course of the interview.

Our conversation is below.

So Tom, what’s up?

How’s London?

I’ve been in London before, a couple of times actually. I love London because it’s the centre of so many things, including art, cinema, literature. I think it’s been very good for artists, London. Music, fashion, artist, filmmaker... playwrights! How many playwrights do you guys have now? Good playwrights?

We’ve got some, yeah.

Don’t say ‘some’! I’ll get sad!

[Laughs] We’ve got some good ones! I used to work as a sound technician in the theatres. I’m a teacher now, but I used to be around a lot of those types.

Because everything from this culture came from the play, believe me — and then cinema. Play and music first. And also good literature. Any questions?

Well, speaking of music, something that struck me whilst I was doing my research—

Ah, you know it used to be I came here, and I was very lucky. Believe it or not, I saw The Rolling Stones, I saw The Beatles in Hyde Park — about ‘68. I was very young back then. Music, to be honest with you, the centre of the world is here. Everybody knows that, even... mostly modern music. I cannot talk about classical music like that, but modern music we owe to London. I even saw Donovan. You know him?

Yes!

I love Donovan. I took a photo of him at that time. I sold it to a magazine or something and made money for it. [Laughs] I don’t remember which one. Pink Floyd were great here too. I’m crazy about [David] Gilmour, Roger Waters, those kinds of people. I’m crazy about them. My thing is, I play the trombone. I’m the jazz guy. I don’t know about jazz here, but I’ve lived in New York a long time.

Jazz central.

Yeah! Up in Harlem we have the Duke Ellington house. Every Saturday, everybody goes there, I go there if I’m in New York, yeah. But for about 15 years I lived in Japan.

What kind of music were you finding there?

Modern music in Japan, mostly influential. I love the culture from England, of course I love the culture from the French. And everything came from New York — but not music. Music belongs to you. Nobody can get that from you. I think of music today in a very different way. Not like before, where you’d hear this, then hear this, rap comes in. At that time [in 1968] I remember, for example, Jimi Hendrix made me crazy. Bob Marley, too. But one person that stayed forever: Bob Dylan. Crazy about him, Bob is great. You know, I love George Harrison.

Is he your favourite Beatle?

Not favourite, no. But he... I think everybody looks at Paul, and of course there’s John [Lennon]... [Makes a strong grunting noise] He basically invented modern music. But Eric Clapton, George [Harrison], people like that, they bring something new. They bring it. George Harrison has something. I talked to him about this actually, Scorsese did the George Harrison documentary! I loved that documentary. We in New York loved George Harrison a lot, because he was very quiet and that’s a sacrifice.

Yeah, he stepped into the background but then wrote those really nice tunes.

So many people love them now. Music is at the front of your country. I don’t know about today, to be honest with you. What is today? Tell me.

Today? It’s everything. It’s all so fragmented, lots of... swirly things going on at the same time. We’ve got a resurgence of British rap music...

One time I remember you guys going too much into electronic music, and now it’s come back again to real music.

You were going to be a conductor for a bit, way back when. What kind of things did you take away from doing that?

First of all, I didn’t have the money to go to school. I came here a couple of times, of course it was very expensive. And of course I went to more expensive places. But conducting for me is a lot like directing. I chose directing because I have a chance to express my experience. That’s why, for example, you’ll see at the ICA three films from me — Manhattan by Numbers, which is my first film from the New York trilogy [the others are ABC Manhattan (1997) and Marathon (2002)]. They showed that a couple of days ago. And now today, I have a film called Sound Barrier, which is truly New York. Then I have a movie, Cut, which is Japan. I work internationally, in Italy also.

I bring the rhythm and editing and sound design. Mostly sound design, that’s my speciality. And music for the film. I never used music for the film except a couple of times. I used it for Manhattan because Gato Barbieri [composer on Manhattan by Numbers] did the music for Last Tango in Paris by Bertolucci. He introduced me to him [Barbieri]. But editing and movement can look like conducting, like music. “Now they’re talking over here, now they’re talking” — I love it! But in cinema we have a chance to make a different level in the mix. Make it down, make it up, more focus on silence! Silence is the best music for me. When nobody says anything, and you’re not hearing anything, just images. That music is also great.