Morteza Avini

Sardar Jahadgar Sayyed Morteza Avini
File:Morteza Aviny.jpg
Born	(1947-09-23)23 September 1947 Rey, Iran
Died	9 April 1993(1993-04-09) (aged 45) Fakkeh, north western of Khuzestan Province
Nationality	Iranian
Education	Master's degree in Architecture
Alma mater	University of Tehran
Occupation(s)	Film director, author, photographer, journalist
Organization	Jihad of Construction
Notable work	Ravayat-e Fath documentary film
Spouse	Maryam Amini (m. 1982)
Website	www.avini.com

Sayyed Morteza Avini (Persian: سید مرتضی آوینی; also spelled Aviny; 1947 Rey – 9 April 1993 Khuzestan) was an Iranian documentary filmmaker, photographer, author, journalist and theoretician of "Islamic Cinema." He studied architecture at Tehran University in 1965. By the time of the Iranian revolution, Avini started his artistic career as a director of documentary films. He made over 80 films on the Iran-Iraq war, and is considered the preeminent filmmaker on the subject. According to Agnes Devictor Avini invented original cinematography methods, depicting the esoteric side of the Iran-Iraq conflict in a Shia mystical style. Most of his work was devoted to reflecting how bassijis perceived the war and their role in it. His most famous work is the documentary series Ravayat-e Fath (Narration of Victory), which was filmed during the Iran–Iraq war.

Avini believed that secular Western techniques could be employed in the service of spiritual art, but the artist should subdue their profane nature. When filming, he was killed by a mine explosion and pronounced a Shahid (someone who died fulfilling a religious commandment). Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared him the "the master of martyred literati" (Persian: سید شهیدان اهل قلم), and the 20th day of Farvardin is entitled the day of "Islamic Revolution art" in his honor.

Early life and education

Avini was born in 1947 in Rey, south of Tehran, to a middle-class Muslim family that was not particularly religious. He attended elementary and secondary school in Zanjan, Kerman, and Tehran. Avini entered university in 1965, earning a master's degree in architecture from Tehran University prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Intellectual revolution

According to his friends and classmates, Avini had a different lifestyle before the 1979 Revolution of Iran, and he underwent an intellectual revolution in the 1960s. In response to Avini's harsh criticism of the secular intellectuals of his time, whom he accused of "lack of loyalty to the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei," Massoud Behnoud published an article detailing Avini's lifestyle during his studies in the [Tehran] Faculty of Fine Arts. "...for a period he became a hipster. He grew his hair long and started wearing jeans, bracelets, and things like this. But for his good or bad luck, in 1978 he got involved in spiritual affairs and literature [Erfan-va adabiat-e erfani] and gave up on his previous life style altogether," Behnoud wrote in his second article in Adineh magazine, after his first had been criticized by Avini in Sureh magazine.

According to Shahrzad Beheshti, one of Avini's friends during his studies, Avini had changed and was exploring other routes. In other words, he was not interested in daily life solutions. "Since that year, we thought Avini was interested in things that we could no longer comprehend… Avini was a very different person before and after the revolution," said Beheshti. By the revolution, Avini gave up writing and burned all his writings to annihilate his 'self,' "so that all that remained would be God." "Likewise, a film is the result of the filmmaker's inspiration. However, if one entirely immerses one self in God, then God will inspire his works and appear in them. That's my goal not my claim," said Avini. After the revolution, he was introduced to Ayatollah Khomeini's ideology; he became a follower of the "charismatic leader," but not a close disciple.

Artistic work

While Avini could have become a politician like many of his colleagues, he instead participated in the revolution through documentary filmmaking; afterwards, he joined the television team of Construction Jihad with an ideological goal, where he was the head of Jihad Television Unit, a documentary film unit co-sponsored both by IRIB channel 1 and Construction Jihad. According to Avini, this was the very "suspended position between the two organizations" that led to the unit's works; if not for that, none of the films would have been created. Avini, who made over 80 films on the Iran-Iraq war, is considered a major contributor to the documentation of the war.

Style

Avini described his approach to documentary filmmaking as “illuminatory”; for him, this was a process in which “the essence of existence” reveals itself to the artist, who captures it in his artwork. This process involves self-negation in the presence of truth. Avini argued that artist must restrain his own subjective thoughts in his artwork and instead "reflect truth like a mirror."

According to Agnes Devictor, a professor at the Sorbonne who specializes in Iranian cinema, Avini created an original cinematic approach and tried to develop a complex reflection on the war, even in the urgency and danger of the battlefield. He did not limit himself to a realistic or glorifying approach. Although Avini considered his films promotional, decisive, and modern, he invited the viewer to develop a personal place within the event and perceive the esoteric, Shia mystical side of the conflict.

Working with a crew of young, amateur volunteers, Avini could focus on "filming something differently" in his documentary series. As he had based his works on the break with the imperial past, he could not work with a team formed under the Shah or use older Iranian television methods, which drew from American styles.

Avini had his teams stay at the set for long periods of time, taking the time to discover and encounter "the other." Avini tried to maintain realism by minimizing the use of cinematic effects, and worked to thwart the habits the combatants had adopted when being filmed. During the war and the occupation of Khorramshahr, Avini decided to record the events and make promotional films. Avini rarely filmed major victories and was hardly interested in strategy or military issues; his documentaries were almost exclusively devoted to how volunteers (bassijis) viewed the conflict and their participation.

Using his own methods of filming and editing, Avini sought to capture both the visible (military operations) and the esoteric (the internal or moral frontline) elements of battle, which he overlaid with Shi'a mystic philosophy.

Ravayat-e Fath

Ravayat-e Fath (Narration of Victory) was a "lifelong" documentary of the Iran-Iraq war which focused on the daily life of Iranian soldiers. It consisted of five series and dealt with the spiritual aspect of the war. It depicted "a lifetime spiritual experience" through its ideological narration.

Theorist

Avini was an intellectual and theorist who reconciled the Islamic regime with political and aesthetic modernity. He wrote a series of articles in Sureh magazine critiquing "Western Civilization," a subject on which he later concentrated in his film Sarab (Mirage).

According to Devictor, Avini could be related to late 19th century thinkers in the Muslim world who felt it was necessary to employ Western political, economic, or cultural techniques in the service of spiritual art, but that the artist should conquer the techniques' profane nature (as Avini believed). At a conference at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, he said that Western art was a container that could accept any content, and that it was possible to insert religious thought without changing or betraying it.

Death and legacy

Avini was killed by shrapnel from a landmine explosion in Fakkeh, in northwest Khuzestan Province, on April 9, 1993, on a former frontline. He was dubbed a Shahid after his death. Two days before leaving for Fakkeh, he was asked about his destination, and Avini answered: "You may not know where I am going, I am leaving for Fakkeh, where our combatants witnessed how the angels were delivering the martyrs' souls."

He was entitled "the master of martyred literati" (Persian: سید شهیدان اهل قلم) by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on the 20th day of Farvardin, which was declared the day of "Islamic Revolution art" on the Iranian calendar.

Filmography

Title	Year	Genre	Episodes
Six Days in Turkmensahra	1979	documentary
Khuzestan Flood	1979	documentary
The Bitten by the Khan	1980	documentary	6 episodes
The Reward of Jihad and Martyrdom	1981	documentary	3 episodes
The Victory of Blood	1981	documentary	3 episodes
Truth	1981	documentary	11 episodes
With the Doctor of Jihad in Bashagerd	1981	documentary
Seven Stories of Balochistan	1981	documentary	7 episodes
Qiamollah	1982	documentary
Salavati Economy	1982	documentary	6 episodes
The Lion Men of God	1983	documentary	4 episodes
Brave men! Karbala is Waiting	1983	documentary
Karbala, War, People	1984	documentary	3 episodes
With Al'Mahdi Brigade at the Head of Albysheh Axis	1985	documentary
The Special Program of ValFajr 8	1987	documentary
The Chronicles of Victory	1985~1988	documentary	63 episodes
Elegy	1988	documentary	2 episodes
America, Deception, Rape	1988	documentary
The Breeze of Life, Fragrance of Islamic Revolution in Lebanon	1988	documentary	13 episodes
The Herald of Affections	1989	documentary	7 episodes
It Can't Be Said, the Separation of a Friend	1989	documentary	2 episodes
Stone Revolution	1989	documentary	6 episodes
Talk to Me DoKoohe	1989	documentary	2 episodes
Mirage	1990	documentary	17 episodes
Three Generations of Runabout	1992	documentary	3 episodes
A City In the Sky	1992	documentary	6 episodes

Sources:

Bibliography

Title	Year	Source
Magic Mirror - Volume I	1998
Magic Mirror - Volume II	1998
Magic Mirror - Volume III	1999
The Beginning of an End	1999
Imam and the Inner Life of Human	1999
The Rupture of Form	2009
Talk to Me DoKoohe	2001
The Observatory of Mysteries	2012
Development and Foundations of Western Civilization	1997
The Homeless Snails	2000
The Resurrection of Life	2000
Travel to the Land of Light	2005
A City in the Sky	2005
The Victory of Blood	2000
Another Tomorrow	1999
The Heavenly Treasures	1997
The Center of Sky	2001
The Breeze of Life	2005

See also

• Martyr Avini Literary Award
• Occidentalism

External links

• Martyr Aviny institution of cultural and art