A Window to the Fatherland/Dr. Nourizadeh/April 12

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

We continue the program with talking to our special guest of tonight, film director Mr Zakaria Hashemi.

Every time I watch his films they remind me of the pre-revolution time that we lived in but did not appreciate it. We did have a kind of censorship in our film industry then as well, but that was all it was and artists were used to it.

Zakaria had spent a lot of time in the war fronts with Iraq and has now turned his memoirs of that era into a book.

Zakaria Hashemi:

This book has really hurt me a lot. I had to go to the war front and make a filmabout the conflict. I could not stay behind the fronts and got the permission from the army to join the fighting forces, which was a very dangerous thing to do.

I had told the soldiers that I was working for the national broadcasting organization but did not do my job for money.

Halfway through the work the head of the national broadcasting responsible for news and films about the war approached me and told me that I must give half od the budget allocated to the project to him.

I told him I was putting my life in danger and he was only interested in doing business. I eventually gave him the money but I can tell you that many our youths died and the guys like this man have benefitted from that bloody conflict.