Interview with “Dog Sweat” filmmaker
Director Hossein Keshavarz talks about his controversial new film opening in theaters nationwide.
What made you decide to get into filmmaking?
I worked in business for a while, and would find myself sneaking away to the bathroom to write screenplays. So, I figured it would be healthier to pursue a career in filmmaking.
Also, I had written a sci-fi novella that I liked, but which only a handful of people read, which made me realize I needed to find a bigger audience!
I am the last of eight kids. Being surrounded by strong personalities while trying put my two cents in at the dinner table conversation probably led me to work in a field that is collaborative. It definitely made me a very fast talker!
Perhaps most importantly though, I think filmmaking, and art in general, is a way of looking at the world. For me, an important goal in life is trying to understand the world and figuring out how you should live in it. I think people have a fundamental desire to be moral – but it is hard to figure out what is the right thing to do in their relationships, and their interactions in the world. Art is a way of exploring these issues. When I was younger I always thought I’d be an academic or scientist, but I connect with art more because rather than just describe a truth, it helps you experience it.
Where did the idea of your film come from?
During film school I developed a script called “This Modern Love” about Iranians who travel to the Philippines for vacation that explored how Iranians act on their holidays in foreign countries that have fewer social limitations. (The script went through the Script Clinic at the Berlin Film Festival).
When I was selecting cast and crew for the “This Modern Love” I become friends with a lot of the recent graduates of the film and theater programs. I watched the projects they were making – short, underground films about their lives and their relationships. They weren’t bothering censoring their scripts to get approval from the film board. They did this because they wanted to make films that reflected their lives, even if they knew their films wouldn’t have an audience. Inside Iran, the films wouldn’t be shown because of their un-Islamic content; outside of Iran the festivals were only looking for very particular types of films from Iranian filmmakers.
As we were in pre-production for This Modern Love, which would have been filmed with the proper permissions and permits and would have featured well-known Iranian actors, my mother was in a nearly fatal car accident. I dropped everything I was doing and focused on nursing her back in health, first in Iran, then in the United States when she was strong enough to travel.
Once I got back to Iran almost a year later things had changed – both in the country and in terms of my own feelings. My previous script was written at the tail end of reformist president’s Khatami term. Now it was well into Ahmadinejad’s time in office and he had already started a crackdown on artists and dissidents. While I was nursing my mother back to health in Tehran, there were protests at the local university about the recent firings of professors for their supposed ideological leanings. At night when I would go back to my apartment I would see the riot police come in. And in the morning I would see students in the emergency room, who were severely beaten. They would receive medical treatment, but then flee from the hospital to avoid being questioned by the police. None of it was reported on the news inside or even outside the country. This experience stayed with me for a long time. I felt like the times had changed and the script that I had spent so long on was no longer truthful to reality.
At the same time I was inspired by this unseen generation of Iranian filmmakers that I had met. Thus I decided to write a new script (Dog Sweat) that encompassed the things that my friends and I had seen and felt, even if it would have to be shot underground, with the fear of being harassed or arrested.
There is a new wave of artists who sincerely care about being truthful, and who turn down a lot of lucrative work because their conscience won’t allow them to do it. I wanted to help bring this new wave of artists and filmmakers beyond short films that were only seen in the living rooms of fellow filmmakers.
Making a film illegally limited us in many ways, but it also gives the film an immediacy and energy in its portrayal of real life in Iran. It allowed us to tell honest stories of young people fighting to live free.
What did you learn from the process of making this film?
Making “Dog Sweat”, I learned how to form a team where we depended on each other. We shot the whole film underground in often very risky situations. So we had to trust each other in the face of a lot of crazy circumstances. Things would change constantly and a lot of times we could only shoot what we could get. This taught me to truly collaborate with the actors and our DP. Often, our plans would fall apart because of something out of our control and I would ask the actors – what do you think? And then we would have to change and re-adjust. Those type of situations made us bond even more.
Also, this filmmaking experience taught me to trust myself. When you are shooting something illegally and are afraid and are dealing with things falling through and changing constantly, you have to learn to adapt to the circumstances quickly. Amidst all the chaos you have to remember to stay focused on the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it.
What did you do that you consider to be unique and/or original for this project?
Besides the circumstances under which we shot the film, we wanted to make an authentic film that shows the surprising fun, drama and irrepressible energy of a rebellious generation.
Our intention was to make a film that would resonate with both Iranians and Westerners. With Iranians because it would actually feel like what it’s like to live in Iran; with Westerners because they could understand and relate to the experience of the film’s characters.
Any war stories you can share from the making of the film? Biggest challenges?
Because we shot the film underground we had to be careful who we trusted. We didn’t have the control over production that you’d normally have doing a film. A small example of this is the last scene of the movie. It was supposed to be something totally different, which we were going to film over several days by the Caspian Sea. But the actress came and said that her father found out that she was doing the film and forbid her from continuing. She could maybe stick around for a couple hours, but would have to be home by noon. We had two or three hours to shoot something that could wrap up her storyline in the film. I sat down with the DP and the actors and discussed what the characters themselves might do. Then I sat down for a half hour and wrote the scene and we shot it before she had to leave. That scene worked out and I think it’s one of the better scenes of the film. Unfortunately, a lot of times when something out of control occurred it wouldn’t work and winded up having a lot of bits and pieces in terms of footages. Often, for example, we would have two good scenes, but not the critical middle scene to connect them. It made the edit very challenging.
What other projects are you planning for the future?
Next year I will be filming a script that I wrote called “A Pebble of Love in the Shoe of My Life”. “During a weeklong visit to his girlfriend, John has a brief encounter with a women he could have truly loved, forcing him to re-examine his life as he gets caught up in a milieu of racial politics and failed job interviews.”
