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   Nosrat Karimi (born 1925) - 
    Director, actor, scriptwriter, make-up man, and sculptor

Summary

Nosrat Karimi is one of the most important personalities in the Iranian history of theatre and cinema. After receiving his formal education at Tehran's Drama School, he began his career as make-up artist and actor. From the 1940s to the beginning of the 1950s, he played numerous roles in various theatres. Between 1953 and 1964, Karimi lived in Europe. He studied film direction in Prague, in particular puppet and animation movies, and worked as an assistant director and actor in Rome.

In the later years, Nosrat Karimi busied himself with sculpture. He made numerous sculpture, which have been exhibited nationally and internationally. In addition, he wrote books about theatre and cinema.

Nosrat Karimi was born in 1925 in Tehran as son of a respected retailer. Even as a child, he had a bent for the arts. He was fascinated by the traditional comic actors and Persian clowns, whom he could admire at weddings and family ceremonies. At home he imitated these performers and made similar doll figures, his mother helping him to make the dolls’ dresses. At the age of six, he watched the movies of Charlie Chaplin and was captivated by the figure of the poor vagabond, who refused to be beaten by the trials of life. Quickly Karimi learned to imitate Chaplin and found his first audience amongst relatives and friends.

At the age of nine, he began to make himself up for his roles and thus gained his first experiences with the art of make-up. His oldest brother, the later master of miniature, Ali Karimi, recognized Nosrat’s liking for acting and encouraged him in this direction. In his brother’s company, Nosrat made his first visit to the theatre. At the age of ten, he made a bust of the famous Persian poet Ferdowsi, for which he was awarded a respected prize.

After eleven years in Europe, Nosrat Karimi returned to Tehran in 1964. After a few filming experiments with the commercial cinema, he was engaged in 1965 by The Ministry of Art and Culture to run and extend the state workshop for animated cartoons. A little later, Karimi began his activity as professor at The Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran university, as well as at The Academy of the Dramatic Arts, where he taught different art styles for more than twenty years.

During his three years as director of the animation studio, he made a number of short films that won local and international prizes, among them:

In the same period, Karimi produced two TV series: "Mr. Plaintiff", a puppet show and "The Marriage", a twenty-part family series about married life. Through these popular series, Karimi became known to a wide section of society of Iran.

In 1969, Karimi began shooting the movie "The Thief and the Policeman" - a Persian adaptation of the story of cops and robbers. However, after having finished the film for the most part, he gave up the direction due to interference from the producer. In the same year, the British director Terence Young shot some scenes of the film "Poppy is also a Flower" in Iran. He engaged Karimi as make-up artist for for his lead Yul Bryner and other actors.

From 1971 to 1973, Nosrat Karimi made three feature films: "The Carriage Driver", "The Solution" and "A Bed for Three" where he not only acted as director, but also wrote the film scripts and played the title roles. In these movies, Karimi tells with wit and irony three stories, which together form a trilogy inspired by Italian neo-realism. The focal point is the life of average citizens with all their problems, big and small. Strait-jacketed in the fetters of tradition and intolerance, the protagonists get into apparently hopeless situations. However, listening to reason, in the end they find a solution.

"The Carriage Driver" was a great success and went down well with the critics. This movie was chosen as the Iranian contribution for international film festivals. However, the film authorities banned it from being shown abroad. Only years later, could the film be performed in European cinemas. The internationally acclaimed Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, honoured with The Golden Palm of Cannes 1997 and numerous other international motion picture awards, praised the film as an important work of the Iranian Cinema^(*).

Karimi’s fame and great success resulted in attractive offers from many producers. Thus in the 1970s he played in a number of commercial films that were directed by others. He also played a supporting role in a Japanese-Iranian co-production.

In 1975, the director and actor made his fourth and last movie "The Miserable One". Again, he wrote the screenplay. The film, a satire about the mounting tensions in the 1970s in Tehran, went down well and received notable reviews.

In 1976, Karimi played one of the main characters of the TV series "My Uncle Napoleon". This is regarded as the most successful series ever run on Iranian television. A year later, the artist produced the TV series "Khosro Mirsa II". This 16-part series, a grotesque comedy about an aristocratic family descended from the Qajar dynasty, was to be (unintentionally) his last work for a long period. He then wrote another film script and was preparing his next movie, but for the time being film production was stopped during the revolutionary years 1978/79.

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Later works

(*) Abbas Kiarostami: "Having seen 'The Carriage Driver' again after thirty-four years, I am now deeply convinced that neither festival awards, nor the assessment of the art critics can be considered as evaluation criterion for a work of art, neither can the box-office. The importance and the value of a true work of art is only determined over the years. In my view, 'The Carriage Driver' is today more impressive than during the first performance in 1971". Ref.: The Carriage Driver, a Screenplay by Nosrat Karimi, compiled and edited by Mostafa Zemani-Nia, Tehran 2004, page 298.

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