Veteran film and television actor and director Gholamhossein Lotfi, who is staying at home these days, complained about his lack of compassion and inattention, referring to his physical condition that has kept him at home for some time.
According to the ILNA correspondent, Gholamhossein Lotfi (director and veteran actor of cinema and television), referring to the situation of his working days and life, said: “During these 15 years, I worked in a few scattered cases and a few short sequences, which I can not say continuous work and continuity.” I did.
He added: “Eight or nine years ago, I fell from a height on a TV series and was injured in an empty pool. My back and legs were injured.” At first, it got better after a normal treatment, but the pain and problems came back and I had to have surgery. Last year, at the height of the struggle with this disease, as I was preparing for my second surgery, I was offered to play the movie “Coconut”, which is in the children’s genre. Although I could not walk and moved with the help of my sister’s child, I came to Tehran and filmed. I was returning to Qazvin again. When I saw that my presence in the film was prolonged, I rented a house in Tehran to finish filming, because it has been six or seven years since I sold my house in Tehran and came to Qazvin.
Gholamhossein Lotfi, referring to the problems he encountered after being injured on the set of the film, said: “I was injured during filming.” Unfortunately, the society has become so bad that the people who were on the stage with me in the morning and we had been working together every day for three months, even on the night of the accident, did not come to ask how I was. I was sad at first and thought I was a bad person. Every time I went through my life, I saw that I never quarreled or insulted anyone, and I always respected everyone. I have nothing. You see, Ms. Elnaz Shakerdoust, who played with me in Mr. Jirani’s “Suffocation”, was injured on stage in another film, when she went to the hospital, no one asked her. So it turns out that society has become bad and not my personal issue. A cowardly culture has grown up in Iranian cinema where nothing is worthwhile. Now Corona has come and no one can attend the funeral, but before Corona, a great actor like Ezzatullah Entezami, when he died, very few people attended his funeral.
“There is no single class to support artists and there is no proper mechanism to support people who are injured at work,” he said. “Now in the United States, an actor plays a movie, even if for the rest of his life.” If he is paralyzed, money will be transferred to his account from the sale of the same film for the rest of his life, and his life will not have any problems. I have acted in all these films on TV and in the cinema, and the most famous of them is the series “House to Shower”, which is broadcast every year during the month of Ramadan, but can you believe that I am still a creditor of this series? This is a wrong behavior on TV that the last installment is not paid in every series we play, and we are always indebted to the works. These problems do not end today and yesterday. I do not know if the TV directors know or not, but it is unlikely that they do not know, and there is probably a series of relationships that prefer artists like me to ignore and not bring to themselves. Of course, there is less of this problem in the cinema because you are on the side of a personal producer and he finally pays the money anyway. I do not like to say anything so that you do not pay me. This means that they themselves cause the wrong system to spread, which continues to this day.
“No one cares about the other,” said the veteran TV director. We are not insured, I have spent about 45 million tomans for my feet so far. The Institute of Veteran Artists also donates 100 or 150 thousand tomans a month to all artists, which is a very small amount. Supplementary insurance, for example, in the first operation, which was 12 million tomans, paid 2 million tomans. Now, because I am an guidance worker, they paid me 2 million tomans, and otherwise they would not have given me the same. Nowadays, most children are not paid well because supplementary insurance does not pay for their treatment.
In response to the question whether he did not miss making the film, he said: Why? I have a scenario ready now, but who is the investor? Of course, it is now a corona and the country is closed. Filmmaking activities have also decreased significantly. Most cinema kids are unemployed. Unfortunately, the government does not provide any assistance to the children of the cinema. If I were president, I would have decided differently for cinemas, but now I am not!
Complaining about the behavior of filmmakers towards actors who were away from work for a while due to illness, he said: “Sometimes a person gets sick for six months or a year, but sometimes they do not call for ten years to call for a job.” We are actors and we should be invited to work. I was sick for a while and I did not die. Why don’t you come to me anymore? So you have to interview them to find out you live! Of course, money solves some of the problems, but now I need the spirit to continue living. I like to work and be active. When they do not come to me, the disease remains in the body. I went to the same movie “Coconut” because it changed my mood and I saw behind the scenes how it had a good effect on my mood and made me feel better.
“I wrote a lot of plays and screenplays, I wrote two or three serial subjects, and I wrote four or five episodes each, but there is nowhere to go,” he said, noting that he had not been unemployed and tried to write during his years at home. To be able to present the work. On the other hand, because I live in Qazvin and I am far from the center, it becomes a little hard work. Qazvin province also has a television, but it has a very small budget that we can never afford to work.
“I have never done this in my life,” said the director of the memorable “Mirror” series. I used to make the series “Mirror” for TV when the streets were deserted on Mondays and people were watching the series. They even sent me two or three letters of appreciation from Imam Khomeini’s office, and Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani praised the series during Friday prayers, but the TV directors did nothing at all. Everyone told me that your nuns are oily with this series that you made, but how many years have passed since then? One of the TV executives did not tell me not to be tired. They rejected everything we did after that without reading it. Why has the series “House to Shower” been broadcast eight hundred times to date? Because in the last ten years, except for the Capital series, none of the series was defensible and they had to turn to the old series. I got my PhD in acting and directing two years ago. Why do I have to stay home with so much experience and education?
Pointing out that we should not blame all the problems of the country on Corona, Lotfi said: “Do not blame everything on Corona.” Corona was not there two years ago, but that was our situation. Another year the corona will go and again this is our situation. Incidentally, Corona also had many advantages. People took more care of themselves and observed a number of things.
The veteran director and actor concluded by saying that the cinema will tell many stories about Corona in the future: “We must let it end like during the Corona War and then portray the social effects and consequences of this event.” Many stories can be told about this great event of the century. Of course, the subjects become more sad and the investor is less willing to make a tragic film. These stories must be deposited in the layers of life. Dramatic and even comedic subjects can be made from corona. I have many plans for Corona in mind. But when you can not find an investor, all these plans are a pity. A good painter is that his work is not dependent on anyone and he creates a work individually, but the filmmaker has to provide different conditions to be able to make his film.