Alireza Khatami comes into the studio to talk his first feature film Oblivion Verses (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1e6OaNQ-2k) which premiered at the Venice Biennial where it took a golden lion for screenwriting. He chats with Brian and Dana on filming beyond plot, making a movie in a language you don’t speak, and everything you need to know about cemeteries.
It has been important, certainly since the turn of the 20th century, to ask what things – not just art, everything – mean. What does this abstract painting mean? What does this realist short story mean? What does this rock mean? I learned at the Santa Monica police station, from an incredibly chatty technician who gently rolled my finger on the scanner, that the print on my left index finger is of the sort that less than 1% of people have. I asked, laughing, but not really, I felt pretty serious about it – it was my first thought – “what does it mean?” She said, “oh, probably nothing.” If I look it up online – I think it was a double loop or a Peacock’s eye or maybe a tented arch, I wish I remembered or wrote it down, but I didn’t – it might mean that I’m a perfectionist, that I’m indecisive or diplomatic, that I’m independent and inflexible, or that I am “fiery.”
