: this video consists of some short excerpts from the film Mokarrameh, Memories and Dreams (Mokarrameh, Khāterāt va Royā-hā) by the Iranian documentary film-maker Mr Ebrāhim Mokhtāri (ابراهیم مختاری).
accordint to the http://payvand.com/news/06/may/1006.html#_ftn1
Mokarameh Ghambari, Iranian village woman
This unusual lady, who was sold into marriage at a very young age raised nine children and lived with two havoos (a husband’s other wife). She was a farmer and a farmer’s wife most of her life and at the same time was a seamstress for ten years, hairdresser for fifteen and a midwife and a healer for many years, before becoming a painter at age of 67, after her husband died a few years before. This strong lady never went to school nor had any formal training. She first started painting when, after a long illness, her children, out of concern for her health, sold the cows that she was raising. Out of grief, she started to paint, first on small scraps of paper that she found in the house using natural-made colors from fruits and trees. Her very first painting was a portrait of a cow. Some while later, her youngest bought her some paper and paint from Tehran and she went on to become a real painter. She started to paint her house, her door, despite the strange looks and comments from her neighbors
In an interview she said that she paints like a child. Her paintings are full of stories, most with bright beautiful colors, but there is always some dark shade somewhere in her works, to bring out that bitter sweet side of life. Her paintings are her creation of her recollections of the stories that her husbands used to recite to her as well as local folk legends, religious tales, her children’s faces, her life and her dreams. She also got ideas from stories in the Koran and the Bible and what was going on in her village.
At first she started to paint at night and would hide her paintings if someone dropped by unexpectedly, because in her village a farmer should not have anything to do with paper, as it was considered a waste,
Mokarameh Ghanbari, Iranian village woman, who lives near the city of Sari in the Caspian region of Mazandaran, is now in her seventies and still incredibly active. She has been painting for ten years in the Naïve genre.
She began painting at the age of seventy in 1995, after the death of her husband and the departure of her children from home. She had not received any previous training.according to http://www.tavoosonline.com/News/NewsDetailEn.aspx?src=309
She began painting on the walls of her house and continued to paint on anything she could, from stone to wood to paper, using natural herbal paint. After her talent was discovered and she was featured in the Seyhoon Gallery she became a full time professional painter.
The motifs of her works are derived from ancient and religious myths and stories and the simple occurrences of village life. She is still not familiar with the concept of perspective in painting and continues to paint in the Naïve mode.
She uses all kinds of material in her works and paints on all kinds of surface—she is right now using three-fold plywood and Styrofoam.
She uses a beautifully colorful palette to paint her version of ancient myths and religious epics or just the events of village life such as weddings and celebrations.
In the year 2001 she was rewarded an award for outstanding woman of the year by a well-known NGO
Mokarrameh Ghanbari, who was born in 1928 in Mazadaran, a region in the north of Iran, reminds us more of our mothers or grandmothers than a painter.
In 2001, Qanbari was awarded an honorary certificate at the Conference of the Foundation of Iranian Women's Studies in Stockholm, and was named the year's exemplary woman.
In addition, she was named the "Female Painter of 2001" by the Swedish National Museum.
Recently many of us have read that Meryl Streep is going to portray an Iranian lady painter, that most of us had not even heard of, in a forthcoming film (see article). So who is this lady that Hollywood has found so interesting? Mokarrameh Ghanbari, who was born in 1928 in Mazadaran, a region in the north of Iran, reminds us more of our mothers or grandmothers than a painter.
But Fox Film executives recently announced that the appearance of Meryl Streep in the role of late Iranian artist Mokarrameh Qanbari in the upcoming Fox Film production is uncertain, the Persian service of CHN reported on Sunday. Ali Bolboli observed that a French actress will probably replace Streep in the film. acording to thehttp://payvand.com/news/07/apr/1157.html
