Wind Carpet: Kamal Tabrizi

Just watched this wonderfully funny, deliberately informative, cinematographicly witty film by Kamal Tabrizi.

Synopsis: ": Ten-year-old Sakura (Miyu Yagyu) travels with her father Makoto (Takaaki Enoki) from Japan, to Isfahan, to pick up a Persian carpet designed by her late mother. Although warmly greeted by Makoto’s friend Akbar (Reza Kianian), it soon becomes clear that the carpet – needed in 20 days’ time for a Japanese street-festival – has not even been started. The 11 years old Ruzbeh calls the locals into a carpet-weaving Task Force in a bid to get the job done. Although essentially a conventional fish-out-of-water story, director Kamal Tabrizi brings a variety of tones and textures to the film to keep it from following a predictable pattern.

The film was produced on the occasion of a major exhibition (June 2004) on Iranian carpets at the Mitsubishi Club in the Japanese capital of Tokyo on Tuesday. 10 percent of the sales of the displayed carpets was allocated for the victims of the earthquake in the city of Bam, Kerman province.

Trivia: did you know that a recently woven Iranian carpet (2005) hangs in the auditorium of the UN headquarter in NY?

• Unique design
  
• 225 sq feet
• each centimeter of it contains 200 knots all tied manually
• Woven in 10 years by the well-known Iranian carpet weaver Mohammad Seirafian from the city of Isfahan.
• The 12 century Persian poem "Oneness of Mankind" has been woven into it in pure gold.
• all natural colors, resistant to sun and become more attractive with time
• The carpet is presented as a gift from Iran
  
• The English translation of the verse installed next to the carpet

The verse reads:

All men are members of the same body, Created from one essence.
If fate brings suffering to one member, The others cannot stay at rest.
You who remain indifferent
To the burden of pain of others,
Do not deserve to be called human."