Omar Khayyam Does Dallas

A new film about the legendary Persian poet Omar Khayyam, directed by Kayvan Mashayek, has opened in Dallas. The Keeper was shot in Uzbekistan--one of our friends, Emelia Asadova, worked on the production, and seemed to like it. Here's an excerpt from the Denton Record-Chronicle's account:

Khayyam’s story is told through flashbacks as a contemporary 12-year-old Houston boy (Adam Echahly) becomes intrigued when researching his heritage, and specifically the Iranian tradition of passing along stories between generations. It tracks Khayyam through his early years, when his romance with a woman separates him from a childhood friend who later becomes a powerful sultan.

The idea was inspired in part by Mashayekh’s late father. When he was 11, Mashayekh emigrated from Iran to Houston with his family, where he eventually became a lawyer before turning to filmmaking. In the meantime, he said he lost touch with his cultural roots.

“I was trying to be as American as possible. I was trying to divorce myself from my ethnicity. My father was really troubled by that,” he said. “When my father passed away, I realized all the wisdom behind the things he told me.”

The ambitious production was no less challenging. The Keeper was shot in five cities and three continents during a total of 37 days spread out over almost an entire year.

        About 80 percent of the film, including all of the flashback sequences involving Khayyam, was shot in rural Uzbekistan, where Khayyam himself once studied. The director said much of the third-world architecture there still resembles that from 900 years ago.

        However, military conflict in neighboring Iraq during 2003 forced the production to shut down for eight months because of insurance concerns. The sets were only about 200 miles from the Afghanistan border. Yet Mashayekh persevered in a quest for authenticity.

        “You can still go in some areas and see the same brickwork that’s exactly from that time period. It’s very rustic,” Mashayekh said. “There was a staple of architecture that we were trying to maintain, and the closest thing that we could find to it was in Uzbekistan.”

        The Keeper is now playing at the Inwood in Dallas and Rave Motion Pictures 16 in Hickory Creek.