Laguna Hills man mortgaged home to make documentary on the devastating 2003 earthquake in his native Iran.
LAGUNA HILLS Jahangir Golestan-Parast still remembers how decades ago on a couple of occasions his principal shone the flashlight inside a dark movie theater and hauled him and his friends back to school.
The boys had skipped math classes in their native Isfahan, Iran, and snuck away to the local cinema, which showed classic American films with heroes like John Wayne and Charles Bronson, dubbed in Farsi.
As a teen-ager, Golestan-Parast loved watching Western movies, which he says kindled his interest in filmmaking.
And though he dabbled in film classes for the next few decades and had produced a video travelogue, the devastating 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran, gave him an opportunity to show the true side of his former homeland, he says.
“Every time I have seen this documentary and I have seen it 50 times, I cry because I truly accomplished my goal. It’s all about humanity,” said Golestan-Parast, 55.
The life insurance salesman from Laguna Hills, who married an American woman and smarted at the 1991 film “Not Without My Daughter” vowed to one day make a film that would reveal a positive side of Iran. (”Not Without My Daughter” was based on the true story of an American woman who escaped Iran with her daughter against the wishes of her Iranian husband.)
Two weeks after the quake, Golestan-Parast began documenting the aftermath by dispatching a film crew to Bam, where the Dec. 26, 6.6-magnitude temblor killed 30,000 and turned the city’s ancient citadel to rubble.
A few months later, he learned about Americans Adele Freedman and her fianc
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Director Golestan truly deserves our gratitude on so many levels. His timing could not be more perfect. People in the U.S. as well as in Iran and the rest of the world really ought to, once in a while, put aside their religious, ethnic and cultural differences and re-discover the beauty of their common humanity.
This film is more than a film about the earth quake of Bam… It is all about humanity.
Only few documentary films have impacted me like “Bam 6.6″. The film does an excellent job of portraying Iranian people and their hearts.
Congratulations to director Jahangir Golestan-Parast on this great work.