A Compromising Position
In an interview with Donal Foreman, Caveh Zahedi talks critics, Ulysses and how bad filmmakers are like bad lovers.

Caveh Zahedi isn’t a household name, either here or in his own country – but, for independent filmmakers, he’s a name worth remembering: not for the usual superlatives about integrity and persistence that tend to get thrown around in the independent world – although they do mostly apply here – but because, with his latest film, Zahedi has done a remarkable thing: set out, and succeeded, to make a film that would acquire theatrical distribution.

This may not sound so remarkable until one takes into account a few pertinent facts. Since his debut feature, A Little Stiff (co-directed with Greg Watkins in 1991), Zahedi has been making and starring in painfully honest autobiographical films which have utilised re-enactment, cinéma-vérité and video diary formats to explore his personal life. Since each film has challenged conventional notions of narrative, duration, entertainment, performance, documentary, honesty, and even ethics, it’s not surprising that none of them have reached an audience beyond film festivals and the occasional sale through his website. The other pertinent fact is that Zahedi’s latest, breakthrough film, which synthesises many of the concerns of his previous work, has an added cross to bear: the film details his long battle with a sex addiction to prostitutes. That the naturally titled I Am a Sex Addict also manages to be his most accessible, funny and (believe it or not) heartwarming film to date (and his first to be screened in Ireland, playing at this year’s Galway Film Fleadh) is a significant achievement. Of course, Zahedi didn’t manage it without some compromises along the way, his short-lived blog documenting the distribution process gives frank exposition of many of them, but he seems to have reached the conclusion (for now, at least) that making films is not just about what he wants. In one vivid metaphor, he described it as comparable to the give and take of a sexual experience: bad lovers are the ones who think only of satisfying themselves.

Given this proclivity to pull things off against the odds, perhaps we should give Zahedi the benefit of the doubt if his latest project sounds a touch Quixotic in the scale of its ambition: an 18-hour adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which the American Academy in Rome has granted him a year-long residency to write. In Ireland to introduce Sex Addict to the Galway audience, Caveh Zahedi also spent several days in Dublin meeting with Joyce scholars and researching the project.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 119.