Description

One week after 9/11, San Francisco-based filmmakers Jay Rosenblatt and Caveh Zahedi asked 150 independent filmmakers to create a short film or video related to the events. Eleven of the resulting works are included in UNDERGROUND ZERO, a feature-length video that studies the significance of September 11th through a variety of creative, personal and cultural perspectives. ... Read more

Description

At turns humorous, touching, and revealing, IN THE BATHTUB OF THE WORLD is the video diary of a year in the life of independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi, and his real-life girlfriend Amanda (Mandy) Field. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

painful
"In the Bathtub of the World" is neurotic and painfully boring.

a great experience
This is certainly a film that will appeal to some more than others. I personally found it to be one of the best studies of a film maker's persona that I have ever seen. I enjoyed every moment of the year 1999 set with Caveh and Mandy. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Beginning with a chance encounter in a campus elevator, this boy-meets-girl comedy by Greg Watkins and Caveh Zahedi chronicles the romantic crush a film student (Zahedi) has on a shy artist (Erin McKim), documenting his multiple, urgent attempts at securing a date. Getting his feet wet, Zahedi awkwardly holds her umbrella while she studies for an exam; in another sequence, he brings her a flower--day after day, but she's never around to receive it. Each attempt to impress her winds up a painful--if beautiful--failed gesture. In true schlemiel fashion and sticking with the surface realism of the film--real-time action, real-life participants, and third-person documentary-style photography--the hero is allowed no bag of tricks. Each method falters, and he suffers a Chaplinesque pratfall. But while the prospects of the protagonist dwindle, he also gains from the perspective of a pressing, difficult experience. Don't let the familiarity of the story's formula (nice guys don't get laid) or the hero's sweetness (nerd in search of a girlfriend) fool you; the underlying dramatic tensions in the film are love and infatuation and how very hard it is--when we're being honest--to tell the difference between the two. --Christopher Chase ... Read more

Reviews (1)

One of the great American Independent films ever!!!
Zahedi's film is one of the most emotionally complex viewing experiences of the last two decades. He shows us how we all have many sides to our personality. The brilliance of the film lies in the varying tonal qualities of the scenes. You can never simply dismiss a scene as funny or angry. There are layers upon layers of tones subtly moving around so that you are continuously re-evaluating your relationship to the film. Everyone I have introduced this film to has loved it! ... Read more

Description

A real-life comedy about a filmmaker who takes a road trip to Las Vegas -- with his real-life father and 16-year-old half-brother, plus a crew of two -- in the hopes of proving the existence of God. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore
This film is so entertaining and true to life. It takes you through the winding roads of family life as it changes from one generation to another. Most of all it magnifies the gap that often exists between immigrant parents and thier American children. A must see for those who like a dose of how funny family reality can be.

This is Brilliant, Hilarious Filmmaking!!!!!!
Caveh Zahedi's "mocumentary" is about tkaing a trip to Vegas with his father, a first-generation Iranian immirgant, and his little brother. He has always felt alienated from his family so he decides to bring a film crew from UCLA film school to film the trip. He wants to feel love with his father and brother, so he asks them to take ecstacy with him so that they can have a pure, loving trip together. The father has a heart comdition and the little brother cites the mantra he's been taught at school: "just say no". Caveh's angst-ridden musing is amazing... the film is maddening and sad and funny and you should see it. ... Read more

Description

In I WAS POSSESSED BY GOD Zahedi ingests a heroic dose of "magic mushrooms" on his birthday in order to experience God.A voice begins to speak through him, claiming to be God.Thus begins one of the strangest conversations ever captured on celluloid.USA, 2000, 30 mins., color, full format. Unrated.

Suggested Retail $39.95. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

I Was Possessed by Caveh Zahedi
More than a film, better than a trip to church, Caveh Zahedi's short film I WAS POSSESSED BY GOD is a new kind of cinematic experience, one that doesn't lead you by plot or by physical events but asks you to pay close attention to the almost subliminal changes of mood, consciousness, and expressions that play across Caveh's extremely malleable and expressive little body as he explicitly and desperately yearns for something higher than himself ... via psychedelics. But this is far from simply being a "let the camera roll on a trip" movie -- as I watched this film, it slowly dawned on me that the careful editing of the piece was beginning to create a structure that is as subtle as it is enlightening. Once you have tuned into his mind-state, watching Caveh go through his own doubts, fears, feelings, and desires becomes as much your own trip as his.

What makes Caveh's personal psychedelic experience so valuable to me as a (non-tripping) viewer is how he has constructed this trip of his into an otherwise soberly edited film. As the mushrooms rewire Caveh's brain, and allow something "other" to emerge (either God or Caveh's unchecked subconscious -- possibly they are one and the same) the film manages to capture tiny blips of expressions that were just pronounced enough and arranged in such a way to allow me to follow along, as I was forced to take my cues from the only thing I had before me - Caveh's physical expressions.

In a series of subtle and not-so-subtle changes of facial arrangement, flapping of body parts, yelling, screaming, and otherworldly rolling of eyes, Caveh's link to reality ebbs and flows as he is simultaneously aware he's on drugs and on camera, both conscious of his body and of the microphone, vigilantly trying to leave himself open to anything that might need to bubble out. And, needless to say, some intensely, almost embarrassingly personal shit bubbles out!

As Caveh ingests the mushrooms and his trip builds, peaks, and dies down, a strange set of patterns emerges. For instance, my favorite is the recurrence of his flapping hands, which slowly reveals itself to be some kind of "antenna" for channeling God - at first coming spontaneously as whatever-it-is builds in him, leading him to higher and higher planes of ecstasy, but then as his trip lamentably fades, Caveh touchingly attempts to flap God back into him. It is these very fluctuations between faith and fear, between control and submission, with insane, scary, comical spitting, kicking, screaming, pleading, celebrating, and regret mixed in that give I WAS POSSESSED BY GOD such a beautiful soul. As Caveh gives into the forces at work on him he also gives signs that he can't help but be well aware of what is happening, and of what you might think of this whole thing. He gives the occasional "out of character" direction to his camera man (including expressions of love and appreciation - clearly expressive powers his possession is giving him) and makes the occasional self-conscious comment ("I'm starting to feel a little tired" is my favorite) -- all of which is, for me, the most touching and enlightening aspects of this film - this one man's intense desire to become free from his ego, his fear, or his self-image (not an easy task, apparently) and reach for something purer - this is clearly much more than a self-obsessed drug movie.

Caveh tries to go beyond everyday expressions of a social and personal kind, and though he's either unable or unwilling to completely remove a self-conscious air about him, he's taking such great personal RISKS -- the risk of looking foolish, the risk of failure, the risk of negative judgment (his own as well as others) -- that I cannot help but be deeply sympathetic and inspired simply by his faith in his attempts. It is his stab at fearlessness in reaching for this higher plane that makes me love the Caveh Zahedi of I WAS POSSESSED BY GOD - not simply Caveh's ability to channel God (if indeed he has) but in his ability to TRY SO EARNESTLY while knowing full well that there is a man with a camera on him, and that he just might look ridiculous. This is the drama of the piece -- a man who desperately WANTS to be possessed by God, and wants to put his ego away in hopes that something better might visit him, but cannot fully forget where and what he is. If you are ready to check your own ego, put aside for the moment your own ideas of what is ridiculous, and risk looking foolish yourself, then maybe you will be possessed as I was by this inspired and inspiringly original film who's main events are little more than a scream, a flap of the hand, and a slobbery smile.

Transcendental Slave
Caveh Zahedi has long concerned himself with the massive task of capturing the existence of God on film. In his cult-classic, I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore, he attempted to film without a script, guided only by the hand of God. The rusultant meditation is one of the most wildly speculative, absurd, and provocative testaments to the inscrutability of God yet put on film. I was Possessed by God delves even more deeply into the basic conundrum of faith. IN this short work, Caveh ingests a heady dose of magic mushrooms and then proceeds, by his own admission, to "Channel" the voice of God. And while there is room for doubt-Who know God bore such a fondness for Jean-Luc Godard?-ultimately, the truth of Zahedi's link to God becomes secondary to his filmmaking, which, in this instance, is dazzlingly, disarmingly subtle. I Was Possessed by God is itself possessed of a grace of construction entirely too rare in today's cinema. Zahedi is content to let the images speak for themselves; he trusts the power of the visual form itself, and wisely refuses to embellish it. There is great beauty in a simple shot of a...porcelain teapot; while the drama of an intense psychotropic drug reaction is left pure and undigested. INdeed, this is a raw film, which demands viewers to draw their own conclusions- a demand that, contrary to what Hollywood might have you think-is perhaps the most respectful attitude towards his audience that a director can have. Haunting in the best way, gorgeous to look at, and more faith-provoking than thought provoking (a good thing), I was Posessed by God is a boldly original work of cinema.

This film pulled me in.
What I liked about this film was that I felt, on a physical level what it must have been like to experience the kind of trip that Caveh was on. Because the actions and speech were so unselfconscious and raw, it felt like I was right in the same room or even in the same body. Not only did it make me laugh but it also made me reflect on - all the claims of divine meetings seem to involve the word "Yes". Hmmmmmmmmmm ... Read more