Picture Gallery & Anecdotes 

If Hafez Wrote A Haiku for Cowboys

Directed by Masahiro Sugano

"Once I settled in and immersed myself I could feel my nervous system calm the fuck down and connect me with all these people's stories and fall in love with each person and remember how awesome and transformative movies can be. (*spelling and punctuation left as original)" - Post Screening Survey (Nov. 2023)

If Hafez Wrote a Haiku for Cowboys was filmed in Iran, Japan and the U.S. across cities and townships of Tehran, Chabahar, Abayaneh, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagasaki, Colorado Springs, Philadelphia, and Tacoma.

Iranian episodes were filmed over twenty days in December 2018.  The trip was made possible through a Tehran-based artist residency program.

"It absolutely works and flowed like a good conversation where topics suddenly change and sometimes everyone is speaking at once. (*spelling and punctuation left as original) " - Post Screening Survey (Nov. 2023)  

Japanese episodes were filmed in July 2019. Magnificent "matsuri" festivals take place during this time of the year in my region. Growing up, I never had the chance to see these famed events due to my parents' dislike of crowds. 

"In a word this movie was beautiful. (*spelling and punctuation left as original)" - Post Screening Survey (Nov. 2023)

The U.S. production started in the late summer of 2019 with the Colorado episode. Then the pandemic came. Production concluded in August 2021 with the Philadelphia episode. 

-   At the intersection of longing and regret, 

we sometimes run into a festival float.  -

(Speculative Tag Line)

Daunted by the task at hand in the early stage of post-production, I had a vision to incorporate the Ai for editing. I wanted to experiment with the idea of randomized association of sequences. I made a full database of the entire footage for this purpose, but I could not find a programmer. 

"I love the various story locations, and the locations were used in such a way that didn't rely on cultural exoticism.(*spelling and punctuation left as original) " - Post Screening Survey (Nov. 2023) 

Editing finally gained traction in the fall of 2022. In all honesty, I was too scared to start the task. I mean... how do you go about editing more than twenty episodes into a single feature film?

-   Movement = Space x Time + Longing   -  

(Speculative Tag Line)

Circumstances in Iran was unforeseeable. The production unfolded largely through serendipitous encounters. Communication with collaborators afterwards has been difficult. I actually have no names or contacts for some Iranian actors. 

"All of the stories were beautifully mundane, things that could be happening to any one of us in any part of the world. The problems are the same no matter where we are on this plant. (*spelling and punctuation left as original) " - Post Screening Survey (Nov. 2023)

Kurosawa and Ozu represent two opposing schools of cinema art. At least that's how I teach it. One is driven by a series of exciting plots. Kurosawa championed this visually, impacting later Hollywood filmmakers. The other style focuses on creating a shared sense of time and space between the cinema and the audience, and this was pioneered by Ozu. My current film If Hafez Wrote a Haiku for Cowboys falls in the latter category (I think). 

GO TO DIRECTOR'S COMMENT:    

>> https://sites.google.com/view/hafezhaikucowboy/about 

GO TO SUGANO'S FILMOGRAPHY: 

>> https://sites.google.com/view/hafezhaikucowboy/filmography