What follows is the result of an idea aimed at connecting the realm of philosophy and thought with the world of drama. The idea is to select sentences from the statements of the members of the philosophical group, archived in the “Chistiha Blog”, and after working on the concepts of those discourses, along with some brief practice and editing, create a dramatic idea. In its continuation, another dialogue, another concept, and another thought would take shape.
In the principles of screenwriting, “idea generation” and “plot outlining” have specific methods; however, we tried to be one step before the idea and the plot. In that very stage of the mental spark — or, as we call it, the “étude” stage — where the writer’s hand is free to put into writing any image, imagination, imagery, or witty remark. Here, we did not limit ourselves by avoiding mention of technical instructions, executive arrangements, dialogue, scene construction, and other such matters, leaving them for more detailed outlines. On the contrary, we have fully written down everything that came to mind in the moment.
Through our group sessions, we reached the conclusion that there is no need for polished and precise outlines of our conversations. It was only necessary that whatever came to mind in a single instant be immediately edited and recorded under the title “Étude.”
And now we share the same with you. May these exercises and études be the beginning of a path for stepping onto the bridge between philosophy and drama.
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Ideas on the Bridge from Philosophy to Drama: Etude 123
Note: These études have been officially registered with the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. All intellectual property rights belong to the author. Republication is permitted solely on the website “Chisti-ha.”
Idea No. 123
Short Film Title: The Staircase-Dweller
Saber’s rough, work-worn hands place something unseen into a large, faded military duffel bag. He picks up a dust cloth. We follow his feet as they descend a narrow spiral staircase. This is a chandelier shop—though “shop” is almost too generous a word. It is little more than a cramped booth. Outside the window, night still lingers.
We watch Saber carefully dusting the chandeliers. He is a tall man of about sixty. His mouth sometimes hangs slightly open, revealing gums long emptied of teeth. He wears the most threadbare clothes a laborer could own, yet somehow they remain clean and carry a quiet dignity.
Later we see him again in the same cramped upper room, sitting beside the duffel bag, preparing to leave. Worry moves across his face. The space is barely one by two meters—just enough to lie down. The walls are stacked with chandelier boxes; on the carpet lie scraps of cardboard, pastry-box lids, and similar odds and ends. He pushes them aside and goes back down the stairs. A single bare bulb hangs from the ceiling on a short wire; the electrical wiring is exposed, the switch mounted on the wall.
From the street we see the metal shutter of the shop rolling upward. Saber opens the glass door from inside and steps out. The first moments after dawn have already passed; the morning sun is beginning to touch everything. At almost the same instant the streetlights switch off together. This is a dirt road in a Mazandaran village, somewhere near Aliabad-e Asgar Khan or Vanoosh—a long street that feels half-rural, half-small-town. The solitary shop occupies the ground floor of an ugly, freestanding three-story building of seventy or eighty square meters, built on a plot of exactly the same size, right at the edge of the road. The stairwell entrance sits beside the shop window; above it, a few mismatched windows look down with no regard for proportion or harmony with the village around them.
A man approaches from a distance carrying a loaf of barbari bread. The air is lightly misty. He enters the shop. From closer range we watch the two men change shifts. The newcomer calmly arranges his breakfast as if nothing else matters; he does not even glance at the opening chores Saber is finishing. This is Farshad, the owner, about thirty-five years old.
Saber says goodbye and walks away along the street. He disappears into the mist. Later scenes follow him through another street, an alley, a paved road, and finally the main highway. Time passes. A minibus approaches with flashing headlights; a truck blares its horn as it overtakes. Saber is on the minibus. There are no empty seats, so he sits on the step. The engine noise fills the space; the atmosphere is heavy and lethargic. His eyes stay fixed on the window. Scenes pass one after another: the natural beauty of the Sisangan region, then a town that could be Mahmoudabad, Fereydunkenar, or Amol.
Exactly where Saber steps off the minibus stands a chelo-kebab shop. He will spend the entire day working there as a laborer, then return by the same minibus at night to the village. Life repeats. We follow his gaze—toward the beauty of the landscape, and at the same time toward the ugliness of human life. At night, back at the chandelier shop, Farshad locks the door behind him. Together they pull down the metal shutter, which Saber himself locks from the outside. The glass door is locked as well. A quiet longing for freedom remains in him as the streetlights filter through the window and the chandeliers, switched off by Saber in two groups, go dark. Then the spiral stairs again, and the upper room.
From beginning almost to end, the film is the quiet repetition of this man’s days. With each cycle we grow more curious about what he hides in the duffel bag. Gradually we understand: books. Novels. Several volumes of Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe, among others. Saber is a reader. Little by little we realize that the cardboard scraps and pastry-box lids are what he writes on. Once we see him sitting on the spiral staircase, dust cloth still in hand, lost in thought.
All of this feels strange. The people around him are present in almost every frame, yet connection never forms. Inside the minibus no one speaks; most passengers are either asleep or staring at their phones. On the sidewalk outside the kebab shop, people place orders while car horns dominate the soundscape. No one acknowledges him.
The ugliness of the city’s buildings is more striking than anything else. So is the constant blare of horns. Once, in a narrow alley, Saber watches a bird cleaning its nest on a tree branch, discarding excess feathers and dry strands of grass. Several feathers already lie on the ground below. Nearby, half-hidden in a clump of dried grass, one of the bird’s eggs has fallen—intact. Saber’s hand reaches for it, as if to return it to the branch.
In the chandelier shop almost no customers appear—except once, a young woman who pauses to look into the window. She wears a loose, long manteau and a patterned headscarf. Farshad steps outside to invite her in, but she does not enter and walks away in silence. Inside, Saber has been watching. She looked at the window, and now she is gone. That is all—an ambiguous glance with no clear meaning.
The real event arrives only after we have fully absorbed the monotony of this life and the surprising intensity with which Saber looks at the landscape each day—especially the Sisangan curve where the forest meets the sea. The quiet joy in that gaze has made us wonder what he is thinking. Then comes a rainy day. Saber returns to the shop under the rain. As he locks the door, the shop window is streaming with water. For the first time we hear his voice, upstairs, as he writes on the scraps of cardboard and paper. The rain is heavy. Thunder rolls. Time passes. With each successive shot the camera moves closer to his pen and hands. His voice is hoarse, marked by a deep, private pain—as if it belonged to someone who has never spoken to another person. Occasional coughs interrupt him.
The sentences we hear all circle the same preoccupation: ugliness. We understand his central insistence—poverty itself is not ugly. Ugliness is something else. People simply do not see it. Sentences of this kind continue. Then Saber’s eyes grow heavy. He drifts into what feels like a death-like sleep. His yellowed, worn face settles into pure calm. We sense that in this moment he has given up his life—offered it to the character of his story. We cannot be certain. Darkness.
After a pause, Saber’s voice continues over the end credits. The familiar world now feels slightly uncanny. It is as if he has just stepped off the minibus opposite the kebab shop, and everything we see is purely from his point of view. His gaze rests on the shop. The camera moves forward as though he is walking past it, continuing along the street until he reaches a newspaper office. The buildings are ugly. A newspaper seller is loading bundles onto his motorcycle for distribution; a few remain for the next carrier. The camera approaches one of the papers. Among the headlines a single line becomes clear:
“Ugly and Beautiful, Part Fifty-Five. By S. Staircase-Dweller.”
This may be his wish. Or his dream. Or reality. We do not know. The end.
Author: B. Khosravani
Any copying or use of these ideas is ethically and legally permitted only with proper attribution. Production rights require the author’s written consent.