Seven Servants

Daryush Shokof is an artist-filmmaker who left Iran in the seventies for the USA and under the name of AliReza Shokoufandeh. He studied math, and Phscics at E.N.M.U. and then went on to get a masters degree in management from U.D.in Texas. He became a full time artist in Germany where he moved to from New York in early eighties. He coined the term Maximalism in the arts in 1990 in Cologne Germany, and together with many of the artists of the time they made many exhibitions under (the maximalists, at Gallery Schulze in Cologne, in 1990) both in Europe and in the USA. He first made a name for himself as a script-writer by copying works from great Directors of the time (Fellini, and Pasolini), changing the names of the characters and some situations and presented them to his father as his own works which made the proud father believe the son was a genius. He was soon the talk of a bigger circle of friends and family and had to write at a level to match his great idols from the age of 11. None of his writings ever showed any promise until finally and at the age of 42 he wrote that big story which attracted the attention of the legendary names of cinema to it (Marlon Brando, and Anthony Quinn) both wanted to have the lead in Seven Servants. Quinn played the role alongside David Warner, who played the role offered to Norman Mailer (who was so in admiration of the story that refused to play the role saying his acting was not up to the role). In the next 10 years he did more than 12 feature films and 10 short films with high originality both in stories and Directing the films. He has made his movies through the help of private friends and contribution and cooperation from great many professionals who believed and supported in his abilities as an artist-filmmaker. He has never had any of his movies released to the public and has never received any funding for any of his films from any official film industry related companies, and or from any country. He continues making films under amazing conditions which in itself are truly an interesting story to make a film about. —IMDb