If you can continue making documentary films, I hold, it is important and valuable work. In documentary making, the role of speech is crucial, just as martyr Avini proved it. Both the text and its reciting are extremely important. If martyr Avini's presentations were not there, many of the scenes didn't make sense at all. Long after the broadcast of "A Narrative of the Conquest" a TV show that had started, I didn't know martyr Avini.
But, I was a fan of the TV show and watched all the episodes. It had a great impact on me; I saw how his speech was influential.
Once, some young producers visited me (I think they were from the Jihad Department). In our meeting, I said "The nice voice that expresses the words, is amazing. Keep it." He, [Avini] himself, was present in that session. But nobody told me that he was there in person. Later he wrote to me: "I am the one who makes this program.”
The person who wants to make such programs should prove the same innocence, endurance, and confidence in the words he reads.
Sometimes, someone expresses valuable remarks; but it is clear that he does not believe in his own utterances. But Avini’s voice is the one that expressed the greatest remarks while believing in what he said.
For example, he said: “Our youth are more familiar with the ways of the heavens than the ways of the earth.”—He said it in a manner as if he had already travelled through ways of the heavens; he had seen and he knew that these youth were more familiar with the heavens.
We might think that a warrior’s voice must be harsh. Nonetheless, his voice did not carry a harsh tone. His voice was innocent and soothing, at the same time, it represented a particular firmness while reading a powerful, artistic text.
Avini’s writings were wonderful. He wrote and performed them himself. You should try to work on such things and create good works. Even if you cannot produce a half-hour program, you can make it into a 15-minute program; it is fine.
Make the introduction short: Long introductions are not interesting. Good introductions are always short. Why? Because it becomes repetitive [if too long]. I listened to the first episode’s introduction enthusiastically. In the second episode, the enthusiasm reduces. In the fourth and fifth episodes, it is only repetition. So, the introduction should be short to reduce the trouble caused by repetition.
But for the main part of the program, you can make it short, if you cannot make a long one, even around 15 or 10 minutes long.
Although Martyr Avini could not continue, I was so grateful for the episodes he produced after the war: they were incredible. Still, they were different from those made during the war.
Imam Khamenei, September 2, 1993
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