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| The Sealed Soil (1976-77) |
Marva Nabili's The Sealed Soil [Khak-e Sar bé Mohr] has been rediscovered and reclaimed in recent years as a feminist masterpiece. However, judging from the interview you are about to read, the film didn't enjoy the same enthusiastic reception upon its initial release. Though premiered at the Berlinale Forum (along with films by Dorothy Arzner, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Germaine Dulac, Laura Mulvey, Karin Thome, Ursula Ludwig, John Cassavetes, Barbara Kopple, Godard & Miéville and Taviani brothers) and enjoying a healthy festival run afterwards, it was forgotten until its name appeared on a couple of lists about great films made by women directors. It was then that both Cahiers du Cinéma and Sight & Sound took note of the film and the filmmaker (who made only one other work, for the US television.) In Sight & Sound, the film's "poetic tone, sparse dialogue and focus on its heroine’s daily life" was compared to Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman.
Chronicling the life of woman in a small village in southwest Iran, the film's US premiere took place on January 25, 1978, at Pacific Film Archive where my friend, Tom Luddy, interviewed Marva Nabili. Below is an edited version of that conversation of which an audio tape of poor sound quality survives. Since some of the audience questions are inaudible even to the people present in the auditorium, Tom occasionally repeats them for Marva. He also has the unenviable task of translating and abridging the long-winded, abstract questions. (I have altered the order of some of the question/answers to have the more general questions appear at the beginning.)
The reason I bothered to transcribe the interview was the fact that I was hoping to show the film in Berlin next month (Sinema Transtopia, May 2021) but I discovered that the Arsenal/Berlinale print of the film is too worn-out to be screened. Even before this revelation. I knew a restoration was much needed and already long overdue. If someone comes forward, there's a good chance that we could make this great piece of cinema available to general audiences. Hopefully, next time around they'll ask more sensible questions.
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TOM LUDDY: Is the first American showing of the film to a public audience?
MARVA NABILI: Yes.
LUDDY: Well, we're very honoured. Can you talk a little bit about your life as a woman filmmaker in Iran?
NABILI: It's very short: I have no life there! I studied in New York and I've lived in New York. I went to Persia to make this film. I was treated rather badly. I could not find any money for the film. They didn't know me and especially because I was a woman, [they] had no confidence in [me]. So what I had to do was to work for television. I made a children's series – fairy tale stories – and by that money I managed to make this film. It was made in a very low budget: thirty-five thousand dollars. And it was made in 16mm because I didn't have the money [to shoot in 35mm]. And I don't think I'll go back there to make another film because I wasn't treated well.
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| Marva Nabili in London, August 2017 (c) LFFF |
LUDDY [repeats the question]: Was the exorcism scene in the film authentic?
NABILI: Yes, actually he was an exorcist and whole scene with the exorcist is exactly what they did. I asked him if someone is possessed by the devil what you do, and he went on and we just shot it. I didn't put anything there.
LUDDY: Would a man be treated any differently if he experienced that kind of nervous breakdown?
NABILI: No.
LUDDY: What kind of place was it?
NABILI: That's a shrine, and it's it was a very old shrine. It had turned into a ruin. Outside where you see the broken wall that I think that's where when people don't have any places to bury their dead, they [bury the] poor people there.
LUDDY [repeating the comments of a member of the audience]: The comment is that there's something in the film and there are these new villages seen which are being built by the Iranian government that implies that these are helping the people in some way. Can you elaborate on that?
NABILI: Yes that was the position of the chief of that village. The shahrak that you see which are new [small] town they build around villages – as you see the architecture is completely different than what they live in, and that's a very hot climate, and people in those villages they really need mud[brick] houses like they did live in in this old village and the new towns that they had built for them is all made out of cement which is not practical at all. The chief's position was obviously on the other side. He wasn't even living in this old village anymore. He had moved to the new shahrak and he wanted to bring the rest of the villagers into the new town. [If] you are asking what my position is [in regard to these constructions] I thought my comment in the film was obvious enough and that you should have guessed what I meant.
[After the man in the audience insists on his point, or the lack of a point]
It's a shame that you didn't understand what I was trying to say because I thought I put it very clearly as that was exactly the reason this woman is going through this drama, it is because of what's happening around her. She's searching an identity because she's not living in the old age anymore, and the new life isn't serving her at all, and she's somewhere in the middle. She doesn't know she's confused she doesn't know what she's doing and you see the influence of the new [lifestyle] on the village, and how it's changing everything.
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| The Sealed Soil (1976-77) |
LUDDY [on behalf an audience member]: How would a villager pay for meat and cheese and food once they moved into a new village?
NABILI: Well, that's the whole problem because those villages used to work on the fields. Now the government has these new agri-business companies that are all around. They've taken over the land. They're trying to help but in their own way. In the old days, the private land-owners used to give a share of the crop to the farmers, and store them there for the winter. But now they give them some cash instead. It become a problem because sometimes they have to pay cash for the cheese and whatever food they get on the crop, and they're usually short of cash and what happens is they move to the cities.
LUDDY [uncomfortably repeating an embarrassing question someone has just asked]: Being educated and having seen a lot of films, he couldn't understand the movie. Then "surely the average person in Persia wouldn't ever understand it, then why didn't you make it more clear"?
NABILI: Well, I don't know if I agree with you. I haven't shown the film in Iran and I have no idea what kind of reaction they're going to have. I [won't] be surprised if the villagers saw the film and they understood because that's their problem. I mean I'm showing the problem and an idea that they identify with. The point is that you're sitting here and watching something that's not your problem personally, but if someone is into that situation they understand it well.
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| Flora Shabaviz in The Sealed Soil. She was married to Barbod Taheri, the cinematographer of the film and a key cameraman of Iranian New Wave |
[A member of the audience, perhaps the same person who has asked the previous question, asks about Marva's politics. It's inaudible but easy to guess of you have been to Q&As with Iranian filmmakers. Whatever the question, it irritates her.]
This is your problem and not mine. My job is to point at the problem and to question. Your job is to find the solution because what I'm doing is to point it out as much as I can and spread it more openly. It's a big question. I'm not a prophet. A filmmaker is not a leader to say what you should do. I don't believe in political conflict and sloganism in cinema.
It's a very demanding film. It's very demanding because you constantly have to put all your concentration on it. I think you want me to say something that you want to hear. I'm saying exactly what you're saying, but in a different way. If you were clever, you would find it.
LUDDY [repeating someone's question]: Do people in Persia pay more attention to watching environment as opposed to action? Well, maybe I could translate that question, meaning you have these long shot sequences where there's a lot of time to pay attention to the environment. Is that because of some tradition in Iranian audiences?
NABILI: No it's not a tradition [among] Iranian audience; It's a tradition I've picked up from Persian miniature and poetry which I have sort of transferred into cinema. It has nothing to do with the environment as much as it has with trying to make the audience to see something as a whole and depict lesser things themselves and figure out. I've tried to use the Brechtian theory, [combining it with] my own culture—miniature painting and poetry. All I'm doing is putting a distance between the audience and the happening.
LUDDY: Thank you so much for sharing your film with us!
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