Cinema is a Machine of Empathy

The Stranger and the Fog

“CINEMA  IS  A  MACHINE  OF  EMPATHY”:  RESTORING  AND CURATING IRANIAN’S CINEMATIC HERITAGE.

An interview with Ehsan Khoshbakht  

By André Habib (Université de Montréal)

The  international  recognition  of  Iranian  cinema  parallels  its  presence  on  the  world  festival  circuit,  from  Gaffari’s  1963  Night  of  the  Hunchback,  through  Kiarostami’s  Palme  d’or  for  The  Taste  of  Cherry  to  Rossoulof’s  in  extremis  addition to the 2024 Cannes Festival selection. These last few years, festivals (in particular  Cannes,  Venice,  Berlin,  Locarno)  have  been  pivotal  in  diagnosing  the  “state  of  affairs”  in  the  Islamic  Republic  of  Iran,  the  ongoing  creative  struggle  and resistance filmmakers have opposed to the regime. We could also add that, over the past ten years, it is also via festivals, and particularly those specialized in showcasing film restorations, that we have witnessed a reappraisal and renewed appreciation  for  works,  mostly  shot  before  the  revolution,  that  had  fallen  into  relative  oblivion  and  which  all,  in  some  respect,  display  eloquent  forms  of  politic  and  poetic  resistance.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  nowhere  is  this  truer  than  at  the  Cineteca  di  Bologna,  via  its  now  world-renowned  Cinema  Ritrovato  festival and through the work of the Immagine ritrovata laboratory. Crucial to this new wave  of  rediscoveries  is  Ehsan  Khoshbakht,  who  has,  since  2018,  worked  as  co-director of the Cinema Ritrovato festival, apart from curating many ambitious programs  across  the  world  (notably,  recently,  the  October  13th  to  November  27th MoMA program, Iranian Cinema Before the Revolution, spanning fifty years and  presenting  close  to  70  feature  and  short  films).  He  is  also  a  filmmaker,  an  architect and an essential figure, with others, of the contemporary reassessment of the importance and richness of the history of Iranian cinema. Shortly before the launch of the Fall of 2023 MoMA cycle, we had a chance to interview him for this special issue of Regards. 

Khaspush (Hamo Beiknazarian, 1928)

The original poster in Russian

 A Soviet production by the Armenian director Hamo Beiknazarian, Khaspush dramatises the Tobacco Revolt of 1890 in which an influential clergyman issued fatwa and banned the use of Tabaco after a Qajar king offered tobacco concession to the United Kingdom.

Entezar (Amir Naderi, 1974)

Entezar [Waiting]

Playing at Il Cinema Ritrovato, June 25, 2024.

Entezar, Amir Naderi’s second film for Kanoon – the Iranian institution in charge of producing cultural goods, including films, for children and young adults – was a deft and calculated move away from the gritty street dramas and crime films of the early 1970s that made Naderi famous but also left him feel artistically unfulfilled.

The Runner's Second Run

A dazed boy is standing on the beach, hollering at the ships leaving the Persian Gulf for other worlds. The vessels of escape, carrying oil tanks and dreams, are fading ghosts on a pale horizon. To overcome a world full of hostility and indifference, the boy must learn to run.

Amir Naderi’s autobiographical masterpiece The Runner (1984) was one of the first postrevolutionary Iranian films screened and celebrated internationally. The epic scene of boys racing across the oil field toward a cube of melting ice, their trophy, became the emblem of the new Iranian cinema that emerged in the 1980s.

Amiro is an orphan living in the southern Iranian port city of Abadan, working odd jobs until he realizes that he has to better his life by learning to read and to run—the first in recognition that other worlds exist, and the second in order to reach them. Paradoxically, this film that sizzles with the desire for freedom was made in 1983–84, the darkest years of Iran’s recent history, when the grip of the Islamic regime on every aspect of life, including the newly nationalized Iranian cinema, became total.

Iranian Films at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2022

The Carriage Driver (Nosrat Karimi, 1971), shot by Houshang Baharlou (Chess of the Wind)

The forthcoming edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato (June 25-July 3, 2022) doesn't include an individual strand for Iranian cinema, however, it'll nonetheless feature at least five dazzling Iranian films, made between 1961 and 2022, shown across 3 different strands.

The documentary section will see the Italian premiere of À vendredi, Robinson (Mitra Farahani, 2022), a dialogue between Ebrahim Golestan, a giant of Iranian cinema and literature (now only a few months shy of his 100th birthday) and Swiss-French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. This is a truly beautiful work and should prepare you for what comes next.

A Fire (Yek Atash) by Ebrahim Golestan was premiered at Venice Film Festival in 1961. We screened it in 2016 when a retrospective was dedicated to Golestan's cinema of poetry and politics. Now we have updated the faded 35mm print previously shown with a 4K restoration of the film, presented for the first time in its original Persian voice-over, spoken by a famous voice artist, Asadollah Peyman. (The 2016 screening was from an English-dubbed version.) 

Company Cinema in Abadan — A History (by Abbas Baharloo)

Taj Cinema in Abadan

Commissioned by me and originally published in the now defunct Underline magazine, this piece by the prolific (and Abadani) historian of Iranian cinema, Abbas Baharloo, sheds light on a lesser-known and nonetheless very significant chapter in the history of film culture in pre-revolutionary Iran. — EK

 

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company ushered in a ‘golden age’ of cinema-going in Abadan before nationalisation in 1951. Overseen by the Company, however, popular entertainment and propaganda were mixed, and screenings did little to bridge social divisions. 

By Abbas Baharloo

 

Many years ago now, Abadan was a city that welcomed immigrants and a place where many settled. Its population was made up of people from many different Iranian and international cities; Isfahanis, Shirazis, Baluch, Kurds, Lors, Arabs, and Azeris lived alongside Britons, Americans, Indians, and people from Rangoon in Burma. At the time Abadan was a bustling city and a vibrant centre of all sorts of cultural and artistic activities. There were leisure clubs; modern cinemas; libraries housing books and other publications in Persian, English, and Arabic; theatre, photography, and gardening associations; concerts of Iranian and foreign music; lectures on literature, music and painting, and sporting competitions. Despite all this, in Abadan doors were not always open to everybody. The prominent Iranian filmmaker Nasser Taghvai, born in Abadan in 1941, remembers it thus:

Rivalry in the City

Tehran’s newly built modernist buildings shown during the title sequence of Reghabat dar Shahr [Rivalry in the City] (Uncredited, 1963)

This is the censored and re-edited version of Jonob-e Shahr [South of the City] (Farrokh Ghaffari, 1958)

The Curious and the Downcast: An Interview with Kamran Shirdel

Kamran Shirdel at the exhibition. Photo (c) Houshang Golmakani

The Curious and the Downcast: An Interview with Kamran Shirdel

By Houshang Golmakani

An interview with the distinguished Iranian filmmaker, photographer, and writer about his latest exhibition of films and photographs taken during the days of the Iranian Revolution. I commissioned this for a winter 2019 issue of Underline magazine but by the time this was translated and edited, the Underline project was abruptly folded. I publish it here for the first time. — EK

As we approach the 40th anniversary of the revolution that saw the monarch of Iran overthrown and replaced with an Islamic republic, renowned documentary filmmaker and photographer Kamran Shirdel is now exhibiting his photographs and raw, unedited footage of the historical event for the first time at a gallery in Tehran. Born in 1939, Shirdel originally studied architecture at the University of Rome before going on to study film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Upon his return to Iran in 1964, he produced a number of documentaries on Iranian social issues in the space of just a few years, the most famous of which include Women's Prison, Women's Quarter, Tehran Is the Capital of Iran, and his satirical masterpiece The Night It Rained. Due to their controversial subjects, all of these early documentaries were banned at the time of their release and Shirdel had several encounters with the Shah's secret police force SAVAK as a result. With the exception of his first and only feature-length film, The Morning of the Fourth Day (1972), Shirdel was forced to pursue industrial documentary filmmaking in the years that followed. 1978 saw a rise in strikes and social unrest that fuelled the fires of an impending revolution: the event that Shirdel had been waiting for ever since his return to Iran. Armed with a video camera and a camera, Shirdel took to the streets of Tehran, tirelessly documenting every development throughout the course of the revolution.

40 years later, and for the first time since they were taken, Shirdel's photographs and footage from those days are now being exhibited at the Nabshi Centre in Tehran from 30 November 2018 to 25 January 2019.  Shirdel, who was 39 years old at the time of the revolution, will turn 80 later this year. Despite his age and a spinal condition that requires him to use a walking stick, Shirdel still attends the exhibition almost every day in order to see the effects of his work first-hand. The exhibition itself is relatively large, covering two floors, with mostly large-scale photographs displayed on the walls and 40-year-old, antique television sets showing 8mm footage on repeat. Unfortunately, Shirdel's 16mm footage was confiscated in the days following the revolution and no trace of them has been seen since then. 

Duke Ellington in Isfahan

Duke Ellington in Isfahan 

Director: Ehsan Khoshbakht

UK, 12', 2018/2021, colour/b&w

World premiere: Telluride Film Festival 2021

This short documentary by the Iranian filmmaker, writer and archivist Ehsan Khoshbakht tells the story of Duke Ellington's concert tour of the Middle East in 1963 and the development of one of the most beautiful jazz standards.  

The legendary composer and bandleader was seen as the ideal cultural ambassador for the United States at the height of the Cold War, when President Eisenhower's desired perception of the US as a moral force for good in the world was being undermined by an awareness of its treatment of African-Americans. 

Arriving in Iran with his band, Ellington was inspired by the historical city of Isfahan and especially its architectural riches. It would give its name to one of the pianist's most enduring compositions, and the tour as a whole helped to shape a Grammy Award-winning album, Far East Suite, which showed how much Ellington had absorbed from the sounds of his travels. 

Using archival images and video footage, and with added insight from broadcaster and jazz historian Alyn Shipton, Duke Ellington in Isfahan shines a light on a largely forgotten episode in jazz history and political history, and provides a clearer sense of the ways in which Ellington's music was affected by, and reflects, his vision of the East.

The Lady of the Harem (Raoul Walsh, 1926)

Hollywood Orientalism involving Iran#1: The Lady of the Harem

A lost silent from 1926, produced by Paramount, directed by Raoul Walsh.

"Jesse L. Lasky announced that The Lady of the Harem has been selected as the title for the Paramount picture which, under the working title of "The Golden Journey," Raoul Walsh has just made from James Elroy Flecker's play Hassan. The new title is considered exceptionally appropriate, as the story deals largely with the lavish harem of the Caliph of Khorasan, Persia, during the twelfth century. 

"Featuring Ernest Torrence, Greta Nissen, William Collier, Jr., and Louise Fazenda," said Mr. Laskey, "The Lady of the Harem will be one of the most colorful and sensational pictures ever produced by this company. Mr. Walsh, who directed The Wanderer and The Thief of Bagdad has filled  this new spectacle with all the colorful atmosphere of the East and I am confident that this production will receive an even  greater reception than was accorded The Wanderer." [From Moving Pictures, 1926]

Ahmad Shah Qajar Being Filmed for Fox Newsreel

The last Qajar king being filmed

 
Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last shah of the Qajar dynasty (1789-1925), being filmed in Paris by Frédéric Fesneau for the Fox Newsreel in either 1925 or 1926 (a year after he was stripped of his title, so no longer the Shah of Iran).

Revolution, Televised

This article was commissioned by the Iranian documentary streaming website, DocuNight. The programme dedicated to films about Iranian revolution featuring an array of thoughtfully selected titles is still live and many of them are seeing their internet premiere. Highly recommended. — Ehsan Khoshbakht

It has happened more than once. While speaking with documentary filmmakers of a certain generation (Med Hondo, one of the greatest African filmmakers, for one) I have been told how much they would have loved to go to Iran in 1978 to film, document and report back on the revolution as it was happening – followed by an expression of regret, that they couldn’t get into the country. This conversational turn has been repeated often enough that when that great documentarian of our time, Jocelyne Saab, talked about wanting to shoot the Iranian revolution, I hastily and foolishly jumped ahead, saying “But you couldn’t get in, could you?” She gave me one of her calm smiles and replied: “I could, and I made a film about it – Iran, Utopia in the Making – which was shown on public television in Japan, Algeria, Sweden and Switzerland.”

His name was Negahdar Jamali...

نگهدار جمالی، سینمادوست، مبلّغ سینما و فیلمساز خودآموختۀ شیرازی که برای فیلم‌های ویدئویی وسترن، تارزانی و اکشنی که با کمک دوستان و هم‌محله‌هایش می ساخت، اول در شیراز و بعد به لطف مستند کامران حیدری، «من نگهدار جمالی وسترن می‌سازم»، در سطحی جهان به شهرتی کوچک رسیده بو،د شب پنجشنبه، 22 آبان، بر اثر ابتلا به کرونا فوت کرد.

این خبر را کامران حیدری مستندساز تأیید کرد که قصد داشت فیلم دیگری با مرحوم نگهدار بسازد.

تماشاگران بین‌المللی با وجد فراوان «من نگهدار جمالی وسترن می‌سازم» را در لندن و نیویورک و شهرهای دیگر دیدند و به دنیای ساده اما دیوانه‌وار این وسترن‌باز شیرازی خندیدند، نه از سر تمسخر، بلکه از سر همراهی با شیدایی او و ایمانش به کاری که می‌کرد.

وقتی اولین بار این فیلم را دیدم، نگهدار را رومانتیکی یافتم که شکست‌های متعددش چیزی از عشقش به سینما نکاسته و درباره‌اش نوشتم «نگهدار جمالي يكي از وجدآورترين فيلم‌هاي سال 2013 است كه مي‌تواند هر بيننده‌اي را تحت تأثير قرار دهد و فقر فيلم‌هاي اين مؤلف شيرازي ناخودآگاه او را به وسترن‌هاي اوليه ادگار اولمر پيوند مي‌دهد.»

Cinema, a Poem by Mr. Nazer-Zadeh Kermani (June 1943)

تیرماه 1322

 

André Breton on Sadegh Hedayat's The Blind Owl

Sadegh Hedayat

Nasturtiums Purple

Of Sadegh Hedayat, who committed suicide in Paris on April 9th, 1951, reached us, in the beautiful translation of Roger Lescot, The Blind Owl, a hopeless sign in the night. Never more such a dramatic apprehension of the human condition has aroused such an examination  of our shell, nor such a knowledge of  timeless struggle in a maze of mirrors, with the attributes that are our common lot ... The acuity of the sensations and the violence of the impulses which like  Wölfli, make a confounding use of certain stereotyped images, gasping from one end to the other, those that Hedayat excludes from the world of the "scoundrel". A Masterpiece if any! A book that must find its place near the Aurelia of Nerval, the Gradiva of Jensen, the Mysteries of Hamsun, which takes part in the phosphorescence of Berkeley Square and the prisons of Nosferatu. (Jose Corti Library). A. B. [André Breton]

The State of Cinema in Iran, 1933

Only 6 cinemas in Iran could show sound films in 1933

From The 1934 Film Daily Year Book, a report on the state of cinema in Persia AKA Iran.



Agitation: None.

Censorship: Active and strict censorship of all films to be shown in Persia is maintained by the Amusement Section of the Imperial Police. All films are shown before a board of Police Officers at whose discretion the entire film or parts of it may be rejected. The following scenes are usually barred from films to be shown in Persia:
(a) Any scenes reflecting directly or indirectly on Shah.
(b) Scenes containing political propaganda.
(c) Scenes depicting the horrors of war, suggesting pacifism, or inciting to revolution.
(d) Scenes thought to be detrimental to public morals.

Willow and Wind, an Overlooked Gem Scripted by Abbas Kiarostami

Willow and Wind

Willow trees bend easily in the slightest breeze, but even the wildest wind cannot uproot them. That is, more or less, the story of children in Mohammad Ali Talebi’s cinema; they are affected by every turn, every event, each nuance of the adult world, but they never fall down or stop fighting.

Willow and Wind is Talebi’s greatest cinematic achievement, both in terms of narrative and visual style. It tells an amazingly simple, sometimes absurd story. Like a Persian miniature, it is expressed through fine details. It depicts the efforts of a young boy to carry a large piece of glass some distance across country, to reach the school where he has broken a window during a football match. He’s not allowed back into class until he mends it.

From the Archives: Iran - Rich Land, Poor Land

click to enlarge

Poster (newsmap) produced by the US Army Information Branch in February 1946 to provide the army members with the basic information regarding the post-war landscape of Iran. Courtesy of the University of North Texas.

Citation:

[United States.] Army Information Branch. Newsmap for the Armed Forces : Iran, rich land poor land, poster, February 18, 1946; [New York]. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc830/m1/1/?q=iran: accessed April 11, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.

I've Got Something to Say that Only You Children Would Believe — A Book Illustrated by Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami had a long, colourful career as an illustrator, graphic and film title sequence designer, and photographer before his career as a filmmaker got kick-started in the early 1970s.

His slow success and even a slower international recognition meant that this first part of his artistic life had vert little chance to be appreciated in time and not surprisingly, it was overlooked even by his ardent audience. One could argue, his eventual coming back to these fields (plus poetry and installation) in the 21th century was itself a classic case of Kiarostamian "return" as often seen in his films: returning to a home, to a place, to a landscape, in this case, to old passions.

A great portion of the achievements of these early years remain unavailable but here we have a wonderful example of his illustration work which he contributed to a children book, written by modernist poet and author Ahmad Reza Ahmadi.

One of Kiarostami's illustrations for the book

Four Iranian New Wave Films That You Must See

The Cow (1970)

Written for the catalogue of the 2015's edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato. The two other essential titles which were restored and shown in Bologna a few years after this were Brick & Mirror and The House Is Black.


A SIMPLE EVENT: THE BIRTH OF IRANIAN NEW WAVE CINEMA


This programme offers one way of looking at the birth of modern cinema in Iran, a development now commonly referred to as the Iranian New Wave. The films presented here (The Night It Rained, Night of the Hunchback, The Cow, A Simple Event) make up roughly one quarter of the New Wave films and were selected according to accessibility and print quality above notions of artistic merit alone.

This particular narrative concerns four filmmakers, each of whom returned home to Iran following a period spent overseas, in order to revolutionise, even if subconsciously, their national cinema. In doing so they also rebelled against a society they found apathetic and divided over matters of justice.