Filmfarsi is My One-Dollar Movie [An Unpublished Interview]

Marjan (left) and Nasser Malek Motie

Upon Filmfarsi's world premiere in Bristol, July 2019, an online journal interviewed me about my film. They never ran it so I decided it to publish it here. — EK


How does it feel to be having your World Premiere at Watershed?

I like that place and the people who run it. Been there almost every year for the past 3 years especially when they started Cinema Rediscovered (which is inspired after Il Cinema Ritrovato) so it's kind of an ideal place to open the film in the UK. Many Ritrovato comrades will be there which makes me feel pretty much at home again.

This has been a four-year journey for you, what does it mean for you to be sharing this film, and your journey, with a festival audience?

Designing Americana#2 (via a French village): The Song of Bernadette (Henry King, 1943)

 

https://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/187118148652/art-direction-reference-photographs-for-the-song

 

Gozaresh [The Report] (Abbas Kiarostami, 1977)

Kuosh Afsharpanah and Shohre Aghdashloo in The Report

Playing this weekend at ICF Center in New York.

The Report [original title: Gozaresh]

Abbas Kiarostami • Iran 1977 • 1h49m • Persian with English subtitles • Cast: Shohreh Aghdashloo, Kurosh Afsharpanah, Mehdi Montazar, Mostafa Tari, Hashem Arkan.

Arguably Kiarostami's least-known great film, part of the difficultly in accessing this compelling marriage drama lies in the fact that it was screened in Iran during the last months of the Pahlavi reign, when the country was gripped by strikes, demonstrations and acts of revolutionary violence – hardly the time for cinema, even if the film did relatively well. Shortly afterwards, when the revolution succeeded, the film – like so many other Iranian films showing nudity, sex or even unveiled women – was banned. The original elements of the film believed to be destroyed during the revolution and the copies in circulation have an unexpected cut in the middle of a scene of intimacy between the two leading characters, suggesting that it has been cut out after the revolution.

According to Iranian film critic Nima Hassani-Nasab, the film was totally conscious of the chaos which lay ahead: "The characters of the film are torn between a desire to revolt on one hand and cowardice and social inaction on the other. This conflict plunges them into dissatisfaction and fills them with hatred for both themselves and the repetitious cycle of life they live."

Designing Americana#1: Remember the Day (Henry King, 1941)

 

https://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/186859286907/designing-americana1-art-direction-reference

 

Filmfarsi (2019)

World Premiere: July 26, Watershed Bristol

Read on The Guardian: How Iran's 'filmfarsi' remains the biggest secret in cinema history

Youssef Chahine, The Nile, The Soviets

Youssef Chahine

One of the six* Youssef Chahine films which will be screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019 is one of its director's epic works from the 1960s and his first film conceived as a co-production between Egypt and the Soviet Union. I haven't mentioned the title of the film yet as it's exactly the reason I'm posting the translation of this interview with Chahine: the confusion about the title of the film.

The film in question is about Aswan Dam which was one of President Gamal Abdel Nasser's most ambitious projects. It was built with the help of Russians after Nasser was turned down by Americans. Chahine was assigned to make a film about it with a cast from both Egypt and Russia and scenes shot around the Nile, as well as in Moscow and Leningrad.

However, the film was banned upon completion and Chahine was asked to do another film on the same subject. The title of the second film which he directed but didn't like was Al-Nas va Al-Nil (People and the Nile, 1972). This film was distributed in Egypt and had some scenes in common with the "director's cut."

For years, that was the only version available until the original film was discovered in and restored by Cinémathèque Française. Chahine started calling his revived film Al-Nil va al-Hayat (Life and the Nile).

Poster for Al-Nas va al-Nil (originally shown in 70mm)

In Bologna, we will be screening the latter version that Chahine liked and approved on June 26, 11AM, Cine Jolly. However, note that the Arabic title of the film in the opening sequence is still Al-Nas va Al-Nil (People and the Nile) even if it is actually Al-Nil va al-Hayat! At this point, I still don't know why.

Back to the troubled history of making this Nile project, Chahine explained the genesis of the film and the problems he had in an interview with newspaper Al Hayat. I have used Google translator and my basic knowledge of Arabic to make this text available to you, as I believe the information given here is important in avoiding the confusion regarding the title of the film.

First Case, Second Case (Abbas Kiarostami, 1979)

Abbas Kiarostami, circa mid-70s

Programme notes written for the world premiere of the restored version of the film at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019. — EK


GHAZIEH-E SHEKL-E AVVAL, GHAZIEH-E SHEKL-E DOVVOM
First Case, Second Case
Abbas Kiarostami, 1979

Written by Abbas Kiarostami. Shot by Houshang Baharlou. Edited by Abbas Kiarostami. Cast: Mehdi Azadbakht, Mohammadreza Barati, Hedayat Matin Daftari, Nader Ebrahimi, Gholamreza Emami, Mahmoud Enayat, Ezzatolah Entezami, Ali Mousavi Garmaroudi, Ali Golzadeh Ghafouri, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh.

First Case, Second Case

This banned and rarely seen pseudo-documentary by Kiarostami is a testimony to his seldom acknowledged political shrewdness and his objective, complex perspective on the tumultuous events of the late 70s in Iran, culminating in the revolution. Remarkably, he achieved this without leaving his comfort zone, the classroom setting, and by staying faithful to his inquiring style, with its subtle, imaginative manipulation of recorded reality. Here, he also mastered the interview format (recently introduced into his body of work by Tribute to Teachers,1977), putting his finger on the pulse of Iranian society by collaging conflicting viewpoints.

Georgian Short Documentaries at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019

Arabesques on a Pirosmani Theme

This programme, composed of four short Georgian documentaries, was cherry-picked by me from a larger number of newly restored films made available to Il Cinema Ritrovato by Central Archive of Audio-Visual Documents of the National Archives of Georgia. Thanks to their hard work and generosity, you'll be able to see some of the most dazzling,  hauntingly poetic films of this year's festival in Bologna. The title of this programme, "Beyond Soviet Propaganda", is suggested by curator of Georgian Archive; a very apt title if you watch the films. — Ehsan Khoshbakht

Tudzhi

Tudzhi [Cast Iron] (1964) by Otar Iosseliani

In this early Iosseliani, the last of the Georgian masters, shows a fascinating combination of influences – from his own background in music, to Soviet documentaries about heavy industry. He records a day in the life of the workers at a steel mill, where the juxtaposition of vulnerable flesh and raging, smelting iron creates striking images. It opens with city symphony style shots of industrial chimneys. From there, in a movement from light to darkness – repeated elsewhere in the film – it’s off to the mill. The post-production sound, although realistic, adds an eerie dimension. There are humorous touches, however: during a lunch break a gigantic fan is used by the workers to dry their sweat-soaked clothes and the air blowing around the shirts turns gives them new sculptural forms. And later, when the workers are seen barbecuing by simply holding the skewers close to the ground, where the temperature is high enough to grill their daily meal.

Way of a Gaucho (Jacques Tourneur, 1952)

Written for the catalogue of Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019 to accompany a June 25 screening of the film from a vintage BFI print. — EK


This year's Il Cinema Ritrovato offers some of the most eclectic westerns ever made: Henry King's realist, anti-violence drama The Gunfighter, Budd Boetticher's austere and minimalist Ride Lonesome and Tourneur's Argentinean western, Way of a Gaucho. Interestingly, the latter was meant to be directed by King, too, whose wife's illness prevented him from accepting an assignment which demanded shooting entirely in Argentina.

Gauchos are a "special breed of men answering only to their laws and codes," the opening sequence voice-over clarifies with its clear analogy to cowboys, setting the tone for a classic western narrative. The film follows the story of gaucho Martín Penalosa, from imprisonment, after killing a man in a duel, to agreeing serve in the militia which he eventually deserts. This gives the film its dramatic core, especially after Martín's commander, Major Salinas, embarks on a long chase to capture the deserter who by now has become a hero bandit.

Becky Sharp (Rouben Mamoulian, 1935)

Becky Sharp

A restored version of Becky Sharp will be screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2019. For the screening date, check the Cineteca's website mid-June. -- EK


Becky Sharp, the protagonist of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, is a golden-haired gold digger, a flirt and social climber of early 19th-century England. Mamoulian’s portrayal of Becky in this satire of aristocratic life shows her not as an opportunist but a woman mischievously reversing gender power relations, a bon vivant – with three-strip Technicolor advocating her excessive world. This colour process, previously used only in shorts or for certain sequences in black and white features, was used here for a feature film for the first time. Shooting began with actor and (rather dull) part-time director Lowell Sherman handling the project. When Sherman died during the production Mamoulian was brought on board, starting from scratch. Having made a succession of great films since 1931, the Tbilisi-born Armenian had one of the most consistent bodies of work in post-sound American cinema, known for his ability to encode his vision in light, movement, and now colour. Technicolor wished to seduce the viewer; Mamoulian wanted to tell the story via the colour. The continuity of colour temperature was of no concern. In the ball sequence, a sudden shot from above also marks a shift like that from an oil painting to a watercolour, with colours leaking from the edges of the figures. The palette is dominated by pale blues, tawdry yellows, royal reds and light greys mostly for backgrounds. Critic Tom Milne notes how the colours define Becky's moods with “soft blues for melting ingenuousness, bright yellow for moments of triumph,” or more generally, when in the ball sequence “the blues, greens and yellows are gradually drained away to leave the screen suffused by a crescendo of red.” The initial box office failure and later availability of poor prints only (using the inferior two-colour Cinecolor process) created the impression that Becky Sharp wasn’t worthy of its director’s name. This definitive restoration finally reveals it as one of Mamoulian’s finest works of the ’30s.

Ehsan Khoshbakht