The Footage Found Me – Reflections on Celluloid Underground

My written introduction to the screening of Celluloid Underground at UnArchive Found Footage Fest in Rome, read out by Alina Marazzi. – EK

* * *

This is a film about an underground film collector, Ahmad Jorghanian. He was my friend. But I didn’t know how to tell his story. I tried ten years ago – and I failed. I abandoned the project altogether until, five years ago, I began having recurrent nightmares. They helped me get back on track and try to make the film again.

When you have one layer of a story and don’t know how to deal with it – don’t deal with it; Just add another layer. I ended up adding layer after layer: there is Ahmad; there is me on the screen, which I can’t bear; there is the history of film culture in Iran from two different angles – pre- and post-revolutionary; there is the story of the banned movie star Fardin; there is the history of film formats, from 35mm to digital; the story is also told through movie posters, in which I am The Son of Dr. Jekyll; and there is the story of an East London neighbourhood where Hitchcock was born.

The film was shot over the course of 25 years, in many different formats. I was in the business of creating an imaginary map of the world – of people and things I liked – without any immediate plans to turn them into a film. Among the things I like, and that made this film, are: Omar Khayyam, John Berger, coffee, Shahla Riahi (the first woman to direct a film in Iran), jazz, Luigi Comencini, trees, the recently murdered filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui, trains, Enrico Ghezzi, walks, Ebrahim Golestan, more trees, Chris Marker, Ana Mariscal. Some of the lines in the film are stolen from them. When you hear “the chaos of memories,” that’s not me. That’s Walter Benjamin.

Till We Meet Again (Frank Borzage, 1944)

Catalogue note (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025) on the restored version of Till We Meet Again (Frank Borzage, 1944). — EK

Ray Milland’s John, a grounded American pilot in Nazi-occupied France, is helped by a young nun (Barbara Britton) who, in order to facilitate his escape, dresses as a civilian. In doing so, the two develop an unspoken desire for each other.

Rouben Mamoulian in/on Mexico

Mamoulian (third from right) on the set of The Gay Desperado, a major hit when I played the film at Morelia International Film Festival in October 2025

Catalogue note for the Imaginary Mexico section of Morelia International Film Festival. — EK

It was not only Mexico that Rouben Mamoulian’s imagination transformed into a cinematic feast over the course of his illustrious career. Born in Tbilisi to an Armenian family, this classic Hollywood master used cinema as both a painter’s canvas and a musical score to reimagine cultures, countries, and cities—including those he knew well and had lived in. Thus, through a series of films now considered canonical classics, Soviet Moscow, Victorian London, and Imperial Sweden were rendered in unexpected colours, where life often unfolds with a lyrical, almost musical, rhythm.

Three of Mamoulian’s films have connections to Mexico: The Gay Desperado (1936) is set in Mexico but was actually shot in Arizona. The Mark of Zorro (1940) takes place in Alta California, filmed in Southern California. Blood and Sand (1941) is set in Spain, but was partially shot in Mexico. Even if these portrayals stem from the familiarly ahistorical blend of Hispanic culture, Hollywood glitter, and Mexican imagery, they nevertheless brim with joy and visual splendour, flourishing within their imaginary and impossible terrains.

Jazz In Exile – Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe & Cecil Taylor à Paris

Jazz on Screen at the Barbican, Cinema 1, Sun 16 Nov 2025

Jazz In Exile – Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe & Cecil Taylor à Paris + Intro by Ehsan Khoshbakht

This double bill offers two distinct portraits of ground-breaking American jazz musicians living and working in Europe, each navigating cultural displacement in their own unique way.

Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe (1967) offers a lyrical, offstage portrait of a legendary saxophonist in Amsterdam. Ben Webster cooks, films his own life and reflects on the blues. In the film, his music and spirit explored through poetic visuals and intimate moments.

Cecil Taylor à Paris (1968) is a fierce, fast-cut portrait of an avant-garde pianist in Paris, rejecting the European canon and rooting his explosive sound in the Black American experience. The filmmaking mirrors the music’s energy, becoming a bold improvisation of its own.

Together, they reveal what it meant to be a Black jazz artist abroad, displaced not just by geography, but by culture, politics and sound.

Jazz on a Summer's Day (Bert Stern, 1959)

Review of the Blu-ray release for Sight & Sound, March-April 2023. – EK

Jazz on a Summer's Day

The annual Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island received its only movie treatment thanks to Bert Stern, a photographer famous for his portraits of female stars and models – which should explain the film's fascination with fashion and the idea of the "cool". Here the attitude of the performer – the magnificent detachment of Thelonious Monk, the movie-star glamour of Anita O'Day – is as important as the sound. Equally instrumental in the direction (though, to his dismay, uncredited) and responsible for editing the film was Aram Avakian, who constructs the rapport between the performers and the festival audience, both captured at graceful ease.

Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life (Fred Waller, 1935)

Billie Holiday in Symphony in Black

Duke Ellington receives a telegram reminding him of his forthcoming concert in two weeks’ time—not a terribly long notice for finishing an extended composition that seemingly hasn’t been touched before, but most probably accurate, since Ellington was one of the greatest procrastinators in jazz, often writing right up until the curtain rose.

Jammin' the Blues (Djon Mili, 1944)

Like Forough Farrokhzad and Jean Genet, the Albanian-born Djon Mili belongs to that small group of artists who, when counted officially (theatrical release of a completed film), might have directed only one short film. Yet that short, entitled Jammin' the Blues (1944), remains a touchstone of jazz on film.

The Brave Bulls (Robert Rossen, 1951)

The new 4K restoration of the film – courtesy of Sony/Columbia – plays on November 8 at Harvard Film Archive as part of the retrospective co-curated by Haden Guest and me, Columbia 101: The Rarities. — EK

The Brave Bulls was Robert Rossen’s final film in a cycle of four complex explorations of corruption and fear (Johnny O'clock, The Undercover Man, All the King's Men) that he either directed or wrote for Columbia. A brutally frank bullfighting drama, the film follows a matador (Mel Ferrer) who, beginning to crack under the pressure of his profession and a newfound fear of the ring, seeks to reclaim control over his life. Anthony Quinn plays a typically Rossenian character—a charismatic manipulator who, like Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men, holds the power to both redeem and destroy.

Address Unknown (William Cameron Menzies, 1944)

Playing at Harvard Film Archive on November 8, 2025, as part of "Columbia Rarities". — EK

In 1930s Germany, a congenial gallery owner falls under the spell of Nazism. A chilling work of strong political conviction, the film unfolds through the symmetrically menacing compositions of art-director-turned-director William Cameron Menzies. Based on a 1938 short story by Kathrine Kressmann which originally unfolded through a series of letters exchanged between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his business partner, the film was made thanks to a group of talented exiles and refugees. The cast includes Viennese actors Carl Esmond and Mady Christians, Hungarian Paul Lukas and German Peter van Eyck, and it was shot by Polish-Hungarian cinematographer Rudolph Maté, with a score composed by the Austrian Ernst Toch. But the most striking aspect of the film is its design. Menzies—widely regarded as the father of production design—created 800 sketches that served as the film’s visual blueprint. Shapes and forms, vertical and horizontal lines, all add new layers of meaning to Menzies’ finest directorial work.

The Unknown Brilliance – A conversation about Locarno's British postwar cinema retrospective

Mandy

Transcription of a radio interview on the Locarno Film Festival's British postwar cinema retrospective (which I curated), conducted by Julia Baschiera of Austrian broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk and Patrick Wellinski of German station Deutschlandfunk Kultur. This was done over Zoom in late July 2025. Transcription and mild editing is mine. – EK

ORF/Deutschlandfunk Kultur: Maybe you start by explaining to me the retrospective—why you chose the topic this year, how it began, and perhaps the most important aspects?

Ehsan Khoshbakht: Sure. This year's retrospective is on British post-war cinema, films made between September 1945 and the end of 1960. For me, the key reasons for going in that direction were, first of all, that British cinema in general is—surprisingly—one of the least known European cinemas. These films, especially from this period, have rarely had the chance to be screened outside Britain.

There are historical reasons for that. We can blame the Cahiers du Cinéma circle—particularly Truffaut, but also, to some extent, the Franco-Swiss Godard who thought, “Oh, British cinema is terrible.” That’s unfair and totally untrue when you look at the films. So, I thought it was a good starting point.

It’s also the country I live in. In that sense, it’s a tribute to some of the cultural elements that shaped me and encouraged me to come this way. And Locarno itself has a long history of showing British films, going back to the very first editions of the festival. In fact, one of the films in my programme, Hunted by Charles Crichton, actually won the Golden Leopard in 1953. So, this retrospective also continues that tradition.