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AVAILABLE TO STREAM FEBRUARY 17 – MARCH 2, 2021.
Sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll — Iranian style! A personal journey through the history of Iranian popular cinema before the revolution and the world of “filmfarsi”, a term referring to the rowdy and melodramatic genre films made from the early 1950s to 1979. Filmfarsi provides a fascinating archaeology of “the biggest secret in cinema history” (The Guardian) — a compelling window into a lost past. This documentary uncovers a cinema of titillation, action and big emotions, which presented a troubling mirror for the country, as Iran struggled to reconcile its religious traditions with the turbulence of modernity, and the influences of the West. Four years in the making, Filmfarsi features clips from more than 100 films, almost all banned in their country of production.
REVIEWS
“Reminiscent of archival artist Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time, a doc constructed from damaged reels of early North American silent films, Filmfarsi projects the fragility of cinema’s format, and the ideas it carries, against volatile conditions. In the former, it’s a combustible silver nitrate base, in the latter, a combustible political climate.” – Hyperallergic
“For the past four years, filmmaker Ehsan Khoshbakht has been unearthing a long lost cinematic history of film stars from the Middle East…. and unlocked one of the richest film genres recorded on celluloid. Filmfarsi uncovers the cinematic and social history of Iran under the Shah, suppressed since the 1979 revolution.” – Sight & Sound
PROJECTR MOVIE CLUB
Projectr Movie Club is a bi-weekly series showcasing rare, lost and unreleased films. Tickets can be purchased for individual titles ($12) or as a 4-film Edition Pass ($25). Films are only available to watch during their two-week presentations. Learn more.
Another question, thank you! I loved the relationship of your spoken narration with the film clips. Your words explicated the film clips, but the clips also went beyond illustrating what you were saying — they also breathed on their own, and exerted their own powerful fascination. At the same time, your voiceover was drawing out historical, social, and political implications of the filmfarsi. Beautifully done. So I wonder about your process in making this essay film — did you think of other people’s essay films (Thom Andersen came to my mind), and did you write the text first, or go back and forth between choosing clips and writing the text?
– MicheleThank you again, Michele! It involved lots of back and forth between writing and editing. The starting point was a written script which contained the narration and the details of the clips to be used with the relevant timing, etc. However, many details changed along the way. I kept viewing films as we were editing. I also allowed my editors to actively participate and to play with the material or even view the films on their own and come up with alternative scenes if they wished to. There were some work-in-progress screenings at the Cinematheque of Copenhagen, Basel’s Stadtkino and London’s Essay Film Festival which helped me shape up the film to a great extent. The first cut was nearly two hours, way too long. It eventually became what you saw. As for the other question, I guess Thom Andersen was somewhere at the back of my mind, mainly because I’m originally an architect and urban designer and look at things the way an architect does, but the filmmakers who were very crucial in inspiring Filmfarsi were Jean-Luc Godard (Histoires du cinéma, in particular), Peter von Bagh (Helsinki Forever), Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa (Jerry & Me), Chris Marker (especially in writing the narration), etc.
– Ehsan Khoshbakht