Ebrahim Golestan: Lion of Iranian Cinema
INFO 312-846-2800
WHERE Northwestern Univ. Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston
Imagine how different our understanding of film history would be if we were denied access to everything made before the so-called sound revolution. A much more profound revolution interferes with our grasp of the history of Iranian film. During the fundamentalist revolution of 1979, the Islamic clergy said cinema was a form of Western exploitation as corrupt as prostitution and over 100 movie theaters were burned to the ground.
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Both new waves are associated with Italian neorealism and the ethics of humanism, but there are pronounced differences. The second has notably developed in relative independence from commercial filmmaking practices in the West. But the first, associated with Ebrahim Golestan, Parviz Kimiavi, and Sohrab Shahid Saless, was contemporary with the French New Wave, and reflects the modernity of that period. Bahram Beizai, Dariush Mehrjui, and Amir Naderi are among the few filmmakers who might be stylistically associated with both waves, but given how seldom their prerevolution films are seen nowadays (apart from Mehrjui’s The Cow) it’s difficult to say much about them.
Resnais’ shorts were commissioned documentaries, but while taking on such topics as African sculpture and colonialism, the Nazi death camps, the French national library, and plastic manufacturing, he was able to incorporate creative camera movements and edits as part of his formal structures as well as poetic meditation, literary narration, and at times controversial political positions. Similarly, Golestan appears to have approached his films on a protracted oil fire (1961’s A Fire) and archaeological excavations (1963’s The Hills of Marlik) as highly productive workshops. The Iranian Crown Jewels, a 1965 film commissioned and then banned by the shah’s cultural ministry, features dazzling edits and camera movements and a charged narration assaulting economic disparities. (This is the only Golestan film in the series lacking English subtitles, but a translation of the text will be handed out at the screenings.)
We move next to a noisy nightclub where Hashemi, baby in tow, explains his dilemma to a group of flippant, dandyish friends and acquaintances as well as to his girlfriend, Taji (Taji Ahmadi). Later, at a police station, he’s advised to take the baby to an orphanage if no one claims her by morning. Taji meets Hashemi there and insists on returning with him to his one-room flat, where they spend an uneasy night: he’s paranoid that the neighbors will jump to conclusions about his sex life, she’s anxiously hopeful that they’ll keep the baby and get married.
