Synopsis Three actresses at different stages of their career. One from before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, one popular star of today known throughout the country and a young girl longing to attend a drama conservatory.
Nahal who is four months pregnant suddenly finds out that her child is dead. She chose silence and decides not to talk with anybody about that.
Quote: A dark film with moments that recall Bunuel.
Nahal is around thirty and in her fourth month of pregnancy. During a routine check-up she learns that her baby has died and she now faces a curettage abortion in two days’ time. When she tries to address the subject, neither her mother nor her husband give her a chance to speak. Nahal knows that her family will force her to go back to taking the antidepressant medication she began prior to her pregnancy. At first the young woman appears to resume her daily life as before, but her silence soon turns into rebellion. Hamid Rajabi portrays a woman who revolts against the veneer of her middle-class existence, a woman who wants more from life than a coffee machine, a fridge with an ice dispenser and a second car. Nahal breaks free from the constraints of her standardized existence; her protest is unexpectedly anarchic as she deliberately provokes the people around her and draws them out of their shells. Paridan az Ertefa Kam describes a struggle which ultimately cannot be won, but nonetheless has to be fought. The film also explores an Iranian middle-class which, with its love of status symbols, seems to have locked itself away in a mental prison.
Winner of FIPRESCI Prize at Panorama section of Berlinale 2015 for “Our award goes to a film that speaks in a very subtle and nuanced way about depression, rebellion and psychological diseases. Though set in a specific country, the film is able to present how social and family relationships work in general terms. Of special note is the complex cinematic language and especially how long takes are used in a very fine way to shape the subject. The Prize for the best film in Panorama goes to Paridan az Ertefa Kam (A Minor Leap Down) by Hamed Rajabi.”
Hamid Nematollah’s compelling drama “stakes out a new path for Iranian cinema” (Variety) as it exposes key problems plaguing modern-day Tehran. Johan is a gentle and thoughtful young man who works as a window dresser at a fashionable boutique. When a poor and very beautiful young girl enters his store, Johan feels compelled to steal a pair of blue jeans for her. This action triggers a downward spiral that will change Johan’s life forever. “Painfully real and engaging” (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times).—Iran—2004—115 mins.
Set in a tight-knit, extremely conservative island community off the Southern coast of Iran where all women wear burkas, this film begins as an investigation into the suicide of a woman named Samireh. Her husband callously says that while he cares about the lives of his kids, women’s lives are cheap. However, the women the director Oskouei interviews – many of whom were married off at age 12 or 13 – stand up for themselves and discuss their difficult existences. Oskouei relies mostly on close-up or medium-shot interviews, and as usual, displays his gift for framing people dynamically in tight spaces.
A man turns to violence after losing those he loves most in this taut drama from Iran. Ali (Rafi Pitts) is a reformed criminal who lives in a small flat in Tehran with his wife Sara (Mitra Hajjar) and their young daughter Saba (Saba Yaghoobi). While he’s grateful for the chance to support his family honestly, Ali doesn’t much care for his job as a night watchman or the noise and stress of city life; Ali heads off to the woods and clears his mind by hunting as often as he can. One day, Ali comes home from work to an empty apartment; he has no idea when his family has gone, and when they don’t return, he goes to the police. After a long and frustrating wait, Ali learns that Sara was killed by stray gunfire during a skirmish between protesters and police, and Saba is missing and feared dead. Ali snaps and uses his hunting rifle to kill a pair of police officers; when the authorities give chase, Ali heads to the woods while the police try to find him in the forest he knows better than the city. Shekarchi (aka The Hunter) was an official selection at the 2010 Berlin international Film Festival.
Synopsis: Darvish Khan, a deaf-mute shepherd living in the desert, has a mystical vision in a dream in which he encounters a saint. When he awakens, he finds himself clutching a large stone. Grateful for the vision, he aims to pay homage and begins to construct an unusual monument in its honor. After his wife tells a neighbor that it is miraculous place, news of his ‘garden of stones’ spreads and people from neighboring villages come to see it. The result wreaks havoc upon Darvish Khan’s life. Bagh-e Sangi won the Silver Bear prize for the best film at the 1976 Berlin Film Festival and was shown at the Tehran, London and Paris film festivals. It was recently included at #20 on a list of the 27 best Iranian films, as selected by 14 Iranian directors for the 2014 Fribourg International Film Festival.
A man falls in love with a stranger woman. The woman has her young lover whom she secretly dates in an uninhabited house. The man discovers that the subject of his affection is in fact his friend’s wife and in despair takes his own life.
Quote: This is a Iranian short film named “The Frozen Rose”. Its story is an excerpt from the movie Khodahafez Rafik meaning Goodbye my Friend (2003) which includes three mini stories. This story is about a young girl named Rukkayah and her deep desire to see her father again who had already been martyred on the frontlines during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). We see at the beginning that when the train which carries Iranian soldiers stops, this little girl is the only one who stands in the same position until the other children move away after having sold their flowers to the soldiers. Every morning she cuts flowers and offers them to the soldier who will be martyred without taking their worth in return. The end of this movie is very powerful and moving. In essence, the whole story relies on the fact that Rukkayah hasn’t accepted that her father has passed away 2 years ago.
The director created effectively a melancholic atmosphere in this short film. Besides, the actors are stunning, and especially the little girl!!!
These soldiers represent the ugliness of the war as all soldiers, and this little girl, like all children, represents purity, the beauty of life and love. These soldiers want to show their respect towards a being who is “superior” from every war and soldier. The film is intense and powerful, and the down-toned colors and brilliant cinematography complement the unreal part of the narrative.
SYNOPSIS On a chaotic and congested highway toll interchange, an off-camera toll clerk listens impassively to a humanitarian public service radio broadcast from a Red Crescent spokesperson urging listeners to consider adoption of the many children who have been left orphaned as a result of the recent devastating earthquake in northern Iran. An unnamed, middle-aged film director (Farhad Kheradmand) stops at the tollbooth and inquires about the condition of the main road to Rudbar, having been turned back a day earlier at the intermediate town of Manjil due to the impassability of the route. Accompanied by his son Puya (Puya Pievar), the director is hoping to reach the village of Koker in search of the Ahmadpour brothers: two boys who had appeared in his film, Where is the Friend’s House? (a self-reference to Abbas Kiarostami’s earlier film). However, the director’s plans are soon derailed when a police officer explains that the road is only available for access by emergency and supply vehicles. Attempting to traverse the main road as far as he is able to (and allowed by the emergency authorities to travel on the road), he inevitably finds himself snarled in an interminable traffic juggernaut on the outskirts of Rostamabad. Spotting a convenient rural side road through the hills, he takes an impulsive detour through earthquake-ravaged communities and makeshift tent relief aid centers in search of an alternate route to the remote village and, in the process, encounters a series of aggrieved, but resilient earthquake survivors as they slowly rebuild their scarred lives after the incalculable tragedy
Quote: Made surreptitiously in 1977 just as the Ayatollah Khomeini regime was coming to power, a rough cut of ‘The Sealed Soil” was smuggled out of Iran by the director in a false-bottomed suitcase, and taken to the U.S., where che completed her final cut. The film has never been seen in Iran
Quote: An orange Chevrolet Impala drives across a cemetery towards an abandoned shipwreck in the middle of a desert landscape. It is the 22nd of January, 1965. The day before, the Iranian prime minister was shot dead in front of the parliament building.
A group of college students move into a dilapidated dormitory that is reputed by local people to be haunted.
From Horror.com: The history of horror films being made in Iran goes back to the 1950’s when the late directory Samuel Khachikian cranked out titles like “A Party in Hell” (1956), “The Midnight Terror” (1961) and “Delirium” (1965). Over the years since, the horror genre in Iran has had its up and downs. One thing has remained constant, though, many Iranian movie fans welcome the chance to see domestically produced fright films. Iranian horror fans got lucky this month, as Mohammad-Hossein Latifi’s new horror movie “Girl’s Dormitory” hit screens. The film follows a group of college kids who are forced to move into a house that the local people believe to be haunted. You can guess where plot goes from there. The reviews of the film have been mixed so far, but Iranian horror fans don’t get a chance to see too many domestically produced films in the genre so any new addition is welcome. Some reports have the new horror flick as the current most popular movie in Tehran cinemas.
An uproarious adoption of a popular novel by Iraj Pezeshkzad set in and around the family compound in early 1940s Tehran, marvelously rich in personality and incident. The title character, so-called because of his constant invocation of the general, rules over a wonderfully complex extended family. A hilarious series which makes fun of just about everything.
Quote: In Iran, since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women are no longer allowed to sing in public as soloists – at least in front of men. Defying censorship and taboos, the young composer Sara Najafi is determined to organize an official concert for solo female singers.
In order to support their fight, Sara and her friends invite three French female singers, Elise Caron, Jeanne Cherhal and Emel Mathlouthi, to join them in Tehran and collaborate on their musical project, re-opening a musical bridge between Europe and Iran.
Are they going to succeed and finally be gathered in Tehran, sing together, on stage and without restrictions, and to open a door towards a new freedom of women in Iran ?
Quote: The Ghost Valley’s Treasure Mysteries (in Persian: اسرار گنج دره جنی, transliterated as Asrar-e Ganj-e Darre-ye Jenni), also known as “The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jinn Valley”, is a 1974 satirical comedy Iranian film, directed by Ebrahim Golestan. It was released by Golestan Films, and was Golestan’s last feature film in Iran. Using symbolic language, the director was accused of having the Shah’s support.
Very bad quality, but apparently the only way to see this movie by Ebrahim Golestan.
An emotional and symbolic drama depicting the transformation of Palestine into Israel by focusing on an Arab and Jewish couple who occupy the same house before and after the establishment of the state of Israel. Palestinian physician Saeed and his wife Latifeh live in 1948 Haifa. As Jewish refugees arrive from Europe and the Palestinian residents protest, tensions mount in the city. During the ensuing war, Saeed and Latifeh are killed but their infant son Farhan survives. Soon thereafter, a Jewish couple takes up residence in Saeed’s house and adopts Farhan, whose name has been changed to Moshe. Meanwhile, Saeed’s mother Safiyeh, who had come to Haifa to convince her son to flee the mounting tensions, finds out what happened and poses as the former nanny of Farhan/Moshe while her husband Rasheed plans their revenge. Loosely based on Ghassan Kanafani’s story ‘Returning to Haifa’, and filmed in Lebanon with Arab actors directed by the late Iranian filmmaker Seifollah Daad, ‘The Survivor’ won a special jury prize at the 14th Fajr Film Festival in Tehran and an award for best screenplay at the Non-Aligned Movement Film Festival in Pyonyang. A Farsi dubbed version of the film, released in Iran under the title ‘Bazmandeh,’ was the first post-revolution Iranian production featuring actresses without head scarves, which created a stir after Seifollah Daad was appointed as Deputy Minister of Culture for Cinematic Affairs under President Khatami.
Quote: Five sequences : 1) A piece of driftwood on the seashore, carried about by the waves 2) People walking on the seashore. The oldest ones stop by, look at the sea, then go away 3) Blurry shapes on a winter beach. A herd of dogs. A love story 4) A group of loud ducks cross the image, in one direction then the other 5) A pond, at night. Frogs improvising a concert. A storm, then the sunrise.
From Village Voice: In 1962, beloved and controversial poetess Forugh Farrokhzad went to Azerbaijan and made this short film on the grounds of a leper colony, presaging in 22 minutes the entirety of the Iranian new wave and the international quasi-genre of “poetic nonfiction.” It’s a blackjack of a movie, soberly documenting the village of lost ones with an astringently ethical eye, freely orchestrating scenes and simply capturing others, while on the soundtrack Farrokhzad reads her own poetry in a plaintive murmur—this in the same year as Vivre sa Vie and La Jetée. (Chris Marker has long been a passionate fan, as has Abbas Kiarostami, whose The Wind Will Carry Us owes its title and climactic verse to Farrokhzad.) It was the only substantial piece of cinema Farrokhzad ever made. Five years later, having already attained near legendary status in Iran for her writing, she was killed in a car crash at the age of 32, guaranteeing her posthumous fame as a feminist touchstone for generations of angry Persian women.
Also included in the DVD, the short documentary :
Ebrahim Golestan – Yek atash (A Fire / Un Feu) 1961 – Iran – 24 min
“In the spring of 1958, in the region of Khuzestan, at the heart of the Iranian oil industry and of Persian civilization, an oil well explodes during a drilling. The eruption is endless; the fire is powerful, indestructible, and gigantic. It is a dragon. In any case, that is how it is presented in A Fire.” (Stéfani de Loppinot, Cinéma 07)
The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), formed upon nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, employed film systematically, producing many films on oil and petrochemical subjects. It also made films depicting Iran’s progress and modernization, highlighting the role of the Shah and NIOC in that direction. Under its auspices, Ebrahim Golestan directed A FIRE (1961), a highly visual treatment of a seventy-day oil well fire in the Khuzestan region of southwestern Iran. This film was edited by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad and won two awards at the Venice Film Festival in 1961.
Born in 1922 in Shiraz, Golestan has been a pioneer in filmmaking and literature for more than half a century, with far-reaching influence on generations of Iranians in various fields of art. He is the founder of the Golestan Film Studio and directed, among other films, the groundbreaking documentary Wave, Coral and Rock (1965). He now lives in London.
“Au printemps 1958, dans la région pétrolière de Khuzestan, coeur de l’industrie pétrolière iranienne et de la civilisation perse, une nappe de gaz explose lors d’un forage. La source est sans fin, le feu puissant, indestructible et gigantesque. C’est un dragon. En tout cas, c’est ainsi qu’il apparaît dans “Un feu”. Ce documentaire filmé à la Bolex 16mm, dans l’urgence de l’évènement, est en effet beaucoup plus que le simple récit de la catastrophe. La force du film tient à ses rencontres fortement contrastées, pourtant finalement si proches, entre le réel et l’imaginaire, le jour et la nuit, l’infiniment grand et l’infiniment petit, le crissement des ferrailles, le râle sourd du feu et le chant des hommes, le sauvage et le dompté, le sec et le fertile. “Un feu” recompose la communauté humaine, la puissance ancestrale des astres, une terre en devenir” (d’après Stefani de Loppinot, Cinéma 07). le film a obtenu le Mercure d’Or au Festival de Venise en 1961.
Audio…………: English (2-channel AC3) A Fire Farsi (2-channel AC3) The House Is Black Subtitles……..: French, Spanish, French (hard subs, The House Is Black) Video Format…..: PAL Aspect Ratio…..: 1.37:1 OAR DVD Source…….: DVD5 DVD Format…….: Fullscreen DVD Distributor..: French magazine Cinema #7 Program……….: DVD Decrypter,PGCDemux, SubtitleMaestro,Muxman,Vobblanker,SubtitleEdit, IFOEdit Bit Rate………: 8.28 Mb/sec
Quote: ‘Olive Trees’: Bears Message By Desson Howe Washington Post Staff Writer July 19, 1996
“Through the Olive Trees,” Abbas Kiarostami’s subtly involving faux-documentary, acquaints you directly with the time-consuming, spiritually enervating process of filmmaking. But there’s more to it than that. A film-within-a-film drama, it’s about a movie crew that is recruiting amateur actors in a mountainous region of Iran for a romance called “And Life Goes On‚. . .‚.” The area has just been devastated by an earthquake. Homes are crumbled and deserted. Many people are now living by the side of the highway. But the upheaval doesn’t preclude local excitement. Kids skip school and hike five miles to watch the filming. Girls, their heads draped in chadors, vie shyly to be chosen for a part. After casting his actors, the director (famous Iranian actor Mohamad Ali Keshavarz—who introduces himself to the camera as a real actor playing the director) commences the production. But Keshavarz’s male lead has to bow out because he stutters in the presence of women. In a newlywed romance, that’s a major problem. The actor is replaced immediately by a young bricklayer (Hossein Rezai), but the problems do not disappear. There’s friction between Rezai and the lead actress (Tahereh Ladania). Apparently, Rezai—who first saw Ladania when he was working on her parents’ home—recently proposed to her. But his offer was refused, and Hossein was fired from his job. After that, the earthquake claimed the lives of Tahereh’s parents. The tragedy notwithstanding, Ladania remains under the protection of her grandmother, who thinks little of the illiterate, homeless, now-unemployed Rezai. Ladania, whose true desires remain a mystery, speaks to Rezai only as a performer. The film crew has to repeat take after take, as these two distracted actors botch their lines. And now, the real story emerges.
“Through the Olive Trees,” which Kiarostami wrote, directed and edited, tells its tale with a quasi-documentary accumulation. Real time seems to idle, as director Keshavarz patiently rolls his eyes and instructs his cameraman to shoot the same scene again—and Hossein stubbornly importunes Tahereh to reconsider him as a husband. The characters (and Keshavarz is the only professional among these performers) seem to be living their lives with realistic, deadpan intensity—with Kiarostami’s camera merely recording the experience. And in the final scene, a wonderful extended shot that brings the title vividly to the fore, “Olive” shows, in a way few conventional movies can, that life goes on forever.
