Alwan for the Arts and 3rd i NY Collaborative Monthly Series Presents:

Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema: Book Discussion and Screeninging with Hamid Dabashi

The House Is Black (Khaneh Siah Ast)
by Forugh Farrokhzad/ Iran/ 1964/ 22 min
and
The Cow (Gaav) by Dariush Mehrjui/ Iran/ 1969/100 min

Tuesday, November 20, 2007. 6:30 PM
Two Boots Pioneer Theater,
155 East 3rd Street (at Avenue A)
Subway: F to 2nd Ave; 6 to Bleecker
Tickets: $10 Adults / $6.50 Pioneer Members

The House Is Black by Forugh Farrokhzad/ Iran/ 1962/ 22 min/ Farsi with English Subtitles

A classic in Iranian New Wave filmmaking from poet/ director Forugh Farrokhzad presents a haunting and sympathetic examination of life in a Tabriz leper colony. Through powerful imagery and a striking voice-
over by Farrokhzad, a startling glimpse into a hidden aspect of humanity is revealed. A film of staggering force, lyrically composed by one of the 20th century's leading poets, The House Is Black is a revelation. In the 1960s, poet Forough Farrokhzad directed her first and only film. It depicts the lives and bodies of people tragically
deformed by leprosy. This is a film of stirring and powerful images, and a beautifully tragic poetic narration. The House Is Black has heavily influenced the modern Iranian cinema of such great filmmakers as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who called it "the best Iranian film." It provides, in the film's own words, "a vision of pain no caring human being should ignore."

Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967) was born in Tehran into a middle class family of seven children. Author of several volumes of poetry that are hallmarks of contemporary Persian literature. In 1967 she tragically died in a car accident. She was associated with the film industry in Iran through the filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan, House is
Black is the only film she directed.

The Cow by Dariush Mehrjui/ Iran/ 1969/100 min Farsi with English Subtitles

This highly symbolic Iranian drama (shot in black-and-white) revolves around the most important figure in a remote rural village. That figure is the village's sole cow, owned by Mashdi Hassan (Ezat Entezani). The beginning of the film makes clear just how vital the
cow is to the life of the village and how much Mashdi and his neighbors cherish it. When the cow is threatened and then killed by members of a nearby clan, Mashdi becomes so distraught that he is gradually transformed into a cow himself.

The Cow (Gaw), Dariush Mehrjui/'s second feature brought him national and international recognition and it is one of the films that signalled the emergence of Iranian New Cinema. The Cow was among the very first projects to receives state funding, however, it was banned
by the Shah's censors for the dark images of Iranian rural society. The film was smuggled to 1971 Venice Film Festival and not officially in the festival's program and unsubtitled, it turned out to be the event of festival that year. The Cow received the Critics' Award in
Venice and toured the festival circuit the world over.

Dariush Mehrjui was born on December 8, 1939 in Tehran. As a child, he was deeply involved in music and painting, playing piano and santoor and drawing miniatures. In 1959, he left for California to study cinema with Renoir but then he switched to Philosophy and graduated from UCLA in 1964 and became one Iran's most influential
directors, with more than 20 films to his credit.

Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema by Hamid Dabashi/ Mage Publishers/ 456 Pages/ 2007

The rise of Iranian cinema to world prominence over the last few decades is one of the most fascinating cultural stories of our time. There is scarcely an international film festival anywhere that does not honor the aesthetic and political explorations of Iranian artists. Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema celebrates this remarkable emergence. It focuses on twelve of the most important Iranian filmmakers of the past half-century—among them, such pioneers as Forugh Farrokhzad, Dariush Mehrjui, Abbas Kiarostami, and Jafar
Panahi. In his examination of their lives and their greatest works, Hamid Dabashi explains how, despite the censorship of both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic, the creativity of these filmmakers has transcended national and cultural borders. His account
traces the ascendancy of Iranian cinema in modern Iranian intellectual history and also probes its links to Persian poetry, fiction, art, and philosophy.

In Europe and in North America, in Asia and in Latin America, in Australia and Africa, the thematic and narrative richness of Iranian cinema has met with tremendous acclaim. Indeed, its particular modes
of realism—building on such cinematic antecedents as Italian, French and German neorealism—have become truly transnational, contributing a new visual vocabulary to filmmaking everywhere. Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema studies the role that prominent film
festivals have played in fostering the global success of Iranian cinema, and investigates the reception of these films within Iran, an intriguing story in its own right. This is a book that will reward not only the scholar and the film aficionado but also anyone interested in the cultural history of modern Iran.

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies. Professor Dabashi has
written 12 critically acclaimed books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, Shi'ism, Medieval and Modern Islamic Intellectual History, Comparative Literature,
World Cinema, Trans-aesthetics, Trans-national Art, Philosophy, Mysticism, Theology, Post-colonial Theory and Cultural Studies.