Monday 20 November 2017

Best of the Last Films

Terror in a Texas Town
فهرست «فيلم‌(هاي) آخر» محبوبم از تاريخ سينما براي ماهنامۀ حالا تعطیل شدۀ «صنعت سينما» (پانزدهم فروردين 1393)
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فيلم آخر، بدون اين‌كه كارگردان قصد ساختن فيلم آخرش را داشته باشد. جبر حاكم بر شرايط فيلم‌سازي يا انتخاب فردي، با وجود عمر نسبتاً طولاني فيلم‌ساز باعث شده تا اين فيلم «آواز قوي» او باقي بماند:

Saturday 11 November 2017

Il Cinema Ritrovato in London#1

Assunta spina
Catholics have the Vatican. Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Cinephiles have Il Cinema Ritrovato. It's the name of a unique film festival which has been running now for 31 years. The annual setting for the festival is Bologna which boasts majestic architecture, great food and the oldest university in Europe, helping to turn the location into a film set.

The festival, hosted by Cineteca di Bologna, screens films from all over the world. It is dedicated to film history, but in a way that will fully convince anyone that the past is a vital part of the present – or as Henri Langlois said about Chaplin, it is the future. Il Cinema Ritrovato brings to an international audience films which have rarely been seen, films that have never been seen in decent copies and films that may have been seen before, but never in the city's main piazza with 4,000 passionate viewers in attendance and a philharmonic orchestra providing musical accompaniment. The festival never ceases to amaze visitors.New restorations, new prints, and remarkable discoveries on an almost daily basis are characteristic of this annual eight-day affair, a 500-film marathon that Sight & Sound magazine recently called "The Shock of the Old."

Monday 6 November 2017

A Simple Event (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1973)


Update: Playing at GOETHE-INSTITUT LONDON on November 9, 2017, 7 PM.

From my Iranian New Wave programme notes, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, 2015. -- EK

YEK ETTEFAGH-E SADEH
Iran, 1973 Regia: Sohrab Shahid Saless
T. int.: A Simple Event. Scen.: Sohrab Shahid Saless (uncredited), Omid Rouhani (uncredited). F.: Naghi Maasoumi. M.: Kazem Rajinia. Int.: Mohammad Zamani, Anne Mohammad Tarikhi, Habibullah Safarian, Hedayatullah Navid, Majid Baghaie. Prod.: Sazman-e Cinemaie Keshvar.

A few days in the life of a young boy living by the Caspian Sea. At school he is falling behind his classmates and almost expelled. He helps his father to fish illegally, and at home watches as his mother’s health deteriorates.

original poster

Sohrab Shahid Saless’s debut feature was made clandestinely with the budget and crew assigned to him for a short film by the government-run Sazman-e Cinemaie Keshvar, for whom he had previously made around 20, mostly uncredited shorts. The film was shot in Bandar Shah. Saless, who admired Chekov, chose the location for its “Russian-looking” atmosphere and the fact that it was at the end of the railroad – at a dead end, like the lives of his characters. Mohammad Zamani, who had never been to a cinema, plays the young boy and one can feel the weight of the world on his frail shoulders. Mysteriously quiet and empty, the film’s characters are apparently devoid of any feeling, yet still capable of making an enormous emotional impact on the audience.

Friday 3 November 2017

Underline#1 [a new magazine]


I'm editing a new magazine on arts for British Council Iran called Underline. The digital quarterly publication can be downloaded for free here in both Persian and English editions. This is the editorial from the first issue, Autumn 2017. -- Ehsan Khoshbakht

Editorial

The Swinging Sixties – a period of cultural change characterised by optimism, hedonism and extraordinary artistic creativity – was not only a British phenomenon…

Before elaborating any further, allow me to share the good news: Underline, the online arts journal of the British Council Iran, is now a proper quarterly e-magazine, available both as a free download and for online browsing. We believe the magazine format can give greater coherence to the stories we want to tell.

The articles in this issue are themed around the changing culture of the 1960s – the happiest (and hippest) note struck for UK-Iran cultural relations.

Following the arrival into Iran of new British cultural exports – chiefly cinema, music, theatre productions and literary translations – the scepticism of the post-Coup years temporarily dissolved. Iran was a country striving to become revitalised and modern. Iranians were not content to be merely passive recipients of these new trends. They adapted, transformed and reinterpreted that which captivated them from abroad and made their own cultural exports during this significant period of transition.

Underline#1



آندرلاین نام مجله هنری تازه‌ای است که من سردبیری‌اش را به عهده دارم و شماره اولش، به دو زبان فارسی و انگلیسی، را می‌توان به رایگان در وبسیات بریتیش کانسیل دانلود کرد. این سرمقاله شمارۀ اول است. احسان خوش‌بخت

سرمقاله
انقلاب فرهنگی دهه 1960 میلادی منحصر به اروپای غربی و آمریکای شمالی نبود و آن‌چه به نام «Swinging Sixties» شناخته می‌شود فقط بریتانیا را به تحرکی سرخوشانه وانداشت. اما قبل از توضیح بیش‌تر و پیدا کردن ارتباط آن با ایران اجازه بدهید خبری خوب را با شما در میان بگذاریم:
آندرلاین، مجله هنری شورای فرهنگی بریتانیا، که چند سالی است به صورت وبسایت فعالیت می‌کند از این پس، به جز وبسایت، یک فصلنامه الکترونیکی نیز خواهد بود که می‌توانید به صورت رایگان دانلود کنید، یا هم‌چنان روی وبسایت ما بخوانید.