This program features rarely seen short works by pioneering Iranian filmmakers Mohammad Reza Aslani (whose 1976 feature Chess of the Wind BAMPFA screened in November 2021), Farshad Fadaian, Khosrow Sinai, and Manouchehr Tayyab. Although all these films, with the exception of Sinai’s Ars poetica, were either commissioned or made within governmental institutions, their makers found creative ways not to compromise their radical artistic inclinations. This was partly due to the freedom experienced by artists in Iran in the 1960s. But even Fadaian’s film, made in the 1980s, under very different historical circumstances, seems far too poetic for an industrial film. This collection of works presents a set of contrasting approaches to capturing the nuanced voice of the inanimate in dialogue with the animate.

— The Cinematheque, Vancouver