Between Politics and Poetry: Makhmalbaf Film House

September 1–October 20, 2018

This series focuses on Iran’s Makhmalbaf family of filmmakers—Mohsen; his wife, Marziyeh Meshkini; and their daughters Samira and Hana—whose works offer thoughtful portraits of life on the margins, whether in Tehran, Tajikistan, Kurdistan, or post-Taliban Afghanistan.

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  • Buddha Collapsed out of Shame

  • A Moment of Innocence

  • The President

  • Blackboards

  • The Day I Became a Woman

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Two-Legged Horse

    • Saturday, October 20 5:30 PM
    Samira Makhmalbaf
    Iran, France, 2008

    Imported 35mm Print

    A rich man needs a strong boy to carry his legless son in this unforgiving, Boschian examination of corruption and power. Director Samira Makhmalbaf warns, “If you are here to watch a soft and poetic film, don’t waste your time.”

    Introduction by Hossein Khosrowjah

  • Buddha Collapsed out of Shame

    • Saturday, October 13 5 PM
    Hana Makhmalbaf
    Iran, France, 2007

    Imported 35mm Print
    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
    Film to Table dinner follows

    A willful eight-year-old girl is determined to go to school despite all obstacles in Hana Makhmalbaf’s “deeply affecting” (The Guardian) look at the dreams and traumas of postwar Afghanistan, set in Bamian, site of the Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban.

  • Blackboards

    • Saturday, October 6 5:30 PM
    Samira Makhmalbaf
    Iran, 2000

    Imported 35mm Print

    The starkly desolate mountains of Kurdish Iran serve as backdrop for Samira Makhmalbaf’s hybrid realist fantasia, which follows a group of blackboard-toting itinerant teachers searching for students. “Almost like an art installation in the desert” (The Guardian).

  • The Day I Became a Woman

    • Saturday, September 29 6 PM
    Marziyeh Meshkini
    Iran, 2000

    Imported 35mm Print

    Meshkini’s intense, allegorical, defiantly feminist triptych covering the challenges of being a woman in Iran is part documentary realism, part Dali-esque fantasy, and altogether “an astonishing directorial debut” (New York Times).

  • The Apple

    • Saturday, September 22 6 PM
    Samira Makhmalbaf
    Iran, France, 1998

    Imported 35mm Print
    Film to Table dinner follows

    Samira Makhmalbaf’s directorial debut (at age seventeen) blends a fictionalized plot over a shocking real-life tale of two sisters imprisoned by their parents. “Experimental docudrama, open-ended essay, [and] a remarkable movie” (J. Hoberman).

  • The President

    • Thursday, September 20 7 PM
    Mohsen Makhmalbaf
    Georgia, France, United Kingdom, Germany, 2014

    A dictator and his young grandson become fugitives in their own country in Makhmalbaf’s modern fable of power and uprising, inspired by the Arab Spring. “A formidable political parable, with echoes of Twain and Beckett” (The Guardian).

  • Salaam Cinema

    • Sunday, September 16 5 PM
    Mohsen Makhmalbaf
    Iran, 1995

    Imported 35mm Print

    Makhmalbaf blurs the line between fiction and reality by turning a casting call into cinema, and his prospective actors into subjects, in this tribute to (and wry jab at) the power of film. “Witty and slyly relevant” (Variety).

    Introduction by Hossein Khosrowjah

  • Silence

    • Saturday, September 15 7:30 PM
    Mohsen Makhmalbaf
    Iran, France, Tajikistan, 1998

    Tajikistan provides the setting of Makhmalbaf’s lyrical, visually inventive fable about a young blind boy. “Not since Paradjanov has a director so beautifully fragmented his storytelling imagery” (Film Comment).

  • Time of Love

    • Sunday, September 9 7 PM
    Mohsen Makhmalbaf
    Iran, Turkey, 1990

    Imported 35mm Print

    A love triangle gone awry (maybe) is at the heart of one of Makhmalbaf’s most sensual works, filmed as a triptych in which each section reframes who is victim or victimizer.

  • A Moment of Innocence

    • Thursday, September 6 7 PM
    Mohsen Makhmalbaf
    Iran, France, 1996

    Imported 35mm Print

    A policeman and the filmmaker who once attacked him reunite to create a film of their encounter in this revelatory metanarrative on cinema, mythmaking, and storytelling. “Delicate, funny, and touching by turns” (Variety).

    Introduction by Hossein Khosrowjah

  • Gabbeh

    • Saturday, September 1 8 PM
    Mohsen Makhmalbaf
    Iran, France, 1996

    Imported 35mm Print

    The characters of a colorful Persian carpet come alive in Makhmalbaf’s richly colored tribute to the beauty of Iranian gabbeh (carpet) weaving. “Exultantly lyrical” (Variety).

    Introduction by Hossein Khosrowjah