Name: Filmfarsi
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2021-03-12
Duration: 1 h 24 min
Rating: 7.3
Cast: Pouri Baneai, Reza Beyk Imanverdi, Mohamad Ali Fardin

When viewing the line-up to the 2021 WOW Film Festival this was the title I was most looking forward to,thanks to it exploring the history of Iranian genre cinema.

View on the film:

Introducing the audience to this world of cinema with rusting cans of film reels, writer/director Ehsan Khoshbakht goes back to 1930, and packs every frame with tantalizing glimpses of pre-Revolution Iranian cinema, from Feminist remakes of Billy Wilder's Sabrina (1954) and Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni (1953) (!),to the gloriously kitsch,Euro-Spy style thrills of Dariush Mehrjui's debut film Diamond 33 (1967-also reviewed)

Reeling out criticism similar to that which Spaghetti Western also received,with this era of genre films from Iran being giving the derogatory term " Filmfarsi", Khoshbakht makes a excellent case for this tragically overlooked area of cinema.

Khoshbakht smoothly crosses the film clips with details on the build up to the Revolution,including the Cinema Rex fire/attack during a screening of The Deer (1974),where everyone in the audience was killed. Khoshbakht also displays the distance of this wave in Princess Soraya going to work with Michelangelo Antonioni on I tre volti (1965-also reviewed) and the frozen in time freeze frame ending to the Iranian remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960),as a new wave arrived.

Persian-language (primarily Iranian) cinema is acclaimed for poetic allegory, moral depth, and inventive ways of navigating censorship. It often uses non-professional actors, minimalism and symbolism to explore moral dilemmas, social issues, and the human condition under political constraints.

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The documentary is a form of non-fiction storytelling that aims to present factual information, insights, and perspectives on real-world subjects, events, issues, or people. Documentaries can cover a wide range of topics, including history, science, culture, social issues, nature, biographies, and more.

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An essay-film about Iranian pre-revolutionary popular cinema known as filmfarsi.

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Filmfarsi

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