Decaying Troves

Curated by Afsun Moshiry

Iran, The Land of Religions
Manouchehr Tayyab, Iran, 1972 25 min. No dialog

Sahnehaye Estekhraj (Scenes of Extraction)
Sanaz Sohrabi, Iran, 2023, 43 min. Farsi with English subtitles

Arbaïn
Nasser Taghvaie, Iran, 1970, 21 min. No dialog

Followed by a Talk with Sanaz Sohrabi and Farbod Honarpisheh

The beginning of the 20th century was a period of cultural and political change in Iran, with the country entering a period of visible European imperial influence. The contract (1909) between the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) and King Ahmad Shah Qaja significantly impacted Iran in the subsequent years. The British Petroleum Archives documented their expeditions and unwittingly showcased the expansive colonial network behind the British geophysical interference that spanned Iran. In her documentary essay, Sahnehaye Estekhraj (Scenes of Extraction), Sanaz Sohrabi employs a critical approach to analyse this archived material, exploring the environment between the European imperialist visitors and Iranians. In the following decades, the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi (1925-1941) transformed non-fiction films produced by independent filmmakers into a tool to reinforce the state ideology – a process that was solidified during the thirty-eight-year rule of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-79). The artisanal documentary production and exhibition mode gradually transformed into a largely statist, hybrid, semi-industrialised mode. This shift was precipitated by the centralising and modernising reforms of the Pahlavi Shahs, which the embassies and cultural attachés of the Allied Powers facilitated.

The National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT) has opened its doors to the ideas and suggestions of avant-garde filmmakers contributing to the archives and producing films that contrast industrial growth with the religions, traditions, and rituals of Iranians. At that time, filmmaking was costly, and the necessary equipment was difficult to access. This created a beneficial situation for filmmakers, who were able to experiment and shoot films in a more liberated manner. Two examples that fall under the umbrella of the Decaying Troves programme are Arbaïn by the remarkable Nasser Taghvaie, which focuses on the Iranian ritual of the same name, and Iran, the Land of Religion by the transnational filmmaker Manoucher Tayyab, capturing various religious ceremonies in mosques, prayer rooms, churches, and fire temples. The programme and ensuing discussion are intended to provide a contemporary reflection on archive material and commissioned Iranian film works from the 20th Century from a variety of perspectives. (AM)

Sanaz Sohrabi is a researcher of visual culture and an artist-filmmaker. Sohrabi’s works have been shown widely in exhibitions and film festivals, including Berlinale Forum Expanded, International Film Festival Rotterdam, IndieLisboa, Valdivia International Film Festiva,l Chile, Sheffield Doc/Fest, DocLisboa, Asian Art Biennial 2024, Ljubljana Biennial 2023, Block Museum, Moderna Museet Stockholm, SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, and VOX Centre de l'image contemporaine, Montreal, and Carpintarias de São Lázaro, Lisbon. Sohrabi is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and RAW Académie. She is an Assistant Professor in the department of Communication Studies at Concordia University, where she teaches courses on the political economy of images, histories and theories of photography, and artistic research.

Farbod Honarpisheh is a Research Scholar with the Film and Media Studies Program at Yale University. His academic publications include: “From the Body of Ruin to the Ruin of Body: On Materiality and the Iranian New Wave Cinema, 1960-1979”; “The Oriental ‘Other’ in Soviet Cinema, 1929–34”; “You Are on Indian Land: Between Borders, Styles, and Authors”; and “Koşucu’nun Tasviri: Devrim Sonrası İran Sinemasının Önemli Bır Filmine Gösterilen Tepkiler Üstüne Bir Çalişma” (“Representing The Runner: A Reception Study of a Major Film From Post-Revolutionary Iran”). In addition to his research and teaching, he has for years also sustained a passion for organizing film/video and arts related events.