News

As the I for Iran series has taken the Tiff Lightbox by storm, with several sold out screenings and great press coverage, Sound on Sight has taken a moment to ask some questions on what has brought the series to Toronto and the greater impacts of Iranian cinema are within an increasingly globalized world.

Brad Deane, who is the Senior Manager, Film Programmes at Tiff, and the programmer for the series at Tiff Cinematheque.

Amir Soltani, a Toronto-based film critic and contributor to The Film Experience and Movie Mezzanine, who also writes and co-hosts a podcast about Iranian films at Hello Cinema. Amir Soltani will be introducing Hamoun, Dariush Mehrjui’s incisive, ironic, and finally dreamlike study of middle-class Iranian life, on Saturday, March 28 at 3:45pm.

Check out the rest of the series schedule Here

What has brought the I for Iran series from Fribourg International Film Festival to Toronto?...

At the Edinburgh International Film Festival this year among the rarest offerings were Iranian films from the earliest days of that country's film industry. Drama The Cow (1969) and short documentary The House is Black (1962) have acquired some fame recently, partially in thanks to the efforts of Mark Cousins in A Story of Film, but other entries have scarcely been seen outside of their native land.

Still Life (1974) seemed to stretch the concept of “slow cinema” to snapping point at times, but some moments broke through the boredom barrier and achieved a meditative stillness or a surprising durational comedy through offscreen sound, deadpan performance (from what I take to be a non-professional cast) and sheer dogged persistence. Director Sohrab Shahid Saless, an important early figure in Iranian film, likes to linger and never moves the camera, and thus has won comparisons with Ozu and Bresson which don’t make much sense...