This year’s 29th Annual Festival of Films from Iran doesn’t exactly have a theme. However, several films being screened do have a connection to the past — specifically, that time in Iranian history when revolutionaries targeted both Iranian cinema and the theaters that played them.
After playing last year’s batch of films virtually, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will once again show most of the selections at the Brown Auditorium. A big title in this year’s lineup is “Chess of the Wind,” screening on Jan. 22. This 1976 debut thriller from director Mohammad Reza Aslani is a movie that many (Aslani included) thought was lost.
After showing once at that year’s Tehran International Film Festival, “Chess” was banned a few years later by the Islamic regime, after the Iranian Revolution. The film eventually got the bootleg VHS treatment, but the negatives were even harder to find — until the director’s children found them in a Tehran antiques shop in 2015.
Thanks to Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, the movie received a 4K restoration and has been making the big-screen rounds all over the world. “It really is great to have this as the centerpiece of the festival,” says MFAH film curator Marian Luntz. “It really speaks to a time when there was more dialogue possible with artists and filmmakers and all creatives in Iran.”
When: Jan. 21-Feb. 19
Where: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet; Asia Society Texas Center, 1370 Southmore; Rice University, 6100 Main.
Details: $10 ($8 MFAH members, seniors); 713-639-7515, mfah.org/films
Banned Iranian films are the subject of another selection, the 2019 documentary “Filmfarsi,” showing on Jan. 23. The title refers to the Iranian genre and exploitation films of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, films that were also outlawed. Director/narrator Ehsan Khoshbakht rounded up clips of these old B-movies courtesy of — you guessed it — bootleg VHS copies. Says Luntz, “I think ‘Filmfarsi’ will be eye-opening, definitely very entertaining, often funny — and that is something very refreshing in the lineup.”
“Filmfarsi” also talks about the movie theaters that were bombed and destroyed during the Revolution, particularly the 1978 fire at the Cinema Rex that took between 377 to 470 lives. Rice Cinema will shine a light on this horrific event by screening two films at the university’s Sewell Hall. Shahram Mokri’s 2020 film “Careless Crime” (which was shown during last year’s fest), about a group of modern-day Iranian men who plan to replicate the Cinema Rex fire by burning down a movie theater, will screen on February 4. Masud Kimiai’s “The Deer,” the 1974 drama that was playing on that tragic night, will be shown the following night.
“It is a crucial moment in the history of Iranian cinema, but also of cinema itself,” says Rice professor/programmer Charles Dove. “The Mokri film is a dazzling meditation on that historic moment and Kimiai’s ‘The Deer’ is considered a classic of the pre-Revolutionary cinema.”
More contemporary films will round out the fest. This weekend, MFAH will show such female-centric films as “Botox” and “No Choice” (both from 2020), as well as the 2021 dramedy “Hit the Road,” directed by Iranian New Wave icon Jafar Panahi’s son, Panah. Rice Cinema will show two films from director and former Rice faculty member Yehuda Sharim — last year’s “Letters2Maybe” and 2019’s “Songs That Never End” — later in February. (Sharim will be in attendance for both screenings.) And Asia Society Texas Center will play Majid Majidi’s 2020 film “Sun Children” on Jan 26.
Despite getting rave reviews from critics, “Children” is not the sort of film that would impress James Corden. On a recent episode of his “Late Late Show,” he and guest Jessica Chastain talked about the time their families vacationed together and Corden took umbrage with Chastain’s meandering, movie-night choices, which included “Children.” (Corden said those films look like they were “made for, like, $7.”)
While some moviegoers may not be able to embrace the pacing, rhythms and storytelling of Iranian cinema, Luntz expects those who show up for these films — whether they’re Iranian or just curious — will be more open and accepting. “I hope that people will be interested because of the film’s stories,” she says. “Because these are all, in one way or another, whether it’s a documentary like ‘Filmfarsi’ or the many dramas that we’re showing in the festival — the filmmakers are telling stories. They are smart in how they’re structuring the narratives — to pull the audience in — so you can meet the characters. You want to know what’s going to happen, whether you are told all the circumstances at the beginning or not.
“But, at the end of the day,” she continues, “it really is just like watching a lot of other movies — you’ll get into the story or you don’t.”
Craig Lindsey is a Houston-based writer.
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