Filmfarsi: Iranian Film retrospective at the REX cinema

Sixty years after the Iranian New Wave, 46 years after the revolution, 9 years after Abbas Kiarostami's death and 2 years after the assassination of Dariush Mehrjui, the REX cinema is offering the opportunity to compare pre- and post-revolutionary films from Iran and to discover new connections.

Meeting time allows us 15 minutes before the film starts to find each other - please be on time so we can get seats together. In OV (original version) with English subtitles.

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Tonight's movie, from Wikipedia: Filmfarsi is a documentary film. The term "Filmfarsi" was used in Pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema criticism and used to describe what was perceived as low-quality films mostly copied from the Bollywood cinema and with poor plots, mostly arranged with dance and singing. Filmfarsi were suppressed after the Iranian Cultural Revolution by more strict laws on relations between men and women, as well as religious opposition to the content of the films.

The suppression of the Filmfarsi genre encouraged the Iranian New Wave of modern films in Iranian cinema. Many of the Filmfarsi that survived the Iranian revolution did so thanks to the existence of illegal VHS copies.

The plots of many Filmfarsi are based on "incredible accidents" or "exaggerated misunderstandings", where conflicts between tradition and modernism usually end "in favor of tradition". Within Filmfarsi, there existed unique genres of film such as "Jāheli", described by some as "hyper-masculine", in which tough male characters would save women from "a life of disgrace", such as working as a prostitute or cabaret singer. Other common genres of Iranian film prior to the Islamic Revolution included thrillers, melodramas, musicals and action movies. While the films varied in theme, many of them shared common traits such as a "low production value" and "one-dimensional archetypes".