Vidéos des spectres (du cinéma)

adeline a écrit:Iran, 1963, Forugh Farrokhzād :

Forugh Farrokhzad’s 20-odd-minute black-and-white 1962 documentary about a leper colony in northern Iran is the most powerful Iranian film I’ve seen —- the most poetic as well as the most radically humanist. Farrokhzad (1935-1967) is commonly regarded as the greatest Persian poet of the 20th century, and one of her poems can be heard recited by the hero in Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (whose title is that of the poem). Her only film —- which reflects the probable influence of silent Soviet cinema without being in any way obviously derivative of it — seamlessly adapts the techniques of poetry to its framing, editing, sound, and narration. (The latter is split between two voices: the male voice, belonging to Ebrahim Golestan–the film’s producer, Farrokhzad’s lover, and a considerable filmmaker in his own right —- is mainly objective and factual; the female voice is Farrokhzad’s, offering a poetic and highly emotional reverie about her subject that incorporates passages from the Old Testament.) At once lyrical and extremely matter-of-fact, devoid of sentimentality or voyeurism yet profoundly humanist, the film offers a view of everyday life in the colony — people eating, various medical treatments, children at school and at play — that’s spiritual, unflinching, and beautiful in ways that have no apparent Western counterparts; to my eyes and ears, it registers like a prayer. (JR)