Khak-e sar bé mohr

Made in 1977, Marva Nabili’s KHAK-E SAR BÉ MOHR anticipates the formal asceticism of the films that would follow Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. It also offers a feminist corrective to the male- dominated concerns of that post-revolutionary cinema. 18-year-old Rooy-Bekheir is like a stone, obstinate and unmoveable. Throughout the film she mostly sits: at the courtyard hearth, opposite elders on a rolled-out rug, or alone at a riverbank. Though she is already more than old enough to be married off, she refuses all suitors, as well as any explanation why. Meanwhile, the village men debate whether to relinquish their land to an agricultural business. Nabili too resists filmmaking convention, having shot KHAK-E SAR BÉ MOHR in secret while working on a miniseries for National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT). Her fixed camerawork recalls the films of Chantal Akerman, especially in how it creates a gaze at once intimate and distant. Though we see Rooy-Bekheir in private moments, her hair visible in a way that would soon become impossible in Iranian cinema, she never appears in close-up. The most revealing scene of her body and her desire is filmed, quite literally, with her back to the camera. (Genevieve Yue)

Marva Nabili (selection): NIGHTSONGS (1982)