SOHRAB SHAHID SALESS: EXILES
A Film Retrospective & Conference, Sat 4 Nov 2017 – Fri 19 Jan 2018
ICA, Goethe-Institut London, Close-Up
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082506
A visionary of the everyday, Iranian filmmaker Sohrab Shahid Saless (1944-1998) was one of the great exiles of World Cinema – his lasting influence has been recognized by the likes of Abbas Kiarostami and Romuald Karmakar. In meditative but searing images of everyday life Shahid Saless’ slow-paced films tell simple stories that speak forcefully to the traumas of homelessness and displacement.
This first retrospective in the UK, Sohrab Shahid Saless: Exiles presents the director’s films from the 1970s and 1980s alongside a public programme designed to address questions around migration and displacement, as well as issues of creativity in diasporic conditions.
Shahid Saless had a unique perspective on exile, moving from pre-revolutionary Iran to post-war West Germany in the mid-1970s. Without permanent residency status, locked into a continual struggle with film funding agencies and TV programme editors, this self-described “guest worker” of German cinema made films that strongly reflect the experience of being without a home. Shahid Saless observed the world with an unflinching eye, registering the smallest of details and gestures as well as the routines and repetitions governing ordinary lives. His films are alert to cruelty and injustice, but never judge. Devoid of all sentimentality, they are deeply humanist and poetic. Recent retrospectives in Tehran, Berlin, Brussels and Munich have brought his unique films back to attention, highlighting their relevance in a time when the displacement of people has become a constant and pervasive reality around the globe.
You can find the full programme here:
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082506
Sohrab Shahid Saless: Exiles is curated by Dr. Azadeh Fatehrad and Nikolaus Perneczky in partnership with the Goethe-Institut London and in collaboration with the Munich Film Museum. With support from the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre, Kingston University (London), Iran Heritage Foundation (London) and Arts Council England. We would like to thank our partner venues Close-Up and the ICA.
The retrospective is part of the Goethe-Institut London’s current programme focus on migration and identity.
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Programme Details
Sat 4 Nov 4pm, ICA
Prelude Screening: Far From Home (Dar gorbat aka In der Fremde)
Shot in a mere 13 days, with a cast of lay actors recruited from the streets of Kreuzberg, this trenchant exposé of the life of the Turkish guest worker Husseyn in 1970s Berlin is an urgent, uncompromising piece of filmmaking that feels as hopeless and desperate today as it did then. Shahid Saless’ regular DOP Ramin Reza Molai captures the isolation of Husseyn in long, deep-focus takes that reach down endless streets. The only refuge is a sparse flat that Husseyn shares with other guest workers, where they gather to eat, sing, play backgammon – or simply exist.
Introduced by the curators Azadeh Fatehrad and Nikolaus Perneczky.
Iran / West Germany 1975, 91 min, 16mm, Turkish & German with English subtitles. Directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Written by Sohrab Shahid Saless and Helga Houzer. Cinematography by Ramin Reza Molai. With Parviz Sayyad, Anasal Cihan, Muhammet Temizkan, Hüsamettin Kaya, Ursula Kessler, Ute Bokelmann.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082558
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Thu 9 Nov 7pm, Goethe-Institut
Programme Launch: Black and White (Siah-o sefid) & A Simple Event (Yek ettefāq-e sāda)
Black and White (Siah-o sefid)
An utterly atypical entry into Shahid Saless’ sombre oeuvre, this irreverent stop-motion animated short is chock full of inventive twists and surprises.
Iran 1972, 4 min, digital version (no dialogue). Directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Commissioned by Kanoon: The Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults.
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A Simple Event (Yek ettefāq-e sāda)
Shahid Saless’ stunning debut feature tells the slow-burning story of a young boy living in the town of Bandar Shah (now Bandar Torkaman) by the Caspian Sea. His monotonous existence, spent between school, errands for his fisherman father, and tending to his ailing mother, is changed by a simple but devastating event. Initially conceived as a documentary, Shahid Saless diverted the budget of this government commission towards his own ends. Paying no heed to the coastal town’s sights and attractions, he instead turns his insistent gaze on the seemingly uneventful lives of its poorest inhabitants.
Introduced by the curators Azadeh Fatehrad and Nikolaus Perneczky. Followed by a reception.
Iran 1974, 81 min, 35mm, Farsi with English subtitles. Written and directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Cinematography by Naghi Massumi. With Mohammad Zamani, Ane Mohammad Tarikhi, Habibollah Safarian, Hedayatollah Nawid.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082559
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Sat 11 Nov 5.30pm, Goethe-Institut
Still Life (Tabi’at-e bijān)
Shahid Saless returns to the coastal town of Bandar Shah, this time portraying the lives of an elderly man, who guards a railroad crossing, and his wife. They are stopped in their tracks when a letter arrives informing them of his impending retirement. Still Life is a powerful meditation on a life lived at the margins of a fast-modernising Iran, on the stilled time of old age and its disruption by modernity – and a broadside against the Shah’s grandiose rhetoric of economic development.
Followed by a conversation between critic and curator Ehsan Khoshbakht and Azadeh Fatehrad, and a reception.
Iran 1974, 93 min, 35mm, Farsi with English subtitles. Written and directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Cinematography by Hushang Bahariu. With Zadour Bonyadi, Zahra Yazdani, Habibollah Safarian.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082560
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Sat 18 Nov 4pm, Close-Up
Utopia
This magisterial chamber play is the dark heart of Shahid Saless’ German period. Set in an empty, closed-curtain bordello in West Berlin, Utopia posits prostitution as the truth of the then nascent service economy. Ruled by their brutal pimp, the women are trapped inside a claustrophobic tomb of eternally recurring humiliations – a thinly veiled microcosm of German society, just after chancellor Kohl had announced his neoliberal agenda of ‘spiritual- moral renewal’. A visceral metaphor for the political climate of the early 1980s.
Followed by a conversation between curator and critic Dario Marchiori and Nikolaus Perneczky, and a reception.
West Germany 1982, 198 min, 35mm, German with English subtitles. Print: Austrian Film Museum. Directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Written by Sohrab Shahid Saless and Manfred Grunert. Cinematography by Ramin Reza Molai. With Manfred Zapatka, Imke Barnstedt, Gundula Petrovska, Gabriele Fischer, Johanna Sophia, Birgit Anders.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082566
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Mon 20 Nov 7pm, Goethe-Institut
Time of Maturity aka Coming of Age (Reifezeit)
Time of Maturity patiently details the domestic co-existence of a mother and her son in a desolate urban environment, inviting us to share in the boy’s perception of their daily rituals and routines. There is little in the way of plot development; the action is circular, bordering on stasis. And yet the film’s inexorable rhythm draws us ever closer into this confined, unforgiving world, towards the son’s slowly dawning understanding of his mother’s nightly comings and goings – his coming of age.
West Germany 1976, 111 min, digital version, German with English subtitles. Directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Written by Sohrab Shahid Saless and Helga Houzer. Cinematography by Ramin Reza Molai. With Mike Hennig, Eva Mannhardt, Eva Lissa, Charles H. Vogt, Heinz Lieven.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082569
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Wed 22 Nov 7.30pm, Close-Up
Order (Ordnung) (tbc)
Seemingly out of nowhere, an unemployed engineer suddenly rejects what others – his wife, friends, and presumably he himself before he lost his job – would consider a life well-lived: orderly, industrious, well-adjusted. A modern-day Bartleby, he gets out of bed one morning and decides that he ‘would prefer not to’. Quite possibly Shahid Saless’ most personal film, but certainly his angriest, Order issues a haunting battle cry against the asphyxiating reality of middle class values. A harrowing film with lingering impact.
*Event to be confirmed. Please check on the Close-Up website.
West Germany 1980, 96 min, digital version, German with English subtitles. Directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Written by Sohrab Shahid Saless, Dieter Reifarth and Bert Schmidt. Cinematography by Ramin Reza Molai. With Heinz Lieven, Dorothea Moritz, Ingrid Domann, Peter Schütze, Dagmar Hessenland, Dieter Schaad.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082570
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Fri 1 Dec 7pm, Goethe-Institut
The Willow Tree (Der Weidenbaum)
Under Shahid Saless’ contemplative gaze this short story by Anton Chekhov, which tells a tale of crime and (frustrated) redemption, is recast as a transcendent study of old age. The senile servant Archip, long abandoned by his former masters, witnesses a violent act. He decides to report the deed and so makes his way to the city courthouse... The Willow Tree transposes the moral stakes of Chekhov’s original entirely into the physical realm: It’s all about the weight and fragility of Archip’s aged body plodding through the sublime countryside and the inertia of big city bureaucrats who couldn’t care less.
West Germany / ČSSR 1984, 97 min, digital version, German with English subtitles. Written and directed
by Sohrab Shahid Saless, based on a story by Anton Chekhov. Cinematography by Ramin Reza Molai, Stanislav Dorsic. With Josef Stehlik, Peter Stanik, Milan Drotar, Marian Sotnik, Michal Suchanek, Stefan Adamec.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082571
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Sat 9 Dec 4pm, Close-Up
Hans – A Young Man in Germany (Hans – Ein Junge in Deutschland)
Adapted from Hans Frick’s 1977 auto-biographical novel The Blue Hour, Hans chronicles the last throes of the Third Reich as experienced by a young man marked as ‘Halbjude’ by Nazi race laws. Shahid Saless’ characteristically unflinching eye dissects everyday life in Nazi Germany, showing a broad range of ‘ordinary’ behaviours – downright denunciations, small gestures of solidarity, inner emigration – without exculpating anyone. The end of the war is imminent, but when the Gestapo ring at his door, Hans must escape to the countryside…
Followed by a conversation between curator and critic Vivien Kristin Buchhorn and Nikolaus Perneczky, and a reception.
West Germany / France / ČSSR 1985, 148 min, digital version, German with English subtitles. Directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Written by Sohrab Shahid Saless and Hans Frick. Cinematography by Ramin Reza Molai. With Martin Pasko, Imke Barnstedt, Yane Bittlová, Ulrich von Bock, Jirina Barásova, Hans Zander.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082573
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Sat 13 Jan 7pm, Goethe-Institut
Diary of a Lover (Tagebuch eines Liebenden)
When Shahid Saless first looked upon his new host country, what he saw were lonely individuals locked into private worlds. Diary of a Lover makes visible, palpable even, this immense suffering, leaving the viewer gasping for air. The walls are closing in on the butcher Michael (the now grown-up protagonist of Time of Maturity). He is one among many who, isolated in their identical-looking flats, lead lives of quiet desperation. Michael’s girlfriend seems to have disappeared after an argument. The gnawing question at the heart of this dark paean to alienation: Will she return?
West Germany 1977, 91 min, digital version, German with English subtitles. Written and directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Cinematography by Mansur Yazdi. With Klaus Salge, Eva Manhardt, Edith Hildebrandt, Ingeborg Ziemendorff, Robert Dietl, Ursula Alexa, Dorothea Moritz.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082574
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Wed 17 Jan 7pm, Goethe-Institut
Changeling (Wechselbalg)
In this minutely observed portrait of an ordinary family – father, mother and their adopted daughter in a picket-fenced row house – Shahid Saless revisits the world of childhood and adolescence. Uniquely, Changeling examines this formative experience through the eyes of an anxious mother, who herself was a daughter once: With minimal gestures – a telling look, a thoughtless word, a slight hesitation – her troubled inner world is laid bare. With an outsider’s clarity of vision, but without judgement, Shahid Saless sees through the middle class ideal of the German home. Behind the lace curtain: a prison of their own making.
West Germany 1987, 135 min, digital version, German with English subtitles. Directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Written by Jürgen Breest, adapted from his novel. Cinematography by Michael Faust. With Friederike Brüheim, Henning Gissel, Katharina Baccarelli, Erika Wackernagel, Helga Jeske.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082575
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Fri 19 Jan 7pm, Goethe-Institut
The Long Vacation of Lotte H. Eisner (Die langen Ferien der Lotte H. Eisner)
This intimate portrait of Lotte Eisner conjures up a counter-history of German cinema, based on a kinship of flight and displacement. Eisner, a German-Jewish film critic best known for The Haunted Screen, her study of Weimar-era expressionist cinema, was born in Berlin but escaped to France in 1933. Thus began her ‘long vacation’, as she wryly puts it to Shahid Saless, some fifty years on in her Paris apartment: the moving encounter between two great exiles of cinema.
West Germany 1979, 60 min, digital version, German with English subtitles. Directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. Cinematography by Ramin Reza Molai.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082576
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Fri 19 Jan 9.30am 6pm, Goethe-Institut
Conference: Sohrab Shahid Saless – Exile, Displacement and the Stateless Moving Image
Keynote speaker: Prof. Hamid Naficy (Northwestern)
This one-day conference brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the work of Iranian filmmaker Sohrab Shahid Saless as a conduit for a wider engagement with exiled and displaced moving image practitioners: their ethics, aesthetics, modes of production as well as their precarious lives and often uncertain legacy today.
For inquiries about the conference please contact: [log in to unmask]
The conference is organised by Dr. Azadeh Fatehrad and Nikolaus Perneczky in partnership with the Goethe- Institut London and with support from the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre, Kingston University (London), Iran Heritage Foundation (London), Arts Council England and CHASE (Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England).
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21082577
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Venues and Tickets
Goethe-Institut London
50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Rd
London SW7 2PH
T +44 (0)20 7596 4000
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Tickets: £3
Free for Goethe-Institut language, students and library members
www.goethe.de/uk
Close-Up Film Centre
97 Sclater Street
London E1 6HR
T +44 (0)20 3784 7970
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Tickets: £10
£8 concessions
£6 members
www.closeupfilmcentre.com
ICA
The Mall
London SW1Y 5AH
T +44 (0)20 7930 3647
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Tickets: £11
£8 concessions
£7 members
www.ica.art
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