Parviz Kimiavi

Curated by Morad Montazami in relation to alternative voices and cinema traditions from the 1970s up until today and in close collaboration with Tate modern’s curators Morad Montazami and Andrea Lissoni, the screenings will be dedicated partly to new wave Iranian craft and heritage. the rediscovery of such field, mainly embodied by Parviz Kimiavi, whose movies combined ethnographic strategies with speculative narrative or «study of dreams», sheds new light on other contemporary Iranian and international documentary filmmakers; these ones all extend the sheer recording of truth to much more ambiguous “tales” of the truth. This Parviz Kimiavi short retrospective is screened at BAC in anticipation of the screening at Tate modern 19th to 21st June 2015 (as part of the cinema mavericks season).

Friday 27 March, 8 pm
Lecture · Morad Montazami
Screening · the Mongols (moqolhâ), 1973, 85min
A leftfield satire on the expanding presence of cinema and television in Iran’s poor villages that reenacts the Mongols 13th century invasion in the 1970s. The filmmaker, played by Kimiavi himself, struggles with both his own scenario and a looming assignment to oversee the installation of a television relay station in the remote province of Zahedan.

Saturday 28 March, 4 pm
Introduction · morad montazami
Screening · p like pelican (p mesle pelican), 1972, 26 min
A poetic look at ruins that have been home to an old hermit for 40 years, now fooled by a group of children living nearby. While explaining the alphabet to them, at the letter p he runs up against an unknown white creature.
Screening · the garden of stones (baqe sangi), 1976, 75min
In the stone garden, Kimiavi visits the garden of Darvish Khan Esfandiarpur, a deaf mute whose home became a religious shrine after he began to hang stones from tree branches. In each film, Kimiavi explores the status of community, arguably producing allegories of the nation during a period of tremendous transformation.

Sunday 29 March, 4 pm
Introduction · Morad Montazami
Screening · Qeytarrie hills (tappehâ-ye qeytarrie), 1970, 15min
Ironic observation of the archaeological site of Qeytarrie, focusing on the aesthetic/commercial value of those objects dugout, by staging them like a fetish. Puzzling visual echoes to Les statues meurent aussi from Marker and Resnais.
Screening · o protector of the gazelles (yâ zâmene âhu), 20min
An ethnographic and compulsive attempt at recording the lamentation rituals in practice at the mausoleum of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia Imam, in the city of Mashad. The sanctimonious cries and modesty of the people clash with the integrally ornamented and gold mosaics that decorate the mausoleum. It seems like the ritual lasts forever. Day falls into night and night falls into day.
Screening · ok mister, 1979, 72min
In a remote village near Persepolis, in the 1970s, one day surfaces mysteriously William Knox D’arcy the first British oil exploiter in Iran beginning of the 20th century. To enact his plan for exploiting the wealth and the natural resources of this land, he hires Cinderella who is enlisted to keep the illiterate villagers under her charm and make them follow D’arcy’s plans. Astonishing satire on the relation to power for the Iranian people almost prophetizes the revolution which occurs a few months after.