F
I L M S
In 1959 Farrokhzad
went to England to study film production and English. Back in Iran,
she had her first experiences in filming documentaries and began editing
a film called A Fire, photographed by Golestan's brother Shahrokh.
The story of an 1958 oil well fire near Ahvaz that lasted over two
months until an American fire-fighting crew extinguished it, A Fire
juxtaposes the blaze with the sun and moon, flocks of sheep, villagers
eating, harvest time, and the like. Efforts to quell the fire assume
the proportions of a duel of man versus fire which the experienced,
single-minded chief firefighter, who limps presumably from a previous
fire-fighting accident, finally wins. Farrokhzad herself took a trip
to Khuzestan in the same year, from which time she was active in films,
sometimes acting, sometimes producing, sometimes assisting and editing.
Two of these films are a short documentary on Iranian courtship customs
made for a Canadian organization, and water and Heat (1961), which
portrayed the dizzying social and industrial 'heat' of the Abadan
enviroment.
A Fire was shown
in 1961 and met with some success. In the following summer, Farrokhzad
assisted in the production of and played a role in a never-completed
film called the Sea, based on a story by Chubak called "Why Did the
Sea Become Stormy?
Then in the fall
of 1962, Farrokhzad and three colleagues from Golestan Films traveled
to Tabriz and in twelve days filmed The House Is
Black, a documentary
on the leper colony there. Forugh later expressed deep personal satisfaction
with the project insofar as she had been able to gain the lepers'
trust and become their friend while among them. Actually, the experience
proved to have lasting consequences since she shortly thereafter adopted
a boy from his leper parents in the colony and took him to Tehran
to live at her mother's house. After Farrokhzad's death, the boy's
father made public numerous letters she had written him in which she
revealed maternal feelings toward her adopted son that she had been
unable to express toward her own child, who was being raised by her
ex-husband's family.
As for the significance
of The House is Black, it had the effect of presenting Farrokhzad
in a new light to some devotees of modernist literature and other
intellectuals previously unconvinced of her seriousness or sincerity
as an artist. Hitherto imputing some sensationalism or deliberate
attention-seeking to her poetry and life style, the talent and feeling
that the film revealed changed their minds. More importantly, Golestan,
Chubak and others feel that the film unequivocally embodied Farrokhzad's
view of contemporary Iranian society, a popular secular intellectual
view in fact. As Golstan, who supervised the film's editing, sees
it, The House Is Black depicts a leprous society in which the people
trust in God and see a cure for their condition through prayer, whereas
only science and surgery can effect a cure. Without such treatment,
the society leprosy will remain and increase.
Farrokhzad produced
another film in 1962, a documentary for Kayhan Publishers on aspects
of newspaper production. All in all, it was an extremely active year,
but not necessarily a happy one, as the following except from a letter
from this period reveals: I feel that I have lost in life. And I know
much less than I ought to know at twenty-seven years of age. Perhaps
the reason for this is that I have never had a bright life. That love
and ridiculous marriage at the age of sixteen shook the foundations
of my life afterwards. I have never had anyone to guide me in life.
No one has provided me with intellectual and spiritual training.Ê
What ever I have, I've gotten from and by myself. And all the things
I do not have, I could have had. But mistaken paths and lack of self-awareness
and dead ends in life have not allowed me to attain them. I want to
begin again. My bad traits are not because of bad actions, but rather
result of intense feelings, of fruitless good intentions.
A Lonely Woman
Michael Hillmann Page 43-44
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