Iranian critic Ehsan Khoshbakht’s personal essay about a man’s smizdat film print collection shows the lengths cinephiles will go to to protect the art form
The passion of cinephilia is the subject of this absorbing personal essay movie from Iranian critic and film historian Ehsan Khoshbakht, now co-director of the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, Italy, who narrates the film in a style that reminded me a little of Mark Cousins and also perhaps Werner Herzog.
Khoshbakht grew up in post-revolutionary Iran where he developed a love of movies and of moving images generally, even the sternly meagre output on national TV. I laughed out loud at Khoshbakht’s entranced description of the TV’s humble colour test card: “As exciting as an MGM musical!” Khoshbakht (daringly) started a film club as a teenager, digitally projecting foreign movies videotaped from TV. He got into serious trouble for showing the Iranian classic The Cow by director Dariush Mehrjui, an anti-government protestor who was murdered last year (and sadly not included in the Oscars in memoriam section).
