Synopsis
Using excerpts of films produced between 1990 and 2018, Irani Bag is a split-screen video essay questioning the innocence of bags in post-revolution Iranian cinema.
2021 Directed by Maryam Tafakory
Using excerpts of films produced between 1990 and 2018, Irani Bag is a split-screen video essay questioning the innocence of bags in post-revolution Iranian cinema.
We've been robbed of so many precious and innocent moments and sensations for so long. We've been forced to keep our mouths shut, and we still managed to talk. All the doors were closed, and we kept screaming behind them. Our cinema was as good as dead, but we kept it alive nevertheless. I guess that's where my love for Iranian cinema comes from, no matter how butchered and unrealistic it has become. For me, it's a symbol of trying and survival.
So gentle and perfectly edited. The text on screen feels like an extension of the image as the bag is to the limb. Kept thinking about how the central plot point of A Hero (2021) is also a bag!
This video essay was so good and insightful, I'm blown away. I loved it.
Watched on Another Screen.
“what is touch?”
this does so much in its simplicity, there’s so much that can be said about the layers of history and art. the idea of the bag as a limb, while this film itself and its text does the same thing as the bag by being “the mediator”
reminds me of how much i love cinema and how much can be said by just one person(literally just editing and writing using already existing footage)
vimeo.com/774696227
available until january 4th