The House Is Black
1963 · 22m · Iran
Directed by Forough Farrokhzad
Genres: documentary, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, provocative, tender
A poetic documentary filmed inside an Iranian leper colony, interweaving unflinching images of the residents' daily lives with narration drawn from the Old Testament, the Quran, and the director's own poetry to create a profound meditation on suffering, beauty, and the human condition.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A poet filming a leper colony with verse from the Quran, the Old Testament, and her own work — Farrokhzad essentially started the Iranian New Wave with one twenty-two-minute film. Devastating and unfilmable any other way.
Farrokhzad's leper-colony poem essentially invents the Iranian New Wave and remains one of the most ethically rigorous documentaries ever made about suffering. The Vimeo takedown is a regrettable but expected obstacle.
Forough Farrokhzad layering her own poetry over leper colony footage essentially invented the Iranian New Wave — the verse and image are calibrated to refuse pity and demand presence. Vimeo pulled the copy, but Cineteca di Bologna has it.
Reviews
So coruscating, so humanist, so political that really, I can't urge you enough to see it.
One of the prototypal essay films, The House Is Black paved the way for the Iranian New Wave.
Festivals
- Oberhausen International Short Film Festival 1963, Grand Prize
- Venice International Film Festival 2019