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The Sealed Soil & The House Is Black (15) + Introduction

Masterpieces of the Iranian New Wave

,Cinema 1
A woman wearing red, crouching amongst the trees by a river.

The two female-directed films that bookend Iranian New Wave, marking the beginning and final years of the movement, are now claimed as some of the greatest films of their time.

Among the very few feature and documentary films directed by women in Iran before the 1979 revolution, the only two that exist in complete form are poet Forough Farrokhzad’s The House Is Black – a short documentary about fighting leprosy that became one of the first international successes of the Iranian New Wave – and Marva Nabili’s recently rediscovered The Sealed Soil, a restrained rebellion against patriarchy shot in Iran shortly before the revolution. 

Tragically, both filmmakers’ careers were interrupted: Farrokhzad died in 1967, at the age of 32, and Nabili moved to the United States. If The House Is Black merges poetry and cinema like no other film, The Sealed Soil employs long shots and a static camera, with Nabili citing Persian miniature art and director Robert Bresson as influences. In both cases, the results are astonishing.

Tagged with: Cinema Masterpieces of the Iranian New Wave

Please note: The Sealed Soil includes a brief scene with a depiction of animal cruelty. The House is Black contains scenes and outdated language which some viewers may find distressing.

Programme

The Sealed Soil (Khak-e sar bé mohr)

Chronicling the repetitive and repressed life of Roo-Bekheir, a young woman in a poor village in southwest Iran, The Sealed Soil portrays her quiet resistance to a forced marriage. A formally rigorous, if emotionally distanced, critique of patriarchy and the superficial reforms of Iranian agricultural life, the film captures the tensions that contributed to the 1979 revolution.

1977 Iran dir Marva Nabili 90 mins, in Persian with English subtitles

The House is Black (Khaneh siah ast)

Set in an enclosed community for people affected by leprosy in northwest Iran, it is a dialogue between the passions of the poet (Farrokhzad) and the voice of reason (Ebrahim Golestan, also the film’s producer). It opens with a blank screen, gradually drawing viewers into an unwatchable world that transforms, through the miracle of poetry, into the sublime. 

1962 Iran dir Forough Farrokhzad 20 mins, in Persian with English subtitles

  • ‘The Sealed Soil is both a moving portrait of a tragic time and a significant piece of feminist work‘
    Hyphen
  • ‘The House Is Black is a poetic documentary classic‘
    The Guardian

Cinema 1

Location
Barbican Cinema 1 is located within the main Barbican building on Level -2. Head to Level G and walk towards the Lakeside Terrace where you’ll find stairs and lifts to take you down to the venue floor.   

Address
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London
EC2Y 8DS

Public transport
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