Project Detail

Celluloid Underground

Name: Celluloid Underground
Director: Ehsan Khoshbakht
Genre: Scottish, Asian
Released: 2023
Duration: 80 min

Synopsis

After the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, a boy grew up obsessed with all the movies he couldn't see. He met a mysterious film collector who saved thousands of films from destruction by the new regime. Despite arrest and torture, the collector refused to give up his secret hoard. Together they forged a friendship based on passion for cinema and resistance against tyranny. The boy escaped to exile in London to become a filmmaker, and tells their shared story of obsession and celluloid dreams.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Documentary Competition - World premiere

Details

Year: 2023
Type of project: Features
Running time: 80 min
Director: Ehsan Khoshbakht
Producer: Mary Bell, Adam Dawtrey
Executive Producer: Mark Thomas, Sandra Whipham
Editor: Niyaz Saghari, Abolfazl Talooni
Sound: Rob Szeliga
Composer: Ekkehard Woelk

Genre

Scottish Asian

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

UK, Iran co-production supported by BFI Doc Society Fund

Bofa Productions

20 Westerton Drive
Bridge of Allan
Stirlingshire
FK9 4QL

Sales Company

Impronta Films

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“Filmfarsi was the cinema of a nation with a split personality”, says filmmaker Ehsan Khoshbakht in this film-critical history of Iran under the Shah. Khoshbakht’s found-footage essay film salvages low budget thrillers and melodramas suppressed following the 1979 Islamic revolution. These films defined Iranian cinema in the 1960s and '70s, when the industry shared an equal percentage of the market with the USA. Little more than VHS rips remain. Khoshbakht here uncovers that which was thought destroyed. A cinema of titillation, action and big emotions, which also presented a troubling mirror for the country, as Iran struggled to reconcile its religious traditions with the turbulence of modernity, and the influences of the West. The often cheap, sleazy and derivative films offer an insight into Iran’s psyche. Among the scratched reels, some keystones of Iran’s extraordinary film culture emerge, too: Gheysar, whose title design was done by a young Abbas Kiarostami; the work of director Samuel Khachikian, a progenitor of Iranian noir; and The Deer, a film which more than any other symbolises the historic violent turns in Iran’s recent past. Filmfarsi presaged a revolution, and it became one of its first victims. — Yusef Sayed

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