The House Is Black
{{Infobox film
| name = The House Is Black
(Khaneh siah ast)
| image = The_house_is_black.jpg
| caption = The House Is Black (خانه سیاه است)
| director = Forugh Farrokhzad
| producer = Ebrahim Golestan
| writer = Forugh Farrokhzad
| starring =
| distributor =
| released = {{film date|1963}}
| runtime = 22 minutes
| country = Iran
| language = Persian
| budget =
}}
The House Is Black ({{langx|fa|خانه سیاه است}}) is an acclaimed Iranian documentary short film directed by Forugh Farrokhzad.
The film is a look at life and suffering in a leper colony and focuses on the human condition and the beauty of creation.{{Cite web|url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_house_is_black_2008|title=The House is Black|via=www.rottentomatoes.com}}{{Cite web|last=Bekhrad|first=Joobin|date=2020-04-06|title=What an Iranian film about a leper colony can teach us about coronavirus|url=http://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/06/house-is-black-iranian-documentary-leper-colony-coronavirus|access-date=2022-02-05|website=The Guardian|language=en}} It is spliced with Farrokhzad's narration of quotes from the Old Testament, the Qur'an and her own poetry. The film features footage from the Bababaghi Hospice leper colony.{{cite journal|url=http://www.sid.ir/en/VEWSSID/J_pdf/86920110612.pdf|last1=Azizi|first1=Mohammad Hossein|last2=Bahadori|first2=Moslem|title=A History of Leprosy in Iran during the 19th|date=November 2011|journal=Archives of Iranian Medicine|publisher=Iranian Academy of Medical Sciences|volume=14|issue=6|pages=427|accessdate=October 27, 2016}} It was the only film she directed before her death in 1967. After shooting this film she adopted a child from the colony, her son Hossein.{{Cite web|last=Scutts|first=Joanna|date=2020-11-19|title=Feminize Your Canon: Forough Farrokhzad|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/11/19/feminize-your-canon-forough-farrokhzad/|access-date=2022-02-05|website=The Paris Review|language=en}}{{Cite web|last=Milani|first=Farzaneh|date=December 15, 1999|title=Farroḵzād, Forūḡ-zamān|url=https://iranicaonline.org/|access-date=2022-02-05|website=iranicaonline.org|publisher=Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation|language=en-US}}
In 2019, a restored print of the film was debuted at the Venice International Film Festival.{{Cite web |title=It Is Only Sound That Remains: Reconstructing Forough Farrokhzad’s The House Is Black |url=https://southasastateofmind.com/article/it-is-only-sound-that-remains-reconstructing-forough-farrokhzads-the-house-is-black/ |access-date=2024-05-19 |website=South as a State of Mind}}
Production
After a stay in Europe in 1958, Forugh Farrokhzad, most well-known as a poet, returned to Iran and met and began a relationship with filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan. She worked at his film studio, where she gained an opportunity to work as an editor on his documentaries A Fire and Water and Heat, before then directing The House is Black in collaboration with a leprosy charity.
Reception
Although the film attracted little attention outside Iran when released, it has since been recognized as a landmark in Iranian film. Reviewer Eric Henderson described the film as "[o]ne of the prototypal essay films, The House Is Black paved the way for the Iranian New Wave."{{cite web|url=http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-house-is-black|author=Eric Henderson|title=The House Is Black|work=Slant|date=February 22, 2005|accessdate=October 27, 2016}} In 1963, the film was awarded the grand prize for the category documentary at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in West Germany.{{Cite news|date=2019-01-30|title=Overlooked No More: Forough Farrokhzad, Iranian Poet Who Broke Barriers of Sex and Society|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/obituaries/forough-farrokhzad-overlooked.html|access-date=2022-02-05|issn=0362-4331}} Writing for Off Screen in 2014, Roxanne Varzi noted the influence of the Italian neorealist movement on the film.{{Cite journal |last=Varzi |first=Roxanne |date=September 2014 |title=Pictura Poesis: The interplay of poetry, image and ethnography in Forough Farrokhzad’s The House is Black |url=https://offscreen.com/view/house-is-black |journal=Off Screen |volume=18 |issue=9}} A 2020 piece for The Guardian compared the isolation depicted in the film to that of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2024, director Jonathan Glazer chose to discuss the film on an appearance on the radio show The Treatment on KCRW, describing the film as "so coruscating, so humanist, so political that really, I can't urge you enough to see it".{{Cite web |date=2024-03-09 |title=Jonathan Glazer on the power of the camera as witness |url=https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/the-treatment/chelsea-peretti-billy-dee-williams-jonathan-glazer/jonathan-glazer-forugh-farrokhzad-the-house-is-black |website=KCRW}}
References
{{reflist}}
Notes
- Hamid Dabashi, Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema, 451 p. (Mage Publishers, Washington, DC, 2007); Chapter II, pp. 39–70: Forough Farrokhzad; The House Is Black. {{ISBN|0-934211-85-X}}
External links
- {{IMDb title|id=0336693|title=Khaneh siah ast}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:House Is Black, The}}
Category:1963 short documentary films
Category:Documentary films about health care
Category:East Azerbaijan province
Category:Iranian short documentary films
Category:Iranian independent films