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This programme features three groundbreaking short films by Iranian artists Naser Taghvai, Khosrow Sinai and Manouchehr Tayyab. Produced in the late 1960s Iran, they represent some of the earliest examples of experimental cinema in the region. It’s worth noting that during this period, experimental film and animation in Iran were largely dominated by men. While many women started making films in the years that followed, their works remain hidden in archives, if not lost in the turmoil of revolution and war. Khosrow Sinai and Manouchehr Tayyab belonged to a generation of men who studied abroad before being invited back to Iran, commissioned as filmmakers by the Ministry of Culture. In contrast, Naser Taghvai was a writer and filmmaker from Khuzestan Province who learned the craft through hands-on experience rather than formal foreign education.
What ties these films together is their stunning visual style, their unique and avant-garde editing, and their brilliant use of music. Beyond their artistic form, they offer a glimpse into a society undergoing rapid, top-down modernisation. While they share these themes, each film offers a distinct perspective: Arbaeen focuses on the unified movement of bodies, while Ars Poetica captures the overwhelming pressure of a crowded space. Meanwhile, The Rhythm connects society, scenery and sound, creating a seamless bridge between them.
All three films in this selection were made before the 1979 Revolution. They place music at the centre of the storytelling, using it as a way to connect with the past. The result is hypnotic and mesmerizing; the music rumbles across time and across generations.
This programme unfolds under the heavy weight of the present. As war continues, as protesters in Iran are killed for demanding freedom, and profound sorrow weighs on Iranian lives both inside the country and throughout the diaspora, this programme becomes an act of remembrance. These works act not only as cinematic experiments, but as echoes against forgetting. They carry the urgency of what is being lost, and insist on resistance in the face of repeated violence and erasure.
This programme is compiled by Amirali Ghasemi, who also curates the upcoming fall exhibition at argos, and hosted by Maryam K. Hedayat.
The Rhythm, Manouchehr Tayyab (1964)
IR, 9 min
No dialogue
The movement of a train and its arrival at Tehran’s central station is edited in sync with maestro percussionist Hossein Tehrani’s mesmerising use of the zarb (a wooden drum, also known as the tombak).
Ars Poetica, Khosrow Sinai (1967a)
IR, 11 min
No dialogue
A dove flutters through a room full of Iranian sculptor Jazeh Tabatabai’s metal sculptures.
Arbaeen, Nasser Taghvai (1970)
IR, 21 min
No dialogue
During Moharram (first month of the Islamic calendar), the religious enthusiasm of the Iranian population is expressed through the mourning ceremonies that commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, the Shiites’ holy imam.