The 36th Fajr International Film Festival slated for April 19-27 in Tehran will screen 11 films in its ‘Classics Preserved’ section dedicated to restored old films.
Four films from Iran and seven from other nations are scheduled for this part of the festival, IRNA reported. The upcoming edition of FIFF will screen restored classics from Japan, France, Russia, Australia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and one joint project by Hong Kong and Taiwan.
'A Touch of Zen' is among the foreign films to be screened at Classics Preserved. Written, directed and co-edited by Chinese filmmaker King Hu (1932-1997) and produced jointly by Hong Kong and Taiwan, it is a 1971 wuxia film, a Chinese genre concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient times.
The section will feature 'Gate of Hell' from Japan. It is a 1953 film directed by Japanese actor and film director Teinosuke Kinugasa (1896-1982). In the Japanese genre of jidaigaki, it is set in the Edo period (1603-1868) when Japanese society was under the rule of Tokugawa shogunate and 300 feudal houses. The film is the story of a samurai who tries to marry a woman he rescues only to find out that she is married.
The selected feature from France is 'The Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company.' It is a 1986 French movie directed by French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard, 87, a pioneer of French New Wave film movement. The 90-minute film is about an old, anxiety-provoking motto in film industry: 'You are never better than your last project.' It was originally made for TV but is now restored and released to hit the big screen.
'The Assassin of the Tsar' is a 1991 Russian drama film directed by Russian filmmaker, producer and screenwriter Karen Shakhnazarov, 65.
Timofyev is a patient in an asylum who claims to be the man who killed Tsar Alexander II in 1881 and his grandson Tsar Nicholas II in 1918. Doctor Smirnov decides to apply a peculiar therapeutic method on him, but things go in an unexpected way. A good portion of the film depicts the last days of the Russian Imperial Family in Yekaterinburg, a city east of Ural Mountains.
From Australia and by an Australian film director, 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' will be among the preserved classics. A 1975 mystery drama film by Peter Weir, 73, the movie takes place in February 1900, 11 months before the Australian colonies federated and 11 years before the creation of the Australian capital.
Several schoolgirls and their teacher disappear during a picnic in the mountains of Hanging Rock in central Victoria of Australia. The film was a commercial and critical success.
Dinner for Adele, a 1977 Czechoslovak comedy detective film is directed by Czech film director Oldrich Lipsky (1924-86). When detective Nick Carter visits Prague, he becomes involved in the strange case of a missing dog and a carnivorous plant. He becomes convinced that he is standing against his greatest enemy, a gardener who supposedly died years ago in a swamp.
And finally by the distinguished Polish film director Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016), 'A Generation' will be screened. It is a 1955 film based on the novel 'Pokolenie' by Polish screenwriter Bohdan Czeszko (1923-88) who also wrote the script.
The film is set in Wola, a working-class section of Warsaw, in 1942 and tells the stories of two young men at odds with the German occupation of Poland.
Iranian Films
The Iranian movies restored and prepared for the section are two feature-length and two short films. They have been restored at the archives office of the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
One of the short films is ‘Arbaeen’. It is the Arabic term for 40 and the name of a major Shia mourning occasion held annually to mark the 40th day anniversary after the martyrdom of Imam Hussein (AS), the grandson of prophet Muhammad (PBUH), in the Karbala desert of Iraq in 680 AD. It is directed by filmmaker and screenwriter Nasser Taqvaei, 76, and is a documentation of religious traditions and rituals in the southern province of Bushehr.
Another short work is a 1970 documentary by director, screenwriter and editor Parviz Kimiavi, 79. ‘Ya Zamen-e Ahou’ (O Guardian of Deer), an epithet referring to Imam Reza (AS). The film depicts the strong emotional atmosphere inside the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth imam of Shia Muslims.
The two restored feature films to be shown at the festival are ‘Amir Kabir’ by screenwriter and film director Ali Hatami (1944-96) and ‘The Survivor’ by filmmaker Seyfollah Daad (1955-2009).
Hatami made ‘Amir Kabir’ using selected footages from his TV series named ‘Sultan Sahebqaran’ (a title attributed to Nasser al-Din Shah of the Qajar Dynasty who ruled from 1848-96 and to whom Amir Kabir was chief minister). The film will have its first public screening at the festival.
'The Survivor' is a 1995 drama directed by Seyfollah Daad about the Arab-Israeli conflict, based on ‘Returning to Haifa,’ a 1969 novel by Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani, a leading member of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, assassinated in 1972 by the Israeli spy agency Mossad.
