“This is our Iranian story and we must continue to tell it in new, creative ways”
Discover this reimagining of the silent masterpiece Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925), a documentary on the heroic annual migration of the nomadic Bakhtiari tribes of Iran. Screened in a brand-new restoration courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and accompanied by new live score by Peyman Yazdanian and Adib Rostami.
This incredible film, absorbing and shocking, had only one problem – the score. Yazdanian first listened to Patrick Holcomb’s 2021 score for the film, and he found it “so disturbing and orientalist [he] had to turn it off and continue in total silence“. He knew it needed something new. Yazdanian’s score is a radical new idea: an improvised piano and kamancheh duet, played live at each show and adapting and responding to feelings in the moment. The kamancheh is an Iranian string instrument, played in this performance by Adib Rostami, who also plays the tombak (an Iranian hand drum) in more dramatic moments. Alongside Yazdanian’s piano, these instruments create a blend of east and west, “much like the journey of these western film-makers, following the tribes to the remotest parts of Iran” (Yazdanian).
Book now to discover the impact a new score can have on a 100-year-old film.
Event description by organisers.
