The Venice Film Festival has released the list of restored films it is to screen at the section “Venezia Classici”, among which is the 1965 black-and-white Iranian drama “Brick and Mirror” written and directed by Ebrahim Golestan.
Since 2012, Venezia Classici has been presenting a selection of the best restorations of classic films undertaken over the previous year by film libraries and cultural institutes all over the world.
The restoration has been carried out by Ecran Noir Production and Golestan in collaboration with the film Archieve Cineteca di Bologna.
According to the event’s website, Labiennale.org, the 75th Venice Film Festival will be held on the island of Lido, Venice, from August 29-September 8.
Starring Zakaria Hashemi, Akbar Meshkin, Pari Saberi, Jamshid Mashayekhi, Mohammad-Ali Keshavarz and Manouchehr Farid, Brick and Mirror is about a taxi driver whose passenger is a strange woman wearing a black chador - a cameo appearance by influential Persian poet and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967).
Soon after the woman steps out of the cab, the driver notices that she has left a baby girl behind. He tries to return to the exact place where he dropped her and find the woman, but to no avail.
After keeping the baby for a few days and trying to find her family by seeking help from the city officials, the man takes the child to an orphanage despite his fiancés insistence on keeping the child, as she believes the baby is a gift from God.
The film takes its name from a common dictum in Persian, “What the young sees in the mirror, the old sees in unbaked brick,” much the same as “they that live longest see the most”.
The movie keeps safe distance from the films then common in Iran and incorporates some European style into it. The influence of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, neorealist filmmakers of Italy like Micelangelo Antonioni and French New Wave is conspicuous in Golestan’s Brick and Mirror.
Venice Film Festival has selected 16 other films for its Venezia Classici section, including The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982) directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Il Posto (1961) by Ermanno Olmi, The Ascent (1976) by Larisa Shepitko, and The Place Without Limits (1977) by Arturo Ripstein.
Ebrahim Golestan, 95, is a prominent filmmaker and literary figure with a career spanning over half a century. He is based in the UK since 1975. During the course of his illustrious career, he made a drama in 1974 titled The Ghost Valley’s Treasure Mysteries as well as four documentaries, namely A fire (1961), The Hills of Marlik (1963), The Crown Jewels of Iran (1965), and Wave, Coral and Rock (1962).
He is the father of famous photojournalist Kaveh Golestan, and Lili Golestan, director and owner of Golestan Art Gallery in Tehran.
