Editor’s Note
Paris: The Iranian Muse
In this issue we turn to Paris, which has been a secular haven for generations of Iranians. Join us as we explore a few of Iranian culture’s many connections with the City of Light.
In this issue we turn to Paris, which has been a secular haven for generations of Iranians. Join us as we explore a few of Iranian culture’s many connections with the City of Light.
The French-Iranian Film Connection is almost as old as cinema itself. In 1900, in a French spa town and then the Paris world’s fair, Mozaffar al-Din Shah encountered the new medium and ordered it brought to Iran.
The first Iranian to set out to make a career as a filmmaker, Motazedi acquired his skills as a young man in Paris. He would go on to open Tehran’s first movie theaters accessible to both men and women.
In the 1940s, Ghafari moved to Paris and into the heart of its vibrant cinephilic milieu, hired as an assistant by Henri Langlois, cofounder and director of the Cinémathèque Française.
With his documentary The Lovers’ Wind, Lamorisse has a modestly scaled, marvelously achieved place in the French-Iranian Film Connection, and a tragic one.
Hoveyda was at the center of Paris film culture in the 1950s and 1960s, writing pivotal essays for Cahiers du Cinéma alongside François Truffaut and spearheading acclaim for Jerry Lewis.
“We rose early in the morning, went down into a boat, and pushed off for the shore,” wrote Naser al-Din Shah, recalling his arrival in Paris on July 6, 1873.
The travelogue of Khan, a Persian writer from India, would inspire the Shah of Persia to embark on a years-long journey through Europe.
From the Diaries of Haj Sayyah: “There was music and singing in coffee shops and theatres…. The trees were festooned with green lights…. Young people and children danced…. They enjoyed complete freedom.”
Following in the tradition of capturing the American literary experience in Paris, from Stein to Hemingway to Baldwin, here’s a primer on some of the Iranian experience in France’s capital.
It is an open secret that the Islamic Republic maintains a heavy military presence inside Syria, where for the past decade it has supported Bashar al Assad against an armed rebellion.