We continue our discussion of the Iranian programming at the Wales One World Film Festival with Bahram Beyzaie’s great, Downpour (1972),  influenced by Italian Neo-realism and European Art Cinema, one of the films that spearheaded the Iranian New Wave counter cinema, poetic and critical, and managing to synthesise realism and allegory. A great film.

The film was part of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project (No. 3). It received a restoration from the Cineteca di Bologna in 2011 and now has a Criterion release. The podcast refers to Hadmid Naficy’s very interesting piece on the film and the Iranian New Wave that you can access here.

https://soundcloud.com/user-766042506/jose-arroyo-richard-layne-on-downpour

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

In the podcast we discuss, the brilliant editing, the imaginative choice of editing, the variety of impactful shots, the beauty of the images, and some of the ways the film allegorizes. We criticise the sub-titles and wish they’d been better.

Ehsan Khoshbakht, the director of Filmfarsi, contextualises Downpour and The Deer in this brilliant Q&A, shown as part of Wales One World Film Festival:

In the discussion Ehsan refers to Chess of the Wind as part of this New Wave. We podcast on it from Bologna here: 

José Arroyo