The House Is Black (1963)

The House Is Black (1963)
"Khaneh siah ast" (original title)
20 min  -  Documentary | Short

Director: Forugh Farrokhzad
Writer: Forugh Farrokhzad
Stars: Forugh Farrokhzad, Ebrahim Golestan, Hossein Mansouri

Country: Iran
Language: Persian


Within a short life span of 32 years, she became the paramount controversial modernist poet in Iran and the auteur of a short documentary lasting 20 minutes for which Jonathan Rosenbaum quoted it as  the greatest of all Iranian films (and certainly it is !!!). Her name is Forugh Farrokhzad and the documentary is "The House is Black".

Forough made this astounding work at the age of 27 and its her only work in motion picture genre. She traveled to Tabriz for twelve days and captured the life inside a leprosarium. The film starts with a male voice-over "There is no shortage of ugliness in the world. If man closed his eyes to it, there would be even more". She is becoming presumptuous from the first visual of a woman's reflection on a mirror and she is deformed because of leprosy.
The most horrendous fact about leprosy is not death, its the after life when the disease is cured. The destitute victims were coerced (by themselves- this includes a subtext of its political and social conditions) to find their future in an ultimate virtual world, like world of God. Forough is showing this before our eyes through stunning juxtaposing of images; we can see that photographic touch in her visuals, still lives are  shown with such a lightning brilliance. No viewer can forget the scene of a lonely man walking and saying "Monday, Tuesday...." and she broke its continuum by stitching still images and distorted faces. The ugliness is fixed no matter how the days are passing. Its molded onto their bodies and showing the transformation of a human to an object.
Forough's camera is capturing not the weeping faces of members of leprosarium but the emotionless/ happy ones/children playing/festivals. She clearly knew it can enter the viewers mind so deeply than any propaganda film and its unfathomable.
We can see similar visuals in Kamran Shirdel 's Nedamatgah (1965) which is also a short documentary that shows the life of women in a penitentiary but i love to compare "The House is Black" to Alexandra Gulea's documentary God plays sax, the Devil violin (2004). In both of these docus we can see the outstanding photographic impact. Kamral Shirdel's movie lacks it.