ReFocus: The Films of Sohrab Shahid-Saless
Exile, Displacement and the Stateless Moving Image
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:3rd Mar '22
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An Iranian immigrant struggling to integrate into 1970s German society, the filmmaker Sohrab Shahid Saless (1944–98) has become a neglected figure in discussions of diaspora cinema. In this – the first English-language book to reflect on his work and its implications for creativity in the diasporic conditions of urban displacement – a range of international scholars provide a comprehensive account of Shahid Saless’s films and production methods. Outlining his affinity with celebrated directors like Chantal Akerman and Abbas Kiarostami, as well as visual artists like Romuald Karmakar, the contributors firmly position Shahid Saless as a filmmaker who speaks forcefully to the traumas of displacement and migration.
A mystic poet of the hidden sights of our souls, Sohrab Shahid Saless was the filmmakers’ filmmaker. He achieved an almost cultic character in his homeland and his two Iranian films formed the DNA of Iranian New Wave before the Iranian Revolution of 1977-9 catapulted him into Europe and then the US where he died lonely and forlorn. Azadeh Fatehrad has given the world of cinema a priceless gift by editing a much overdue volume celebrating both phases of Shahid Saless’s Iranian and foreign filmmaking careers: in one he mapped the solitude of our souls, and in the other the exilic permanence of our very existence. -- Hamid Dabashi, author of Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future
ISBN: 9781474456401
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
200 pages