Out of the Shadows: Rediscovering Mohammad Reza Aslani

Following on the success of the landmark MoMA exhibition Iranian Cinema before the Revolution, 1925–1979 and the astonishing recent rediscovery of Mohammad Reza Aslani’s Chess of the Wind (1976), the Museum presents a retrospective of the filmmaker’s work—14 newly preserved dramas and documentaries, some never before screened—that deepens our appreciation of this unsung master. A darkly claustrophobic tale of familial greed, cruelty, and subterfuge, Chess of the Wind proudly displayed its 19th-century roots in Henrik Ibsen and Fyodor Dostoevsky even as it hinted unsettlingly at the corruption and moral turpitude of Iran’s Pahlavi regime. Ignored by audiences and critics following its only screening at the Tehran International Film Festival in 1976, the film disappeared for some 40 years until Aslani’s son, by some improbable miracle, found the negative in a flea market outside Tehran. Thanks to a restoration in 2020 by the Film Foundation and Cineteca di Bologna, Chess of the Wind is widely recognized as a masterpiece of Iranian cinema, tantalizing us with more riches yet to be unearthed.

Now 80 and living in Iran, Aslani (b. 1943) first turned to cinema as an aspiring painter and a published poet. His fiction films—including The Green Fire (2007), a richly embroidered fable involving history, mythology, and mysticism—have the qualities of both: meticulously composed images, with characters and objects emerging from chiaroscuro depths into pools of radiant light; and polyphonies of dialogue and sound attuned to rhythmic meter and dispassionate expression. Aslani is also an accomplished documentarian, exploring Iran’s diverse cultures and its history, philosophy, art, and archaeology in commissioned films like Hassanlou Cup (1964), about a 10th-century Persian mystic; Tarikhaneh (1972), about the oldest surviving mosque in the Islamic world, in Damghan, Iran; Chigh (1995), which observes the carpet weaving tradition of Iranian Kurdish Sufi nomads; and two works having their premieres outside Iran: Our Cultural Heritage (1971) and The Dust of Light (1998). Aslani’s fascination with Persian mystical thought, from Rumi’s poetry to the philosophies of Avicenna and Sohrevardi, proved too sophisticated for pre-revolutionary audiences and critics who were more inclined toward the populist melodramas, comedies, and noir thrillers of Film Farsi; and later for the Islamic regime, which forbade him from making films between 1983 and 1995. Always an outsider, Reza Aslani is an artist whose time has come…at long last.

 Organized by Gita Aslani Shahrestani, scholar and daughter of the filmmaker; and La Frances Hui and Joshua Siegel, Curators, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art.

Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL.

Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by Debra and Leon D. Black, with major funding from The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), and The Young Patrons Council of The Museum of Modern Art.