2022 | Iran, UK | Experimental

Nazarbazi

  • 19 mins
  • Director | Maryam Tafakory

This film is currently not available.   

A playful collage of images, words, sounds and texts that deconstructs female desire in post-revolution Iranian cinema.

In Iran, physical touch between a man and woman is prohibited in films. Nazarbazi (‘the play of glances’) examines the at times playful visual forms and gestures employed in post-revolution Iranian cinema to bypass censors. Weaving together cinematic moments of ‘sin’, Nazarbazi reflects on the film legacy of invisible desires, implied proximities and unspoken glances.

Tafakory inserts metatextual interventions: quotes from writers and philosophers such as Forugh Farrokhzad and Ahmad Shamlou expand the meaning of the images. Subverting the strict and uneven codifications of portrayals of female desire, Nazarbazi makes a convincing argument about the radical relationality of touch—without touching.

sound Iranian cinema physical legacy
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