Film: Tehran Has No More Pomegranates

Wednesday 14 October 2009, 7.15-8.45pm
Directed by Massoud Bakhshi, Iran 2007, documentary, 68 min. In Farsi with English subtitles.
Introduced by James Neil, followed by a Q+A by Jon Snow with Massoud Bakhshi, Dr Nayareh Dalali, James Neil and Malu Halasa.
Tehran Has No More Pomegranates marks the arrival of a new auteur in Iranian cinema – Massoud Bakhshi. It is part of that rare breed: a collage ‘ciné poem’ of a great city metropolis. Like its spiritual brethren Berlin: Symphony of a City and Man with a Movie Camera, Pomegranates is at once suffused with a dizzying array of photographs and never before seen archive film from the past century brought together with a witty voiceover and a pulsating musical score by Mohsen Namjoo. Shot over five years and deploying a range of experimental filmic devices, it captures with humour and razor-sharp observation the transformation of Tehran from rural village to city of dreams.
The London School of Economics and Political Science
Atrium Gallery, New Theatre, East Building, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE