The earliest surviving feature film that was directed by an Iranian woman is a portrait of female rebellion. It opens in a New 4K Restoration on May 30th at BAM in NYC with a National Rollout to Follow.
This fascinating and powerful film is remarkable, historically, visually, and dramatically. Marva Nabili’s, The Sealed Soil chronicles a young woman (Flora Shabavis)and her resistance to an upcoming forced marriage, a rebellion quickly misinterpreted by her family as demonic possession. Breathtaking in its directorial restraint and unblinking in its critique of institutionalized misogyny, this is a masterstroke of world cinema which needs to be seen.
Digitally restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by theGolden Globe Foundation, Century Arts Foundation, Farhang Foundation and Mark Amin. Restored from the 16mm original A/B negatives, color reversal internegative, magnetic track and optical track negative. Laboratory services by illuminate Hollywood, Corpus Fluxus, Endpoint Audio Labs, Audio Mechanics, Simon Daniel Sound. Special thanks to Thomas Fucci, Marva Nabili and Garineh Nazarian.
Born in Iran, Marva Nabili studied painting at the University of Decorative Arts in Tehran. She became involved with the production of a film that marked the foundation of “New Cinema” in Iranian film as she played the lead in Siavash at Persepolis (Siavash dar takht-e Jamshid, 1967), directed by Ferydoun Pahnema. This film received the Jean Epstein Award at the Locarno Film Festival.
This experience drew Nabili to London and then New York to study film making, where she received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in cinema. She wrote and directed a number of short films, notably A Trance, Self Portrait, and Nannette in Vermont.
Nabili returned to Iran to write and direct an eight-hour television series based on classic Persian fairy tales, and the same year she wrote and directed her first feature film, The Sealed Soil (Khake Sar Beh Mohr, 1977). This is the story of an eighteen-year-old peasant woman caught in a transitional period between girlhood and womanhood, and the struggle between cultural traditions and modernization confronting her village life.
Because The Sealed Soil was made without official sanction Nabili was forced into self- exile due to the political situation in Iran. The Sealed Soil was shown to critical acclaim in the West, where it received the Best New Director award at Mostra Internazionale del Film d’Autore, San Remo and was selected as the Outstanding Film of the Year at the London Film Festival. The Sealed Soil has never been shown in Iran.
At 18 the young woman, Flora Shabavis, should have been married but she has turned down many suitors. The village chief points out to her that her mother was married at 7 and by the time she was 18, she had born four children. And who is taking care of the many children in the family? Flora. Times are changing. The village will soon be dismantled as the inhabitants move to homes in a city. The contrast of autos and trucks along a highway where Flora walks, her only transport, carrying dishes to be cleaned in the river on her head is compelling. Out of a different culture, a different era, the almost rhythmic quality of daily life draws the viewer in. It is a rare look at a different world, authentic and powerful.
Photos provided by The Sealed Soil
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