Cinema Regained The new restoration of The Chess Game of the Wind
New York Film Festival (NYFF58)
Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. (New York Film Festival)
Mohammad Reza Aslani’s long-lost, legendary classic of Iranian New Wave cinema, The Chess Game of the Wind, was probably the most internationally celebrated revelation/restoration of 2020.
The Chess Game of the Wind is not only qualified to be seen again, but it is a new beginning for such films in cinema. Movies that "take something from life and add something to it." Movies that are truly masterpieces. Films that are not just for cinema ... they are for thoughts ... for thoughts and for culture.
Screened only twice (once for an empty theater) before it was banned in 1979, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s rediscovered and newly restored film Chess of the Wind (Shatranj-e baad) was destined to be lost forever. That is, until six years ago, when Aslani’s daughter found the original print in an antique shop in Tehran.Still banned in Iran, she had to smuggle the film out using a private delivery service straight to Paris. Once there, the film was restored in gorgeous 4k thanks to Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project and the Cineteca di Bologna. (Loud and Clear)
On the plot level, it’s a fabulously scary crime movie with gothic overtones reminiscent of classics like Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diabolique (1955) or any ‘Who’s driving me nuts?’ thriller written in the 1960s by Jimmy Sangster – while formally, it’s a monument to artistic control, a show of perfectionist care and dedication beyond the norm. The creepiness of The Chess Game of the Wind lies not so much in its arsenal of warped souls and broken minds but in the film’s textures: fabrics and the play of light on them, as well as its forcefully rigorous visual compositions that make every image look like a painting depicting the situation’s interior hierarchy, and every tracking shot feel like an earth-shaking shift in power relations. (IFFR)
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An unheralded landmark of Iranian cinema, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s debut feature is set during the rule of the Qajar dynasty and chronicles the fallout when a noble family’s matriarch passes away, kindling tensions new and old among her heirs.
Screened publicly just once and long thought lost after the 1979 Revolution, The Chess Game of the Wind evokes the work of Luchino Visconti in its sumptuous, refined, and poetic rendering of aristocratic decadence, the passage of time, the ties that bind, and the desires that set us against one another.
Featuring a remarkable score by the trailblazing female film composer Sheyda Gharachedaghi and masterfully lensed by Houshang Baharlou with a candle-lit grandeur reminiscent of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, The Chess Game of the Wind ranks among the great recent (re)discoveries of world cinema.
Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.(New York Film Festival)
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The Chess Game of the Wind (Shatranj-e Baad) is the story of a bourgeois but paralyzed woman during the Qajar era who recently lost her mother and believes that people around her are trying to plunder her inheritance and wealth.
“The Chess Game of the Wind” is Mohammad Reza Aslani's first feature film starring Fakhri Khorvash, Mohammad Ali Keshavarz, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Akbar Zanjanpour and Shahram Golchin, which was released in 1976.
At the time of its release, the film did not receive much attention from critics and audiences for various reasons, although Mohammad Reza Aslani believes that this negligence was intentional. With the Islamic Revolution, this film, like others of its kind, could not be watched by the viewers, and The Chess Game of the Wind was forgotten for a long time.
But in 2015, the Martin Scorsese Film Foundation revived this unique film. With the support of this foundation and Mohammad Reza Aslani himself, The Chess Game of the Wind was restored and found another opportunity to be unveiled to new audiences, and now it could once again attract the attention of critics, which of course was highly acclaimed such that it was selected by the jury at the Cannes Film Festival 2020 and will be screened in the classic film group alongside Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Acatone".
It can be said that the film has a surreal genre and is considered as one of the new wave and avant-garde films of Iranian cinema. Few films can be found in the persian cinema that strongly adhere to framing, color palette, mise-en-scène, dialogue, location and most importantly, era of their story. The most important feature of the film can be considered the great adaptation of the mentioned cinematic features with the atmosphere. Mohammad Reza Aslani states that he has tried as much as possible to portray the Qajar life with maximum adaptation and has been determined and successful in his true meaning.
The Chess Game of the Wind is not only qualified to be seen again, but it is a new beginning for such films in cinema. Movies that "take something from life and add something to it." Movies that are truly masterpieces. Films that are not just for cinema ... they are for thoughts ... for thoughts and for culture.
Here I have prepared parts of the movie as a trailer that I hope you enjoy.