Dead End

Part of the film series
Iranian New Wave 1960s-1970s (November 2 - 22, 2013)

Dead End
Parviz Sayyad. 1977. Iran. 95 min. Color. HDCAM-SR. With English subtitles.

Screening followed by a Q&A with director Parviz Sayyad, moderated by Jamsheed Akrami, director of The Lost Cinema and Professor of Media Studies and Production, William Paterson University.

A young woman (Mary Apik) lives on a dead end street with her family. A mysterious man has been following her. Who is he? Is he a secret admirer or someone who is plotting harm? While the young woman draws up romantic fantasies, fear sets in as the man’s omnipresence alludes to the pervasive surveillance carried out by the secret police force, SAVAK, set up by the Shah’s regime. Due to the film’s underlying political theme and the portrayal of female subjectivity, it became banned by both regimes pre- and post-revolution. Although never shown in Iran, the film won actress Mary Apik the Best Actress Award at the Moscow Film Festival.

Parviz Sayyad (1939- ) is a highly popular director, actor, and producer in film, theater, and television, most famous for the character Samad, a country bumpkin, that he created and played in a series of television dramas and films. After moving to the U.S., Sayyad made the critically acclaimed The Mission (1984), which officially entered the Berlin Film Festival, the London Film Festival, and won the Jury Grand Prize at the Locarno Film Festival.

Jamsheed Akrami is a filmmaker, critic, and Professor of Media Studies and Production at William Paterson University. As a filmmaker, he has made several documentaries about Iranian cinema: Friendly Persuasion (2000) deals with Iranian cinema after the 1979 revolution, A Walk with Kiarostami (2003) follows Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami as he captures the Irish landscape, and A Cinema of Discontent (2013) examines film censorship in Iran.
 

This film series is organized in conjunction with the Iran Modern exhibition, on view through January 5, 2014. Public programs held in conjunction with Iran Modern are made possible by support from the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art through Asia Society’s ongoing initiative Creative Voices of Muslim Asia. Additional support for Iran Modern programming is provided by the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, WLS Spencer Foundation and the American Institute of Iranian Studies.