Description
Sohrab Shahid Saless: Filmmaker is the first monograph with multiple perspectives on the work of the Tehran-born film-maker. Saless had already made a number of documentaries and two features in Iran before moving to West Germany in 1975. Films like Still Life (Tabiate Bijan), Far from Home (Dar Ghorbat), and Utopia brought him international recognition. His work also reflects the political mood of those years-the legacy of National Socialism, new forms of racism, and West Germany's attempts to deal with migration. Saless also trains his precise eye on minor characters and the repressiveness and yearnings characterising middle-class life. Despite his restless journey and the difficulties he had in securing funding for his film projects, he managed to create a body of work that can be seen as a chronicle of his time.The book brings together new perspectives on a film oeuvre that has been unjustly forgotten, studies its transnational linkages, and probes Saless's cinematic style.Sohrab Shahid Saless (1944-1998) was born in Tehran and studied in Paris and Vienna. In 1974 he shot two features on the Caspian Sea, which brought him international success. The filmmaker moved to Germany in 1975 and made thirteen feature films there, including co-productions with Iran and Czechoslovakia. His films showed at international festivals like Cannes and the Berlinale. Despite these successes, his work is hard to find today and is rarely screened. He spent the last years of his life in the USA. Vivien Buchhorn is a film historian and curator. She has been working for years to make Saless's films more accessible. The Shahid Saless Archive (http://shahid-saless- archive.org/) was set up at her initiative. The book and the archive are funded by the Goethe-Institut.
