فروغ فرخزاد

I was excited to learn recently of an upcoming conference at the University of Texas on Iranian poet and director Forough Farrokhzad: Forough Farrokhzad Fifty Years Later (3-5 February 2017). The conference will focus on three themes: Farrokhzad’s poetry and status in Iran today, Farrokhzad’s influence in the hyphenated Iranian world outside of Iran, and the critical appreciation of Farrokhzad’s poetry qua poetry in the second decade of the 21st century. In my recent journal article on disability in Iranian film, “From Leprosy to The Willow Tree: Decoding Disability & Islamic Spirituality in Iranian Film” in Disability & Society, I discuss Farrokhzad’s groundbreaking short film, The House is Black — a meditation on suffering which mixes scenes of daily life in a real leper colony with her modernist poetry and religious verses from the Bible and Qur’an. The film, which you can watch above, had a profound influence on Iranian New Wave cinema. Recently, while giving a series of lectures in Iran for the Commonwealth Club of California, I had the opportunity to visit the Iranian Film Museum in Tehran — a dream come true, since I consider Iranian film the best in the world (due, in large part, to Farrokhzad’s influence on modern Iranian directors).