Reflective Encounters

“As the crackling sounds of film roll are heard, we quickly understand that the archives will be at the heart of this cinematographic experimentation. In this dead calm atmosphere, close-up images focus on the hands, faces and bodies of Iranian actors who are always judging each other, waiting, moving slowly but never touching directly. There is no physical contact, except through interposed means, through artifice, through association of images or in the invisible.

If there is a central sense highlighted in this film, it is without a doubt the sight, with our gaze continually being occupied. The editing invites us to question this dense sequence of images that answer each other (nearly 90 different films, from 1982 to 2010) but also the words and ideas of its author. The title – Nazarbazi – precisely depicts this ‘game of glances’ that is enough to tie links between male and female bodies and underline the latent socio-political ambiguities of a society through the prism of cinema.

By superimposing words on the screen, like haiku expressing the personal feelings of a ghostly spectator, Maryam Tafakory raises the question of what is prohibited in society, but also in art. She manages to make the untouchable palpable, whether it is sensations and feelings, or the unbearable prohibitions that deprive the characters of physical bonds.”

— Florian Fernandez