23rd Iranian Film Festival (MFAH Screenings): Tales (Ghesse-ha)

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents the 23rd Houston Iranian Film Festival January 22 – February 2, 2016.

For the 23rd edition of the longest-running MFAH film festival, the Museum is honored by the presence of actress Fatemeh Motamed Arya. She is scheduled to attend a rare, Tuesday-night screening on February 2, accompanied by her husband, actor Ahmad Hamed.

Another highlight of this year’s festival is a new documentary about artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, who is represented in the Museum’s permanent collection.

The Houston Iranian Film Festival continues at Asia Society Texas Center and Rice Cinema.

Film selections were made in collaboration with Tom Vick of the Freer and Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian Institution’s museums of Asian art; Carter Long of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Barbara Scharres of the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.

Tales (Ghesse-ha)
Directed by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad
2014, in Farsi with English subtitles
Iran, 88 minutes
DCP

Interlocking stories of disparate characters trying to make sense of modern-day Iran.

One of that country’s leading women directors tells interlocking stories set in Tehran with a predominantly female cast. The film is woven together with incidents and personalities that appear in more than one story and features talented stage actors.

Tales was first produced as a series of shorts to bypass Iranian government restrictions, using actors who were banned from performing.

Heartless bureaucrats, women in clinics, jealous husbands, a documentary filmmaker, and an arrogant taxi driver create “an image of a modern country with many of the same problems of any country: economic uncertainty is further compounded by drug use and the insolence and inefficiency of the bureaucracy that controls people’s lives.” —CineVue

Additional support is provided by the Society of Iranian-American Women for Education (SIAWE) and the Iranian Cultural Foundation-Houston.