“Terrestrial Voices" at the Figge Art Museum -- September 5.
Thursday, September 5, 6:30 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
On September 5, a widely lauded, deeply important Iranian film will enjoy a special screening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum in the presentation of directors Ali Asgari's and Alireza Khatami's Terrestrial Voices, the Un Certain Regard Award recipient at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival that also won both the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Award at the 2024 Luxembourg City Film Festival.
In Terrestrial Voices, Iranians try to assert their rights in their country's system, whether it is the administration or the school, in work relationships or the procedures of everyday life. Through nine individual stories set in Tehran, the overwhelming weight of politics and religion in the service of power comes to light and is denounced. Asgari and Khatami worked on the script together but had difficulty finding a producer, and ultimately produced the film at their own expense with financial support from friends. The film was then shot within seven days, after which it premiered on May 23, 2023, in Cannes. Terrestrial Voices was subsequently shown on October 4, 2023, at the BFI Film Festival in London, on October 19, 2023, during the Chicago International Film Festival, and at other international film festivals.
Reviewing the film for RogerEbert.com, Godfrew Cheshire raved, "Terrestrial Verses, one of the most brilliant and provocative films to emerge from Iran recently, has qualities that link it to both the modernist formal traditions of post-1979 Iranian cinema and the more recent trend of social and political asperities aimed at the authoritarian repressiveness of the Islamic Republic. The film’s stylistic approach is both simple and daring. In each of its nine episodes, the camera is locked in place, staring, as it were, at a single person who is interrogated by an off-screen authority figure of one sort or another. Each scene plays through without edits, making it resemble a one-act play with both documentary and dramatic aspects."
"Even though it contains no violence and no mentions of politics or the current regime in Iran," Cheshire continued, "Terrestrial Verses may be the most dramatic validation so far of that prediction. It is a scathing critique of the poisoned power relations in the Islamic Republic, relations that corrupt interactions by people at every level of Iranian society. And you can be sure the Iranian authorities understood it as just that. After the film enjoyed rave reviews and public acclaim around the world, Iran banned co-director Ali Asgari from traveling (Alireza Khatami was spared that punishment as a Canadian citizen) and confiscated some of the cast’s passports, laptops and phones.
"Given the extraordinary restrictions Iran places on its filmmakers, it remains a wonder that films as intrepid and original as Terrestrial Voices somehow keep emerging from the country. Asgari and Khatami even cleverly acknowledge the absurd barriers they and their colleagues face. In one scene, a filmmaker faces an official who, in reviewing his script, keeps finding faults with its actions and ideas. The exasperated filmmaker responds by ripping out one handful of pages after another. The scene would be simply hilarious were it not so close to the awful truth."
Terrestrial Voices will be screened in the John Deere Auditorium on September 5, admission to the 6:30 p.m. event is free, and more information is available by calling (563)326-7804 and visiting FiggeArtMuseum.org.
