Rediscovery: Chess of the Wind

A few years ago, at the University of Bologna, I accompanied an ageing filmmaker who had been offered a private tour of the vaults. Being the oldest university in Europe, it holds precious manuscripts from past centuries – literally, the foundations of our civilisation. Among these is one of the first illustrated atlases in the world, which was laid out for the guest. Handling the book with white gloves, he gently browsed the pages with such absorption; it was as if he had finally found the meaning of this otherwise chaotic world.

As he turned the pages in wonder, I was reminded of the reason for his visit: a celluloid atlas, mapping the uncharted territories of world cinema, was being drawn by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation and Cineteca di Bologna. The ageing filmmaker was there to supervise the restoration of one of his films, unseen for decades.

The World Cinema Project, soon to mark its 15th anniversary, painstakingly closes the gulf between past and present. It began as a side project of The Film Foundation (whose sole task was the restoration of American films) and spread its arms in the most universalist manner. The results have been staggering, bringing back to life films from Latin America, Asia and Africa. Some titles are now available to stream in the UK, in a collaboration between The Film Foundation and the streaming platform Mubi.

Charting the lost continents of film often involves complex processes, coordinated between various institutions and archives, supported by filmmakers, historians, curators and adventurers. Sometimes the task is complicated further when the only material available is in appalling shape. In some cases, a positive print of the film (worse still, one with burned-in subtitles) is the only surviving element. A positive print of the Turkish film Law of the Border (1966) was the only known copy to survive the country’s 1980 coup, during which all other elements were destroyed.

Thanks to one important sidebar of WCP, the African Film Heritage Project, we can now see, in impeccable restorations, films from Cameroon (Muna Moto, 1976), Ivory Coast (La Femme au couteau, 1969) and Morocco (Trances), among other countries. These are not just interesting examples of films from underrepresented countries – they are glorious works of art. Trances (Ahmed El Maanouni, 1981), a film about music, features an opening sequence so thrillingly cut, the music so passionately performed and deeply felt, that it forces you to watch it standing up, as if at a real concert. Or take Med Hondo’s 1967 drama Soleil O (from Mauritania), which has all the intensity of looking directly into the sun.

If there is a single film that captures the excitement of this project (which so far has restored 47 titles from 27 countries), it is the Iranian Chess of the Wind (1976), directed by Mohammad Reza Aslani. A film about the transition from feudalism to modernity, a process riddled with corruption and duplicity, Chess of the Wind is a miniature of Iranian society in the 1970s, even if it is set at the beginning of the last century. Showing an acute understanding of the dynamics of that society, it also offers a premonition of the revolution to come. The final shot is a 50-year jump in time, which sees the camera pan above the house that is the story’s backdrop to frame the skyline of modern-day Tehran, extending the decadence and intrigue beyond the walls to society as a whole. Like many great artists, Aslani understood the past, felt the present and saw the future.

A story of deceit and intrigue set in a feudal mansion following the death of a matriarch, Chess of the Wind focuses on the various plots to gain the deceased’s assets at any price, even murder. The sense of friction that builds through the film also existed in Iran. The same regressive elements forced the film into oblivion following its ill-fated premiere – a faulty projector followed by a hostile press conference – at the Tehran International Film Festival in 1976. Aslani, a son of the new world, his modernism a source of fear, was held back by the forces of the old world. After the 1979 revolution, most Iranian pre-revolutionary films were deemed pernicious to moral wellbeing and were consequently destroyed or locked away. For decades Chess of the Wind was not only unseen and largely forgotten but lost as a physical object. It became an invisible film, yet one with an underground, even mythical reputation.

Now the myth is gone and we face the concrete beauty of the film. At the same time we are reminded of the surprises and revelations that await those yet to discover the ground-breaking movement in Iranian pre-revolutionary cinema known as cinema-ye motafavet (alternative cinema), sometimes referred to as the Iranian New Wave. Some of its key talents were uprooted, exiled, banned or retired by force in great numbers after 1979. (Aslani didn’t make another feature-length fiction film until 32 years later.)

Such restoration undertakings reveal the talent not only of greats like Aslani but of a whole team whose contributions could otherwise not be fully understood. How else could one appreciate the work of cinematographer Houshang Baharloo, who lit several scenes with candlelight? The restoration has also renewed interest in the film’s composer, Sheyda Gharachedaghi, one of the most prolific female composers of the 60s and 70s. Her bold, extraordinary work with horn and percussion is a fresh reminder of how imaginative she was in blending her Viennese conservatoire education with Iranian instruments and sensibility.

Reactions to screenings of the restoration in 2020 were universally ecstatic. I have never seen so much artistic brilliance and inventiveness recognised so suddenly as in the case of Chess of the Wind – a work of art dusted off after 50 years of neglect, now officially added to the atlas of world cinema.