The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), formed upon nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, employed film systematically, producing many films on oil and petrochemical subjects. It also made films depicting Iran's progress and modernization, highlighting the role of the Shah and NIOC in that direction. Under its auspices, Ebrahim Golestan directed A FIRE (1961), a highly visual treatment of a seventy-day oil well fire in the Khuzestan region of southwestern Iran. This film was edited by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad and won two awards at the Venice Film Festival in 1961.
Cinematography
Apocalyptic imagery that makes industrial disaster look almost sacred.
Editing
Forough Farrokhzad's poetic cutting transforms footage into verse.
Direction
Golestan finds terrifying beauty in unstoppable destruction.
Director
Ebrahim Golestan
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made just eight years after the 1953 CIA coup restored oil-friendly Shah rule, the film's ambivalence toward NIOC's 'progress' is politically loaded.
Forough Farrokhzad edited this immediately before directing her own masterpiece 'The House is Black' (1962), making A Fire her apprenticeship in cinematic poetry.
IR
