Treasures from the Golestan Film Studio Blu-ray

'Treasures from the Golestan Film Studio' (1961-74) Radiance Limited Edition 3-Disc Blu-ray | 9 films | 4K restorations | Farsi & English w/ English subtitles

For the first-time ever on home video, this collection presents the complete output of the iconoclastic independent Iranian film studio founded in the late 1950s by a towering figure of Iranian culture, Ebrahim Golestan.

The studio’s earliest productions were documentaries that helped bring Iranian cinema to international attention, including The House Is Black, directed by the poet Forough Farrokhzad. From 1961, the studio turned to fiction. Two feature films were completed, including the pivotal Brick and Mirror – both of which are presented here.

After years of circulation in compromised versions, sometimes altered by censorship, these classics, which map the origins of the Iranian New Wave, are now presented in restored and definitive versions. The nine films in this set move fluidly from prose poetry to political allegory, achieving remarkable results that have inspired generations of filmmakers from Abbas Kiarostami to Jonathan Glazer.

Limited Edition contents:

• Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista
• Booklet featuring archival writing by Ehsan Khoshbakht
• Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

Special features include:

• A restored programme of three short documentaries combining the talents of master director Golestan and Iran’s greatest female modernist poet, Forough Farrokzhad: A Fire (1961, 25 mins); Courtship (1961, 11 mins); The House is Black (1962, 22 mins)
• A restored programme of Golestan’s documentaries following his recurrent theme of the land and its people: The Crown Jewels of Iran (1965, 14 mins), Wave, Coral and Rock (1961, 41 mins); The Hills of Marlik (1963, 15 mins), Harvest and Seed (1965, 29 mins)