Lovers’ Wind revisits late French filmmaker’s footage of Iran at Western Front, to November 23

Toronto-based artists Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, and Ryan Ferko collaborate on a multi-channel video installation

Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko, *Lovers’ Wind*, film still. Photo courtesy of the artists

Western Front presents Lovers' Wind to November 23

TORONTO-BASED ARTISTS Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, and Ryan Ferko work as a collective, and they have a new multi-channel video installation now showing at the Western Front gallery.

Developed over three years of archival and community research, the exhibition centres on the story of French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse and his last title, 1978’s Bād-e Sabā (The Lovers’ Wind). The piece was commissioned by the Imperial State of Iran to document the country’s history and modernization and was largely shot from a helicopter, yielding vast views of Iran’s natural and built environments. A voiceover narration personified its winds. The monarch Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was not pleased with the final edit, however, and asked Lamorisse to deliver additional footage that would highlight the industrialization of Iran. The work ended up leading to Lamorisse’s death, his helicopter crashing at the Karaj Dam just outside of Tehran in 1970.

The central work of Lovers’ Wind features scenes from Bād-e Sabā combined with autobiographical details from Lamorisse’s life directly sampled and retooled alongside new footage showing a variety of candid and scripted encounters in Iran, Tunisia, and Canada. Unfolding across a big vertical projection and multiple TV screens of varying sizes, Lovers’ Wind speaks to imagination, memory, and legacy.

In the accompanying single-channel video work Postscript, a phone conversation with an archivist at the National Film Archive of Iran provides the score for a slowed-down version of a short film made by the Ministry of Art and Culture using Lamorisse’s final images of the Karaj Dam. The footage was recovered from the crash site and released posthumously as a companion piece alongside the final cut of Bād-e Sabā a year before the Iranian Revolution.

Lovers’ Wind and Postscript each run for 37 minutes and play simultaneously.

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Gail Johnson

Gail Johnson is cofounder of Stir. She is a Vancouver-based journalist who has earned local and national nominations and awards for her work. She is a certified Gladue Report writer via Indigenous Perspectives Society in partnership with Royal Roads University and is a member of a judging panel for top Vancouver restaurants.

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