Iran unveils book on cinematic history

The book "A Hundred Years of Iran's Cinematic Ads and Posters" compiled by Masoud Mehrabi was unveiled on Monday at Iran Artists House. During the unveiling ceremony of "A Hundred Years of Iran's Cinematic Ads and Posters", Amrollah Farhadi first thanked Mahmoudreza Bahmanpour, publishing manager of Nazar Publications and asserted that cinema men have promoted film poster design in Iran, the Iranian book news agency reported. After a minute of silence in tribute to the late graphic designer Ali Dourandish, Bahmanpour said "as a publisher our art is manifested in our publications, but my special thanks for the preparation of the book goes to Abbas Kiarostami, Siamak Filizadeh and Ebrahim Haghighi." Calling 'Masoud Mehrabi' as "serene man of Iranian culture", he added, "Mehrabi is one of grand founders of culture who has influenced cinema during his 37 years of prolific work. He started researching in 1975 that resulted in the discovery of noteworthy documents." He continued, "Mehrabi founded 'Film Magazine' about thirty years ago and after three decades it is now one of the most effective periodicals of Iran." The primary part of "A Hundred Years of Iran's Cinematic Ads and Posters" was prepared by him in 1992 as the first research ever made on Iranian graphic art, Bahmanpour continued. Then Masoud Mehrabi made his speech prepared for the unveiling ceremony of the book, saying, "Cinema and the press are byproducts of modernity and surprisingly enough, the first step was taken by a totalitarian named Rousi Khan rather than the libertarian Sahaf-Bashi! On October 14 of the year 1907, the first film advert was produced at the photo laboratory of Rousi Khan (Ivanov) and released in 'Habl-al-matin' - a constitutionalist paper." According to Mehrabi, the book contains over 600 adverts and film posters selected out of 2600 pieces of work. The historical phenomena, film screening procedures, methods of poster design and the role of their creators are visible in these works. The pictures are sorted according to screen dates and not poster production dates. Aydin Aghdashlu's 20 min. interview with Ebrahim Haghighi was also featured during the ceremony where Aghdashlu termed "A Hundred Years of Iran's Cinematic Ads and Posters" as a precious document and appreciated the endeavors of its creator. Then Ebrahim Haghighi, graphist and sketcher, mentioned that throughout his 42 years of graphic work in line with the activities of Iranian cinema, he has witnessed the ups and downs of this form of art. "But what matters," he continued, "is that Iran's cinema is inseparable from graphic art. And they are intermingled in many aspects." Finally he stressed that despite the fact that publishing such books is unprecedented, they can be a great help for the posterity. Graphic designer Mohammad-Ali Heddat, cinema/theater actor Reza Kianian, graphic designer Saed Meshki, and cinema director Bahman Farman-Ara were other invitees that made short speeches during this ceremony. Referring to cinema graphic art, Meshki asserted. "The place of cinematic posters is on streets and not in secluded graphic cycles. Therefore I ask all cinematographers and graphists to try to persuade the municipality of the city to consider special locations for showcasing these posters to the public." The bilingual (Persian-English) "A Hundred Years of Iran's Cinematic Ads and Posters" is compiled by Masoud Mehrabi and released by Nazar Publications.