Film Screening:

Gabbeh
(Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996, 76 min, Iran, Persian with English subtitles, Color, DVD)

Presented in conjunction with the Nasher Museum exhibition,
Doris Duke's Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape and Islamic Art

A brilliantly colorful, profoundly romantic ode to beauty, nature, love and art, Gabbeh tells a timeless fable in a radically new way. Mohsen Makhmalbaf originally traveled to the remote steppes of southeastern Iran to document the lives of an almost extinct tribe of nomads. For centuries, these wandering families created special carpets - "gabbeh" - that served both as artistic expression and autobiographical record of the lives of the weavers.

Makhmalbaf's intended documentary evolved into a fictional love story which uses a gabbeh as a magic story-telling device, weaving past and present, fantasy and reality. It is as simple and traditional as a fairy tale about love, yet at the same time it is multi-layered and modernist.

The film was directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, one of Iran's most popular and controversial directors. Makhmalbaf says, "To me, Gabbeh is a return to life and its colors. I was searching for life when I made Gabbeh. I wanted to capture the poetry of everyday life."

-- Gabbeh was just the second Iranian film ever distributed widely in the U.S. (Jafar Panahi's The White Ballon was the first).

-- Winner for Best Film at the 2012 London Film Festival!

Cost: Free and Open to the Public

Sponsors: The Nasher Museum of Art and the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI)