Memories from Tehran are restaged in the urban landscape of a peculiar-looking Los Angeles.
It is springtime in Los Angeles, where people are recalling memories of Tehran. They no longer speak English, but a Persian idiom. Neon lights fill the streets with psychedelic colours. Reality grows vague, and a halucinatory dream begins. Are we in Los Angeles or Teheran?
Iranian director Arash Nassiri interviewed 13 Iranians who have immigrated to Europe and North America, who lived in Teheran in the 1970s. The Iranian captal was then strongly influenced by Western culture: Californian architects and urban planners were being commissioned to develop the city. Sociologists describe the phenomenon as Teheran-Los Angeles. This fantasy of Western modernity ended abruptly after the revolution, and now lives only in the memories of people who lived in Tehran during this era.
Nassiri has the memories of that city resound one last time in the streets of Los Angeles, before they disappear. He takes us on a trip along the architectural movements that created the two cities. As we fly over the boulevards of Los Angeles, migrants tell their collective story of the Iranian captial.
FR, 2017, 21’, Persian spoken, English subtitles, starts every 30’.
