This pair of videos is composed of short clips carefully selected from dozens of Iranian films produced mainly in the two decades preceding the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The films belong to a popular genre of cabaret cinema that captures in black-and-white the teeming nightlife of southern Tehran while relying upon universal filmic story lines and characters, such as the innocent girl from the country who comes to the big city to become a dancer. Projected on opposing walls, on one of which hangs a canvas painted to resemble a theatrical curtain, the videos re-create a night club setting in which the viewer, seated in the middle, becomes part of the cabaret.

Trained in Vienna at the Academy of Decorative Arts, Farideh Lashai was a multidimensional artist who worked in painting, sculpture, and video, some of which incorporate her own paintings and animation. She was also a published poet and novelist, and is known for translating Bertolt Brecht’s work into Persian. Indeed, literary themes and storytelling are an integral part of her last works, including this one.