Googoosh - Iran's Daughter

Director: Farhad Zamani
Studio: First Run Features
Product Type: DVD

Description

Googoosh, Iran's legendary pop diva, was silenced following the 1979 Islamic revolution, when women singers were labeled "temptresses" and forbidden to perform publicly in the presence of men or to release recordings. For several decades, Googoosh's popularity throughout the Middle East had fueled a frenzy in her fans that surpassed the West's cult of Elvis in its intensity. Iranian-American filmmaker Farhad Zamani provides a thoughtful and highly entertaining examination of the phenomenon of Googoosh; from her beginnings as a child star, to a full-fledged adult career of unprecedented scope, to silence and resurgance. Packed with clips from her films as well as concert footage, this award-winning film also examines her image and cultural significance, and places her in a political and historical context; a look at the status of women in Iran before and after the revolution is a connecting thread. Winner! - Vancouver Iranian Film Festival

Customer Reviews:

From World Pulse Magazine.......2006-07-12

Zamani's film tells the fascinating story of Googoosh, an Iranian legend who, like Marilyn Monroe, has constantly sought the luxury of a private identity. Primed from an early age for the stage and screen, she was later silenced, and in her silence became "the voice of a nation." Googoosh was born in 1951 into a very different Iran than the one we know today. The highly visible singer and actor had a powerful image that was venerated by government officials. They found her chic, fun, and charismatic and courted her a representative of their own interests.

But with the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran began a social, political, and cultural transformation, shifting back to a prohibitve fundamentalist government. Women singers were labled "temptresses" and forbidden to perform publicly or to release recordings.

For Googoosh, whose identity was inseperable from performance, this fate equaled death. Instead of leaving her country, as other entertainers did, she retreated from public life for 20 years, becoming a symbol of censorship and oppression and fueling the frenzy of her fans.

Zamani gradually paints an impressionistic and honoring portrait of Googoosh, using footage from her starlet years and interview material from those who know her.

Fascinating subject, awful film.......2006-07-12

I adore Googoosh and her music. And this has to be one of the worst films I have ever seen. Let there be no doubt that the subject is fasicinating. The film follows Googoosh's life and career as well as tackling the role of women in Iran (before and after the revolution). Too bad the director, Zamani, is a complete amateur. This film features a bunch of interview clips that need to be heavily edited to be interesting and it keeps repeating the same archival footage over and over again.

The repeated footage, along with the use of the triple-take trick are meant to emphasize the director's point. But the only thing they proved to me was that this filmmaker doesn't know what he's doing. There are so many flaws and cheap cinematic techniques used here that I wouldn't even know where to begin to describe them.

This film is an insult to Googoosh and to filmmaking.

I AM NOT HAPPY.......2006-06-23

Dear Mr Zamani

Recently I ordered a copy of this DVD: googoosh the daughter of iran, through amazon.com. I live in Sydney/Australia and we were looking forward to watch this movie. Finally, it arrived and with much eagerness we played it.

I'm certainly not a professional movie maker, but I'm certain that I could have done a better job than what you did with this movie. I seriously don't believe that you should have been given so much credit.

I will send this movie back to you and I demand a full refund. Unfortunately I cannot be compensated for the three hours I spent watching this drible.

The movie is of poor quality, scenes repeating themselves at least three times! Obviously there was something wrong with this copy due to the fact that the scenes kept repeating themselves because of your editing incompetance. The movie lacks any coherant flow from one scene to the other. It would have been nice if you could allow a video clip to run for more than 1 min and let us enjoy one song being sung.

I would appreciate a reply and I will follow this up

Regards
yazdaneh@hotmail.com

An art-film about the greatest Iranian pop-star.......2006-03-20

This TOUR-DE-FORCE documentary about pop-singer Googoosh miraculously and ingeniously takes on Iranian history, religion, gender politics, and mass culture.
For American audiences, this ambitious film serves as a corrective to the hateful and ignorant (or cynical) demonization of Iran for the past 27 years in the US, and provides long-overdue lessons about US imperialism and the 1953 CIA-coup d'etat in Iran.
For Iranian audiences (as a fellow Iranian-American) I offer some advice: "JAM-ESH-CON!" This documentary is an intelligent creative ART FILM---not a Hollywood sentimental bio-pic or a VH1 "Behind the Music" (or God-forbid, a Los Angeles ex-pat satellite TV long-form music-video). If you have never seen the films of Antonioni, Cocteau, or Godard, then have some humility regarding what you do NOT immediately understand, and be open to unforseen sublime possibilities...and you will be rewarded!
While lovingly and sympathetically showing Googoosh's life and talent, the film also metaphorizes her to show the misogynist continuum of the monarchy through the theocracy, with women serving as the field upon which (Western or native) patriarchy stakes its claim. This politically savvy film is a breath of fresh air: it refuses simple-minded nostalgia and is critical of both the Pahlavi-monarchy as well as the Khomeini-theocracy; it's critical of both US imperialism as well as Iranian religious fundamentalism--indeed, this film shows how the former incarnated the latter (how the US overthrow of Mossadeq planted the seeds for the Islamic Republic).
Using a highly-creative and difficult FORM (with inventive editing and repitition of sound and images) as well as a rich analytical and intellectual CONTENT, this film is a unique cinematic experience which will deepen your understanding and compassion for Googoosh, her nation, and beyond.

(She's) Still Iran's Daughter.......2005-12-07

Here is a review I saw in the Asian Reporter. Pretty impressive!

By Polo / Asian Reporter July 2005

I could humbly decline to speak. I should find me a savvy Tehrani to help out - I would probably save myself from sounding dumb. Because this is hard. This is not just a gripping biography about Googoosh, a stage and screen icon doubtless as compelling to modern Iranians as Marilyn Monroe remains for us. This film also chronicles Iran's dizzying drive toward modernity, then the country's tortured tumble into an anachronistic theocracy. Farhad Zamani does all that.

"Googoosh: Iran's Daughter" is a difficult documentary. It takes work. In fact, it takes two hours and 38 minutes. Mr. Zamani's research is impressive. He says he sat through over 30 Googoosh movies, from her early days as a child actor to the heady days just before Shah Reza Pahlavi's fall. He personally interviewed 20 musicians and lyricists, professors and clerics, family and friends.

What emerges is a fascinating portrayal of a woman embodying something more than that uneasy mélange of star power and vulnerability that Western voyeurs witnessed in the arc of Marilyn and Elvis, Marvin or Janis. Googoosh is a proper noun, a verb, and an adjective.
Googoosh, as person and phenom, meant as much to popular Persian culture as the Beatles meant to our generation. She set the standard, not by clever design in the way Madonna smartly packaged her own pop authority, but by the artist's immediate resonance with the aspirations of a rapidly evolving urban Persian society.

She broke so many rules. Maybe most of them. Whether it was Googoosh or her handlers, whether it was she or her act, is hard to say. Orthodox Shi'ia authorities made no distinctions. She was silenced. She makes no appearance in her film. The director, Mr. Zamani, makes it clear who was punished for Googoosh's public persona, for the pop culture that swelled around her act.
According to Mr. Zamani, the true beauty of the woman - whether we're talking about the public icon or cynically used public performer - is that she stayed. She could have run. She could've exiled the way many educated and most urbane Iranians did. She would've sung in front of steadily diminishing houses of homesick émigrés in Houston or L.A. But she stayed. And thus silenced for 21 years, she remains Iran's Daughter.

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