Chronicles from Majnun until Layla
Chronicles from Majnun until Layla is a film project structured in three stages: 1.) The Museum of Modern Iranian History (2011–2013), 2.) Layla and Majnun (in preparation), and 3.) The Film (in preparation). Each stage bears its own approach, format, and mode of presentation. The first two stages are conceived as preparation for the third and final stage: the merging moment, which will be in the form of a feature-length, hybrid fiction/documentary film. The film depicts a couple, lovers, visiting a virtual museum of modern Iranian history. The lovers appear both as themselves and as “Layla and Majnun,” characters adapted from a classical Middle Eastern love tale. As they walk the museum, the couple engages in dialogue about their individual and collective stories, memories, dreams, rages, and desires. The lovers’ affairs and conversations interact with the representations of the major historical moments of Iran being documented in the museum. In Stage 1, through the museum’s architectural design and references to an official Iranian narrative taken from a high-school textbook, the various historical periods of Iran get transformed into Kairos (the Now), contradicting Chronos and scientific and analytical historiography.
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