1951 Tehran, Iran

Fery Nassab
1951
Tehran, Iran
Interviewed on September 15, 2019
By Andrea de Oliveira

I don’t remember the title of the first movie I watched, or any of the details really. I do remember that my first visit to the theater confused me. There were people on the wall speaking loudly. But they were flat, not like real people. Because there was no TV at the time, I had never experienced anything like it. My parents were with me. They went to the cinema often, so they were laughing, crying, and clapping. Everything was normal for them. 

I didn’t understand the subject of the film. It was an adult subject, and I was under ten years old. It was a foreign movie, not a Persian movie, so even culturally I couldn’t understand. Theaters in Tehran only screened foreign adult movies. Persian movies came later. Only Western movies that didn’t make sense. I never saw cowboy hats, guns, or horses in my country. I didn’t understand romantic movies either. I was not grown up enough to understand those things. There were no cartoons to entertain me. The audience was laughing, but I didn’t understand. People in your class will say, “Was your grandma a weird geek?” You say, “No, she was a delicate kid. She didn’t understand what movies were. She didn’t want to go into a dark theater with loud noises.”

I remember one thing that I liked. They were selling food. During intermission, men walked around with trays around their necks selling pistachios, not popcorn, in little bags. Pistachios and mortadella sandwiches. At that age, I think every kid in Iran went to the movies for the food. For that reason alone, I liked going to the cinema. I didn’t enjoy the movies because they didn’t make sense to me. But I liked going for the food.

 Later on, I loved Charlie Chaplin. He was my favorite because he acted so beautifully that you could understand everything without any words. He was talented. That’s real art. When I got engaged to Babajoony, we went to see romantic Persian movies. We were from different cities and got engaged without dating when I was in 11th grade. I stayed in Tehran to finish high school. During that year, we went to the movies often. I usually wasn’t interested. Romantic movies are mostly He Said, She Said. I can’t enjoy a movie without seeing the art behind it. You can see the art in all of Charlie Chaplin’s films. I could watch him all day.

All of the theaters screened advertisements for Persian goods, like soap. Somebody would wash her hands and the other people would tell her how good she smelled. Back then, advertisements were more like stories. Now it’s different — oh, I have to tell you this. I remember one advertisement from the first years of TV in Iran. A husband came home and his wife lamented her boredom, asking to go on vacation. The husband purchased a TV and told her that he brought the vacation home. They started watching and they were happy.

My grandma never went to the theater. She was a religious woman who always covered her hair with a scarf. I was around 12 or 13 when TV came to Iran. My dad bought one. When my grandma saw the TV for the first time, she yelled, “Oh my god, I need my scarf!” My dad asked, “Why? There’s nobody here besides you and me.” She responded, “No, no, no there’s a man that I don’t know. I need to cover myself!” My dad tried to explain that the man couldn’t see her, but she was incredulous: “Then how come I see him? He must see me too.”