How deeply can the passion for cinema, cinephilia, impact a person and their destiny?
This is illustrated in Celluloid Underground, a deeply personal documentary flavoured with abundant film snippets from Ehsan Khoshbakht who lectured last summer in Sodankylä on architecture and film.
Khoshbakht shares his own experience of exile in London and tells the story of his friend Ahmad Jorghanian, whose passionate archiving of film copies led to his imprisonment for four years and torture in Iran.
In the painful but treasured memories of his birthland, Khoshbakht founded a film club in Tehran at only 17. When he screened the classic film The Cow (1969) by the father of modern Iranian cinema Dariush Mehrjui who was murdered in 2023, he got in trouble with the Islamic revolution.
The emigration caused by the persecution has, on the other hand, brought Khoshbakht blessings in the West, such as a place among the quartet of artistic directors of the prestigious Italian festival Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna.
The consequences of cinephilia, defying authority and becoming dangerous from the authorities’ perspective are sadly evident in Jorghanian’s fate. Known as the “Iranian Henry Langlois,” he archived over 4,000 films and 1,000 still images, by hiding these forbidden reels in his suburban hideout. Ahmad, a true believer in cinema, values the copies more than himself!
Timo Malmi