The Lost Cinema is a film essay on the New Wave, a film movement which blossomed in the 70s as a protest against a local film industry dominated by shallow, socially uninformed domestic films and excessive exhibition of Hollywood and European imports. Despite the movement’s contribution to the political awareness of the middle class, the New-Wave films, along with all other pre-revolutionary titles, were banned due to their non-conformity to the severely restrictive censorship codes imposed by the government after the 1979 Revolution. The ban has effectively shelved half a century of film heritage.
Above all, the Nagal relied on his imagination a great deal, to improvise according to the audience’s feedback and add to the original tales that he was reciting. He would also acquire inspiration from the images and pictures fixed on the walls – pictures of religious leaders, sport heroes, epic characters – and appropriate them into his narrative. The dominant themes in Nagali were epics depicted from Shah name [2] or the story of Alexander’s quest for the elixir of life.
