Screening “GRASS: A Nation’s Battle for Life” at SOAS

FRIDAY 5 DECEMBER 2008 @18.15hrs FOR 18.30 START
IN THE KHALILI LECTURE THEATRE

Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life
Filmmakers: Merion Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack.
B/W silent 62 mins. 1924

The main subject of this classic film, made in 1924, is the spring migration of the Bakhtiari nomads of Southwest Iran, from the Khuzestan plains near the Gulf to summer quarters high in the Zagros Mountains near Isfahan. The makers (who were later to make the original version of King Kong and a variety of John Ford Westerns) were on their way to India and stumbled on the Bakhtiari migration quite by chance while stuck in Khuzestan because of the uneasy political situation in southern Iran. The first quarter of the film shows scenes from the journey across southern Turkey and Jordan, including some heavy-handed humour with the Camel Corps, before finally reaching ‘The Forgotten People,’ as the Bakhtiari are ineptly named. The rest of the film shows the most spectacular movements of the 45-day spring migration of the Baba Ahmadi sub-tribe, vividly depicting the hardships the nomads undergo, especially in the crossing on the River and the climb up and over the snow-covered Zardeh Kuh (15,000 ft) – though in fact conditions that year were better than usual. The spring migration, into which Cooper and crew wandered blithely unaware, was the moment of taking breath before an inevitable explosion in the complex political situation among the tribal chiefs and other elements in the area. The paramount chief (Ilkhani), who was in Khuzestan only for special reasons to do with his conflict with Reza Khan, gave Cooper permission and protection in part to show Reza Khan how effectively the mountains were actually controlled by the Bakhtiari chiefs, and to show the latter’s goodwill to Reza Khan- hence the document with which the film ends. Haida, the Baba Ahmadi sub-chief who stars in the film, was a servant of the paramount chief and very well-off: the presence of the protected film crew also served to protect Haidar from his neighbours’ hostility during the migration. The explosion came a few days after Cooper left the mountains. Many sub-tribes revolted against the chiefs, there was fighting among the chiefs, and some rebelled against the Government. The paramount chief and his deputy had resigned by September, and Reza Khan’s authority was established.

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