Second trailer for the documentary Gozaran: Time Passing.
Western conceptions of freedom, individuality, experimentation and self-expression are continually tested as the musicians (most of them women) under Mashayekhi’s direction work through a challenging repertory which includes the intensely emotional song cycles of Mahler, the chance-based provocations of John Cage and the orthodox fervour of Arvo Pärt. The efforts of the musicians to not only take on this challenging repertoire but to even play a western instrument at all in so radically repressive an environment is at the centre of this film; to see Mahler emerging from a woman in a headscarf is briefly dissonant but ultimately transcendent. Gozaran makes--with a succession of beautifully chosen and visually striking vignettes, captured with Melle van Essen’s deeply saturated digital images--a real case for the universality of the Western tradition, making the briefness of Mashayekhi’s sojourn one more victim of the endlessly wasteful “clash of civilizations.”