Poor on the outside, rich on the inside
Joan Trevor reviews the documentary “Cinema Iran” (Channel 4) and looks at some of Iran’s cinematic output On the surface, Iranian cinema is everything US cinema isn’t, so Mark Cousins began his Cinema Iran programme interviewing movie goers in New York. “Why do you go to the movies?”, he asked. “It’s a fantasy, right?”, they answered. Then Cousins gave the very ordinary scene he was filming — unbeautiful people in everyday clothes walking along a New York street on a wintry day — the Hollywood blockbuster treatment. Filmed it through a letterbox window, slowed it down, blurred it a bit, shot...