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Zurkhaneh-The House of Strength: Music and Martial Arts of Iran. 2010/2014. Directed by Federico Spinetti. In Persian and English with English, Italian, and Persian subtitles. 105 minutes. Colour, DVD. Produced by the University of Alberta in collaboration with Lab 80 film. Presented by folkwaysAlive! University of Alberta in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Available online for rent or purchase (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/zurkhaneh).
Zurkhaneh-The House of Strength is the first full-length documentary of Federico Spinetti (professor at University of Cologne), an experienced researcher of the music of Central Asia (in particular Tajikistan), about which he has made several short ethnographic films. The zurkhaneh is a traditional Iranian gymnasium: a venue where historical "heroic sports" (varzesh-e pahlevani) are practised with live accompaniment consisting of drum and sung poetry with spiritual, moral, and epic subject matter. This film features multiple manifestations of the zurkhaneh in three geographically and culturally divergent spaces: the indigenous context of several Iranian cities; the established diasporic context of the Iranians in Toronto, Canada; and the momentary, detached setting of the world championship for traditional sports and games in Busan, South Korea.
The multi-sited and multi-faceted unfolding of the film, involving a juxtaposition of voices, stories, players, images, clips, and soundscapes, gradually reveals different aspects of the semantic field of zurkhaneh. What does zurkhaneh stand for? Is it a building, a space, a cultural tradition, a sports discipline, a ritual performance? The 1971 French documentary Le zourkhane et l'épopée iranienne characterizes zurkhaneh sessions as "neither spectacle, nor...