In The House is Black, Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad presents the lives of leper colony inhabitants with empathy and grace. 

“On this screen will appear an image of ugliness, a vision of pain no caring human being should ignore.” 

The image in question is that of a woman standing before a mirror, staring straight at her reflection. Her face is a worm-riddled apple. And yet the camera zooms in closer. Director Forough Farrokhzad refuses to allow her audience to look away until they can see their shared humanity in the leper’s eyes. 

Thus begins The House is Black (1963), an empathetic, often harrowing glimpse into the world of a leper colony, and celebrated Iranian poet Farrokhzad’s first film. Footage of the colony’s inhabitants is juxtaposed with Farrokhazad’s narration, as she reads from the Koran, the Old Testament, and her own poetry. A second narrator, present for barely five minutes, gives a cold clinical lecture on the disease that plagues our subjects. 

Forough Farrokhzad’s extraordinary talent as both a poet and filmmaker are on full display in this twenty-minute opus, which moved the Sha himself to tears. The documentary hints at a fascinating future career in film. Alas, these hints are fated to be no more than eternal inklings of what might have become. Killed in a car accident at the age of 32, this short film remains Farrokhzad’s only major cinematic work.   

As a female poet who wrote openly of desire, Farrokhzad courted controversy throughout her literary career. Likewise, The House is Black eschews all comforting easy explanations. Deeply critical and provocative, one of the earliest scenes features children, already developing leprosy’s signature deformities, reciting a prayer of gratitude. Over the footage, Farrokhzad questions, “Who is this in hell, praising you, O Lord?” It’s a brutal query that audiences will ask again and again over the course of this brilliant, yet difficult to watch, film. 

As Farrokhzad leads us into a world that feels intuitively inhuman, she forces us to confront the daily joys and banality of their, of our, daily lives. We watch a woman apply mascara to the inside of her eyelid, and a mother brushing her daughter’s long thick hair. It’s shocking to see children, their faces marred with tell-tale pox, at school desks and playing sports. Even more shocking is footage of a traditional Iranian wedding ceremony. In the midst of all the dancing and drumming, we see the guests are missing limbs and that the faces of both bride and groom seem more like those of gargoyles than those of men and women.  

How can there be weddings, the audience asks? How can there be children and families in a place like this? 

The answer lies at the heart of the question. We are not watching goblins and gargoyles; we are watching flesh and blood human beings like ourselves. 

The House is Black  is available on DVD through Facets on July 30. You can buy your copy here. 

Author:  Ora Damelin is a freshman film student at Columbia College Chicago. She loves to share her opinions on film and is delighted-and slightly befuddled-that those opinions are now published online.