Our Cultural Heritage (1972)

Overview

Aslani takes us on a mesmerizing journey through Iran’s archaeological sites of Chogha Zanbil, Kerman, Damghan, Yazd, and Kerman, narrating the tale of the Sufi mystic Daghoughi through a 13th-century poem by Rumi. The Pahlavi Ministry of Culture, expecting a far more conventional documentary, kept the film from being shown. It was only in 2024, when Aslani set out to digitize the film, that he discovered two reels had been lost. MoMA presents the world-premiere of Aslani’s re-edited version, which seeks to recapture the meditative flow of his original work despite its missing sequences.