Arash Nassiri on memories of Tehran (Souvenirs)

›I had a database of audio interviews from people who told me souvenirs from Tehran in the 1970’s which I recorded through skype. These audio tapes where then edited and played through earphones to the actors during the filming. They would hear it and then repeat what they heard in the earphones, using their own memory. In the process, they also changed the pronunciation of words which I wanted to leave untouched. I remember describing this to one Iranian who I interviewed and he said “it’s stupid because you lose everything that makes the language beautiful: the rhythm and the melody”. It’s true. But I wanted to have two things at play simultaneously when you watch the images, the landscape and the actors, the real LA and all the memories played on top, like a double vision. There were also a lot of failed takes with mispronunciations, stuttering or just the wording completely distorted.‹ Arash Nassiri

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