About CHESS OF THE WIND

This rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema has reemerged as one of the most astonishing works of the country’s prerevolutionary New Wave. A hypnotically stylized murder mystery awash in period atmosphere, CHESS OF THE WIND unfolds inside a candlelit mansion, where a web of greed, violence, and betrayal ensnares potential heirs as they vie for control of their matriarch’s estate. Melding the influences of European modernism, gothic horror, and classical Persian art, Mohammad Reza Aslani crafts an exquisitely restrained mood piece that erupts into a subversive final act in which class conventions, gender roles, and time itself are upended with shocking ferocity.”–CRITERION COLLECTION

This summer, Mississippi Records released CHESS OF THE WIND, the soundtrack to Mohammad Reza Aslani’s 1976 film of the same time. A masterpiece of world cinema, Aslani’s CHESS OF THE WIND was banned in Iran and thought lost until a complete print of the film re-emerged in 2014. Restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and released to rapturous reviews in 2020, CHESS OF THE WIND is a genre-breaking queer-class-horror in miniature and one of the most visionary and daring films of pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema.

The film’s soundtrack, by one of Iran’s most revered avant-garde composers, Sheida Gharachedaghi, blends Persian classical instrumentation and atonal dissonance drawn from the composer’s Western conservatory background. For the new Mississippi Records album, both Aslani and Gharachedaghi worked with film scholar Gita Aslani Shahrestani to revisit their score from fifty years ago and recombine its recorded elements into a new sonic work. The result is a cohesive sound collage tracing the history of the Women’s Rights Movement in Iran from 1905 to the present – a wholly new work that Aslani long dreamt of creating.

Band bio: TAYF is a nonbinary/women/queer-led group playing music from the SWANA (Southwest Asia & North Africa) region.