In Maryam Tafakory’s ‘chaste/unchaste’, excerpts from 32 Iranian films, spanning three decades, are rhythmically marshalled in a virtuosic ‘comparative’ sequence lasting under four minutes. This breathtaking audiovisual essay moves briskly from quadrilogical screen arrangements, separated (or joined) by a quantifying, ruler-like grid, or guidelines, through diptychs, finally arriving at single screen compositions featuring (more qualitative?) superimposition, coupled with varied forms of internal division. Screen mirroring, switching and (Venn-like!) colorised-overlapping visual techniques, meet swirling, echoing audio, both elements working constantly — to feminist ends — to defamiliarize, decenter, and unmoor our gaze and audition from their at-times hierarchical fixities. This montage purposefully complicates supposedly simple questions like: ‘is this me?’; and: are the components or terms of the depicted ‘chaste/unchaste’ binary really so different?  

For me, this very original audiovisual work needed no particular supplement. But the highly compelling and scholarly creator’s statement that Tafakory has provided is nonetheless most welcome. It adds richly useful contextualisation with regard to feminist theory, to Iranian culture and history, as well as to Tafakory’s biography and other video essay and artistic works. It also helps ‘chaste/unchaste’ make an even more explicit - at least, more verbal - connection to areas of growing importance in feminist screen media studies, such as art design, costume and prop studies. Working with such a large corpus of films, set out for us onscreen so swiftly, contiguously, and powerfully, helps to make this video a very significant and eloquent artefact indeed, in both scholarly and political terms.