An unconscious stranger washes up on shore in a mysterious Iranian film showing in Berkeley Saturday

Four years ago this month, a long forgotten pre-revolutionary Iranian drama entitled Chess of the Wind screened at Pacific Film Archive. I gave the film a rave review at the time; two years later it was released by The Criterion Collection as part of Martin Scorsese’s ongoing World Cinema Project.

Now comes Gharibeh Va Meh (The Stranger and the Fog), a very different but equally astonishing Iranian feature from the mid-’70s (IMDb lists a 1976 release date, but the film itself bears a 1974 copyright). If there’s any justice in the home video world, there’ll be a place reserved for The Stranger and the Fog on the next World Cinema Project Blu-ray set — but for now, your only opportunity to see it will be at PFA at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 23.

Written and directed by Bahram Beyzaie, the film takes place in a fishing village on the misty beaches of the Caspian Sea, where an unconscious stranger named Ayat (Khosrow Shojazadeh) has washed ashore. Seemingly stricken with amnesia, it’s impossible for his provenance to be established: Is he a fisherman lost at sea, or the advance element of an enemy lurking over the horizon? The villagers don’t know, and the stranger is incapable of telling. 

Though Ayat tries to pull his weight by helping with the harvest, suspicions about his intentions continue to mount, and the village elders present him with an ultimatum: Either leave, or wed a local woman and put down permanent roots. He opts for the latter and proposes to widow Rana (Parvaneh Massoumi), whose fisherman husband was lost at sea over a year ago. Her brothers-in-law don’t approve of the match, but the fiercely independent Rana agrees to tie the knot with Ayat. 

The marriage takes place and a child is born, but Ayat and Rana’s domestic tranquility is interrupted by the arrival of five ominous strangers. The quintet demand Ayat return with them to the place whence, presumably, he came — and they aren’t inclined to take no for an answer.

The Stranger and the Fog is cut from the same cinematic cloth as the films of Sergei Parajanov, the renowned (though reviled at home) director whose magical realist depictions of life in Georgia and Armenia stand in sharp and colorful contrast to the socialist realism of most mid-20th century Soviet cinema. In like fashion, Beyzaie’s work was frowned upon by the post-revolutionary Iranian government; he emigrated to the United States in 2010 and has taught at Stanford University ever since. I’m eager to see more of his work.

Pansexual artist and musician Genesis P-orridge gets spotlight once again in new documentary

I thought 2012’s The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye had provided the last cinematic word about pansexual artist and musician Genesis P-orridge, but I was mistaken. Opening on Thursday, Nov. 21, at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater, director David Charles Rodrigues’ S/he Is Still Her/e tells the story of P-orridge’s life from the time they were born in Hull, England in 1950 to their death in 2020. 

For those unfamiliar with P-orridge, s/he was a visual and performance artist who came to prominence in the 1970s via provocative art exhibits, “industrial” music, and body modification projects. Once dubbed a “wrecker of civilization” by a British parliamentarian, P-orridge pushed every project to the limits — and as far beyond as possible.