The Treasure Cave

Bahman Kiarostami, director Abbas’son, investigates an artistic subject in order to explain Iran’s complex cultural reality. The film narrates the vicissitudes of the Teheran Contemporary Art Museum, home of the most vast and prized collection of modern and contemporary art masterpieces outside Western confines, collected by ex-empress Farah Diba and relegated to the museum’s basement after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Entering the “treasure chamber”, to which only guardian and conservator Firouz Shahabazi has the keys, Kiarostami guides us through the discovery of these works, illustrating on the one hand the museum’s recent shows, on the other the dadaesque shows organized by students. Among those interviewed are ex-director Alireza Sami Azar, who in 2005 showed a core group of nearly 200 works from the collection, and Mahmoud Shalooi, current director of the museum, who organized the second show in the summer of 2010.