i?
In his 2004 film, i? of 4.17 minutes, Shahram Entekhabi (Iran 1957) revisits for contemporary culture the concept of Samuel Becketts'only film, called FILM, starring Buster Keaton (1965). In the typical and, by 1965 historical fashion of early cinema that had no dialogue, lots of body movement, and visual explorations of the shock encounter with the city that characterized modernity and was fully worked into those Westerns that were set in the contrastive urban environment, Keaton, 40 years beyond his greatest successes jumps and scuttles around in New York City, never showing his face to passers-by or public. In the final shot, and in what might be an ironic concession to the viewer hungry for realistic solutions, it turns out that face is hideously distorted.

 The primary element of Beckett's concept is the unlikely combination of going around in the public space of the city while never revealing the face. Entekhabi takes the conceptual nature of FILM up but omits such a reassuring ending - reassuring because it projects the refusal of the face-to-face on the figure who hides. Entekhabi's lone figure is never seen because the environment doesn't care to see him. For today, it is of crucial importance to reflect on the relationship between the individual subject whose life the constitution demands we respect, and the larger communities whose members the Western world denies that individuality. For, as i? in its intertextual relationship to FILM seeks to explore, it is not productive to remain obsessed with the individual face as long as a true face-to-face cannot occur.

The mechanics of a conceptual exploration, abolishing the heroizing individualism that subtends Hollywood stardom along with elite notions of artistic genius, offer an opportunity to research identity without sentimentalizing that concept, reclaiming it from abuse in identity politics and its backlash. In i?, ten very short sequences position the Migrant in different urban spaces that hint at his everyday life, from a shave in his own home to the market, the coffee house, and returning to the apartment building he lives in.  A full day, a full life, and no face-to-face.

i? became the new starting point of a series of short films, in which the inscription of historical continuity crossed with geographical failed encounters is shaped further. In these films, the everyday life of the migrant is further stylized and reduced to single acts: traveling, looking for work, intervening in public space, offering cake on his birthday, and running away from suspicious urbanites who finally see him, and think he's up to no good.

Mieke bal
Professor of Theory of Literature, University Amsterdam