Poet, painter, and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad (1934-1967) was born in Mazandaran, north of Tehran, and is one of Iran’s preeminent mid-20th-century writers. Her strong, feminine voice was met with much negative attention and open disapproval, both during her lifetime and in the posthumous reception of her work. Following the 1979 revolution that overthrew Iran’s secular monarchy, Farrokhzad’s work was banned. Her untimely death in a car crash at the age of 32 was seen as a national tragedy and made the front pages of Tehran’s newspapers. She is seen as a symbol of artistic, personal, and sexual freedom because of her unprecedented work in articulating the emotional and physical intimacies of women. The House is Black (1963), her only film, is one of her most internationally acclaimed works.
