Gotham City Soul

It's black history month, six days in, and not a morsel from Gotham City Soul. Now that I'll be writing a blog for my magazine's Web site, I'm more inclined to veer toward other definitions of soul here. So I'm leaving black history and culture and New York City and American soul for parts varied, strange, and sometimes unknown (at least by me) to examine the spirit of things, go to places that may not be pretty, or especially pleasant all of the time, but will surely move you. It is my hope that you will be moved to movement.

A month or so ago I came upon a mini Iranian film festival on public television. There were two short films by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, The School That Was Blown Away (1996), and Images from the Qajar Dynasty (1992). But there was also a film that was something beautiful and terrible all at once, The House is Black ( Khaneh siah ast in Farsi) created in 1962 by a woman I had not known of until now: a renowned Persian poet named Forough Farrokhzad. Essentially, The House is Black is a documentary of a leper colony, an awful thing given beauty and humanity by Farrokhzad. In 1962 there were two drugs, Promin and Dapsone, used with limited and painful success to ease the disease, but a true treatment wasn’t developed until the 1970s. It is clear that even the earlier treatments did not make their way to this desolate colony in Iran. Still, with her unflinching shots of these afflicted people as they go about their daily lives, breathtaking is the scene of a woman applying eyeliner, and a...