Marjan

Shahla Riahi, a stage and screen actress who was also a known singer, became Iran's first female feature director with Marjan, a Persian-language Iranian drama from 1956. It was also the first feature in the history of Iranian cinema that a woman both directed and produced. Arya Film, the studio Riahi founded, made it as its first production, shooting in black and white on 35mm. Today it is counted among the rare, largely lost works of Iranian cinema, with only part of it surviving.

The story unfolds among a band of gypsies who settle near a village. Riahi herself plays Marjan, a young Roma woman, whose romance with Hamid, the village's young schoolteacher (Mohammad Ali Jafari), is set against the odds. Taghi Zohouri, Ahmad Qadakchian, Rahim Roshanian and Tajolmolouk Ahmadi also appear. The film launched Jafari's professional screen career, and Ahmadi was invited into dubbing work while making it.

The screenplay was the first writing credit of Manoochehr Keymaram, and Ahmad Shirazi was the cinematographer. Shooting began in mid-summer 1955 and lasted seven months, at a cost of roughly one million rials. Two reels have been preserved by a private collector, and the national film archive holds an incomplete print of about 45 minutes.