The Remix, Archive, and Memory in Fifi Howls from Happiness

Abstract

Inspired by archival remix in diaspora cultural productions that deal with cultural memory, this featurette demonstrates the potential of filmic remix as a technology of remembrance for challenging normative archives and historiographies. The featurette brings to the fore various remixed elements at work in a poetic documentary of Iranian cinema, Fifi Howls from Happiness (2014) directed by Mitra Farahani. With a background in visual arts, the France-based director positions her film as an act of writing the neglected visual artist Bahman Mohasses into a much needed historiography and moving image archive of Iranian contemporary art. This featurette envisions the filmic montage in Fifi Howls from Happiness as a technology of remembrance that recreates quasi-abstraction and queer compositions that were central to Mohasses’ oeuvre with many pieces missing and lost.