Esmail Koushan (1917-1981) pioneered the Iranian movie industry on the heels of the Allied victory in WWII. A Ph.D in economics and a film buff since his youth, Dr. Koushan produced, directed, and/or scripted ninety films between 1948-1971—one every season—in a genre that came to be labeled FilmFarsi. The term was coined in 1953 by the film critic Houshang Kavousi to disparage the widely popular melodramatic, clichéd, absurd, and commercial movies with obligatory song and dance routines and little aesthetic or production value. Koushan did not heed such criticisms. From the first Iranian talkie in 1948, The Storm of Life, which he produced, scripted, and edited, Koushan stuck to his sole objective instead, which was to entertain the lower classes. His productions ranged widely in style and subject from theatrical love stories to historical and crime drama to comedy and musicals; he even tried science fiction. What is left unsaid about them is that while surreal, they also highlighted real fault lines and moral dilemmas afflicting Iranian society.

Koushan was born to a merchant family in Tehran. He graduated in law but when the government sent him to Germany to pursue a doctoral degree, switched to economics. As funding dried up during WWII, he took a job at Radio Berlin broadcasting war news and Nazi propaganda into Iran and was featured in a newspaper shaking hands with Goebbels at a press event. Handsome and charismatic, he won bit parts in feature films, befriended stars and the technical crew, and charmed his way into learning every aspect of film production hands on. When the RAF started bombing Berlin in 1940, he escaped to Vienna where he completed his doctoral program and also honed his cinematic skills. Fearing arrest by the British as the war ended, he fled to Istanbul where he persuaded two Iranian businessmen to invest in his untested vision and dubbed foreign movies into Persian, one of the many “firsts” in his ambitious career.

He arrived in Tehran in 1946 hauling the dubbed reels, made money, recruited investors, and with every element of film production assembled from scratch, built Mitra Film. His early movies bombed. The first of his future box office wins was Sharmsār (Ashamed) in 1950, starring the singer Delkash, which he produced at his new venture, and in time sprawling, Pars Studio. Meanwhile, he also engaged in filmmakers’ unions and achieved other milestones, including the first Iranian black and white CinemaScope, Accusation, and in 1958, the first color CinemaScope, The Runaway Bride.

The colorful life of Dr. Esmail Koushan, the father of Iranian cinema, is fodder for a blockbuster cult movie.