First released in 1925, Grass is a pioneering ethnographic silent film by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (creators of King Kong). The film documents the seasonal migration of the Bakhtiari people of Iran, who each year crossed treacherous mountains and rivers with tens of thousands of livestock. Nearly a century on, the images remain astonishing: vast caravans stretching across snow-bound peaks, families forging impossible rivers, the sheer scale of human resilience captured in raw black and white.

With ZÖJ’s live score, Grass becomes an alive artifact of history. It becomes an event, an urgent, breathing encounter where cinema and sound converge. To witness Grass with ZÖJ’s live score is to step into a liminal space: between archive and immediacy, between history and the now.

Gelareh’s haunting kamancheh and voice summon the landscapes of the film, threading Iranian heritage directly into the images of the Bakhtiari. Brian’s fractured, elemental rhythms push and pull against the screen’s vastness, underscoring both the human struggle and the grandeur of the natural world.

The result is not nostalgia but transformation. Grass ceases to be a relic of 1925 and becomes a living, breathing conversation.

Stumfilmkonserten arrangeres i samarbeid med Tromsø World.

Klokkeslett TBA.

ZÖJ

Since 2016, ZÖJ, Gelareh Pour (kamancheh, voice) and Brian O’Dwyer (drums, percussion), have crafted a sonic language that inhabits the space between Persian tradition, experimental sound, and raw improvisation.

Their work resists easy categorisation. At once fragile and forceful, their music lingers in silence as much as in sound, carrying echoes of ancestry, migration, and contemporary experience.

Honoured for their uncompromising practice (Fil O Fenjoon hailed as the Australian Wettest 100’s #1 album; winners of the APRA AMCOS Excellence in Experimental Practice Award), ZÖJ have built a reputation for immersive performances that are as much about presence as they are about sound and music.

«Dance now, for tomorrow we go.»

GRASS: A NATION'S BATTLE FOR LIFE
GRASS: A NATION'S BATTLE FOR LIFE
USA 1925
Regi: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Medv: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, Marguerite Harrison, Haidar Khan
Spilletid: 64 min
Språk: Engelsk tekst
Aldersgrense: Tillatt for alle

Trivia
Filmen ble i 1997 valgt ut for å bli bevart av National Film Preservation Board.