Documentary chronicling a century-old nomadic journey through Persia gets a new score

In 1925, 50,000 members of the Persian Bakhtiari tribe set out on a vital journey. Over the course of several weeks, they travelled eastwards from what was then the arid desertscape of Ankara in Turkey, walking barefoot through the snowy Zagros mountains and using makeshift rafts to cross the fast-flowing river Karun to finally reach the verdant grasslands of modern-day western Iran. 

Alongside the tribespeople and their livestock were film-makers Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack, who documented the perilous trek to produce what would become one of cinema’s earliest silent documentaries, Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life.

A pioneering example of ethnographic filmmaking and a predecessor to Cooper and Schoedsack’s future cinema success with King Kong, Grass is now being remastered and presented with a new score written by Iranian composer Peyman Yazdanian, a century on from its initial release. On 19 September, Yazdanian will be performing his score alongside a screening of the film at Kings Place in central London.  

Read the feature in Hyphen.

[This piece was published on 15/09/25]