In Gulistan, Atashi repeatedly recites a passage from Sa’di’s poem of that name (The Rose Garden, 1258), which is a classic work of Iranian literature. In the text, Sa’di introduces his writing as a method for capturing fleeting beauty and rendering it eternal within the pages of a book. His Gulistan will be a garden “whose vernal bliss the passage of time cannot turn to the woes of winter.” However, Atashi’s Gulistan is quite different. In a series of vignettes, mostly shot in New York, Atashi attempts to recall and recite Sa’di’s poem while frequently being interrupted. One early scene shows her on a busy street, where her thoughts are jolted by loud, distracting surroundings. Later, we hear her camera become damaged as it is infiltrated by rainwater. From this unplanned accident onwards, we hear nothing of their recitations, with only ambient noise now reaching our ears. Anything but eternal and unchanging,
Atashi’s Gulistan is an instead monument to contingency, permeability, and entropy, which eventually slides into noise. While Sa’di’s Gulistan is a classic work of world literature, filled with especially deep significance for people from Iran, throughout her short film Atashi delivers this text in an offhand, almost careless manner, as if its meaning had been emptied out. At time,s Atashi struggles to remember the words, so that their work seems to become a mere exercise in rote learning. However, while the sound of Sa’di disappears and the meaning of his words seems lost and contradicted, Atashi’s Gulistan nonetheless finds its own alternative mode of communication through the artist’s performing body. Their body language, their expression of alienation, and their sheer corporeal presence before the camera are all recorded for longevity, tracing the affect of a particular moment, which may have passed, but still leaves its mark. by David Hodge

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