Still Life, Sohrab Shahid Saless′ second film, chronicles the forced retirement of a poor old man in a remote part of northern Iran who works as a railroad track guard and switchman. The story is told with a more sophisticated sense of rhythm than the director′s first film, and a more stubborn attentiveness to recording moments in real time long takes. The ritual of the old man rolling cigarettes and smoking, the old woman preparing and serving tea, and especially her famous needle-threading scene were extremely hypnotic and intense. The gorgeous shots of deserted landscapes, desolate tracks, and the impoverished house of the old couple were unprecedented in Iranian cinema. For the old man, losing his job means losing his place as well as losing the whole routine and meaning of his life. As Shahid Saless said about the old man, the film shows how he never lived. His near non-existence and subsequent absence (removal) doesn′t alter the world around him in the least. With this film Shahid Saless established himself as a pioneer of Iran′s modern cinema who played the key role in establishing minimalism, as well as a founder of poet realism, and a master of the Iranian New Wave, a movement that flourished in the sixties and continued through the seventies, on until forever. (Amir Naderi)