It had been 5 years since the first Lumière brothers’ films were shown at the Grand Cafe in Paris (December 28, 1895) when Muzaffaruddin Shah, during his first trip to Europe on July 17, 1279, in Contraxville, France, got acquainted with the “cinematograph” phenomenon. He immediately prepared its equipment for One of the citizens, Mirza Ibrahim Khan the photographer Bashi (1253-1294 AD), the son of Mirza Ahmad Khan Sani al-Sultana, was entrusted with the responsibility of the photographer Bashi.

The first Iranian film with a Gumon-type camera was taken from the flower festival of Ostend, Belgium on August 23, 1279, and after the end of the trip, Ibrahim Khan was the “cameraman” of the court until the last years of Muzaffaruddin Shah’s reign. Qamezani Sabzeh Maidan shot a film in Muharram in 1280 and organized film screening sessions in the court and noble houses. After the death of Muzaffaruddin Shah, Ibrahim Khan withdrew from the court and abandoned cinema.

The cinema was a monopoly of the court when Ebrahim Sahafbashi Tehrani brought a projector to Tehran and arranged the backyard of his antique shop to show movies. Before Muzaffaruddin Shah, during a trip to London on May 28, 1277, Sahaf Bashi understood the value of cinema, and he expanded his work and opened the first public movie theater in November 1283 on Cheraghgaz Street. However, due to the sanctions of the mullahs and the displeasure of the court, he closed the cinema after a month. He, who soon became known as a constitutionalist, faced difficulties and auctioned his projectors and films, and finally migrated to India.

More than 2 years after the closing of Sahafbashi Hall, Mehdi Ivanov, known as Rousi Khan (1254 – 1346 CE), projector and reel, produced a film from Paris Pate, and from the early months of Muhammad Alisha’s rule, film screening sessions were held in the court and in the house. He arranged for nobles. On 22 Mehr 1286, Rousi Khan turned a yard next to his photography studio into a cinema. Not a month passed that a Caucasian immigrant named Aghayev opened a movie theater in Zargarabad coffee house, located on Cheragh Gaz street, from November 15, 1286. Aghayev and Rousi Khan continued to open other movie theaters in different parts of Tehran.

At the end of the period of minor tyranny, Aghayev closed down his theaters and Rusi Khan kept Faros cinema open for only a few months. But his efforts did not work and he moved to France.

A parrot and a goldfish are among the stars of the first color film in the history of cinema, which was made in 1902/1291. Of course, the most interesting part of this movie is the colorization method.

This film was made by photographer and inventor Edward Raymond Turner in London. The coloring technique used by him, which he registered on March 22, 1899/April 2, 1278, was previously considered a practical failure by film historians. Successive frames were captured on film by passing through red, blue, and green filters, and then a set of three images could be projected onto the screen by passing through the same filters to recreate the final color image. This process, which required a special and custom camera and projector, inspired the color photography technique invented by Turner’s colleague, Frederick Eugene Ives. (It is interesting that in scientific photography, especially in astronomical photography, and even in the most advanced telescopes in the world, a similar method is used to record color images).
Michael Harvey, a curator at the Bradford Museum, has worked with film archive specialists to repair and restore the film using the same technique. Since the film itself is black and white, they had to determine which filter each frame should pass through to reproduce the colors. The film was then converted to 35 mm format by photographing each frame with an optical printer.
The restoration proved the effectiveness of Turner’s technique, revealing images of a Moscow, three children, and a goldfish in vivid color. One of the officials of the film department of the museum allowed the public to watch this film for the first time after more than a century on September 13/23.