Iranian-Australian duo ZÖJ breathes new life into a century-old silent film epic at a one-night-only Melbourne screening.
A 100-year-old silent film is coming to Melbourne’s Capitol Theatre this May, complete with a live score performed on ancient instruments.
Presented by the Castlemaine Documentary Festival in partnership with RMIT University, Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life gets a rare big-screen outing at the Capitol Theatre this May, and it’s bringing a live score with it. Iranian-Australian duo ZÖJ will perform an original score composed specifically for the occasion, turning what’s already a landmark of silent cinema into something genuinely unlike anything else on Melbourne’s events calendar right now.
Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life with live score by ZÖJ – Melbourne
- When: Friday, 1 May, 7:30pm
- Where: Capitol Theatre, Melbourne
- Tickets here
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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Released in 1925, Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life documents the seasonal migration of the Bakhtiari people across the mountains of western Iran, a journey undertaken in search of pasture for their animals involving river crossings, snow-covered peaks and vast plains. Directed by Merian C.
Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the duo who would later go on to make King Kong, the film also featured journalist Marguerite Harrison, a former spy whose involvement has long added another layer of intrigue to the whole story.
Over 48 days, the filmmakers travelled alongside around 50,000 people and hundreds of thousands of animals through some of the most punishing terrain imaginable. More than a century on, the scale and immediacy of what they captured still astonishes.
ZÖJ brings together kamancheh virtuoso and vocalist Gelareh Pour with percussionist Brian O’Dwyer, blending Persian musical traditions with contemporary experimental sound.
Their score for Grass isn’t simply background accompaniment. It’s built to mirror the rhythm of the migration itself: footsteps across mountain passes, the rush of rivers, the movement of vast numbers of people and animals through rugged country.
Pour’s kamancheh and voice bring Persian musical heritage into direct conversation with the film’s landscape, while O’Dwyer’s percussion drives the whole thing forward with a visceral, physical energy. Together, they create a dialogue between sound and image that adds genuine new dimension to one of cinema’s earliest and most ambitious ethnographic documentaries.
Castlemaine Documentary Festival returns for its 2026 edition from 26 to 28 June at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine.
Running under the theme Love: the antidote, the festival brings together Australian and international documentaries that move between the personal and the political, the intimate and the collective.
Among the titles already announced are The Golden Spurtle, a portrait of a fiercely contested porridge-making championship in the Scottish Highlands, and Coexistence, My Ass!, which follows an Israeli peace activist turned stand-up comedian using satire to confront the realities of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Music, parties and Q&As round out what’s shaping up to be a seriously good long weekend of nonfiction cinema in regional Victoria. Full program coming soon.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Castlemaine Documentary Festival.
