British filmmaker Miranda Pennell introduces The Host,her personal account of oil, empire and familyThe film begins inside a box of Kodak Ektachrome slides. The box has my name written on it. Inside, or the snow-capped peaks of the Zagros mountains rise up behind a big,glass-fronted house in north Tehran. Looking at this image I remember a pair of pale yellow flip-flops bobbing up and down on the surface of the kidney-shaped swimming pool. My father had jumped in to fish Azar out of the pool because shed fallen in at the deep end, fully dressed, or couldn’t swim. Or so the chronicle went. Azar was the nanny whod looked after me,and was married to Mohammad, the head servant. I don’t mediate I actually witnessed Azar’s rescue, and on reflection,I am not certain that I ever saw the yellow flip-flops floating on the water, either. This may be just one of those stories told within a family that gain solidity with each retelling, or whose imagery lives on in memory long after all of the protagonists and witnesses are gone.
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Source: theguardian.com