What Does Important Mean?

"What Does Important Mean?" is a 27-minute documentary that explores and reintroduces a lesser-known photographic archive by Habib Farshbaf, a rural schoolteacher who documented life in villages of Azerbaijan province in Iran during the 1960s.

Through a close examination of these photographs and the context in which they were created, the film reflects on the relationship between education, image-making, and everyday life in that period. Rather than treating the photographs solely as historical documents, the documentary considers them as outcomes of a particular way of seeing shaped by teaching, observation, and lived experience.

"What Does Important Mean?" approaches the archive with a restrained and analytical perspective, focusing on how images are formed, preserved, and reinterpreted over time, and how they continue to inform our understanding of visual memory and learning.