“Iran’s morality police arrest hundreds of people every year in raids on ‘satanist’ raves, ‘inappropriate’ clothing and ‘obscene’ CDs.”

So reads the title sequence of Raving Iran, a captivating documentary about two DJs, Anoosh and Arash, their struggle to build careers in music under the oppressive gaze of the Islamic Republic, and their eventual escape to Europe. The film has its UK premiere in Glasgow tomorrow, and the first shock to anyone watching it here or elsewhere in Europe might be the fact that anyone is brave enough to do anything like this in a country with such a restrictive legal system. As Anoosh explains from his new home in Zurich, however, the people of Iran are well-versed in exploiting the limitations of officialdom in the country to make life more enjoyable.

“Everything about people’s private lives in Iran is underground,” he says, “not just the underground techno scene. Nobody has seen the film in Iran yet, especially in Tehran, but if it’s seen there eventually I don’t think people will be too interested in it, because everyone lives their lives this way and everyone knows all about it already. It’s not just about music or DJing or parties, it’s everything. The government expects that people do things that are illegal such as drinking or dressing differently in their private lives, and up to a point they only care about maintaining the official public image of life in Iran. There is an absolutely huge difference between how people live their lives in public and how they act in private.”

Anoosh and his DJ and production partner Arash, who go by the artist name Blade & Beard, became central actors in an underground house and techno scene in Tehran that pushes this unspoken flexibility to the limits. The pair first began to listen to electronic music seriously around 12 years ago after exposure to a familiarly influential source, brought to them by a visiting friend from the US. “He would bring CDs with him,” Anoosh says. “One time he brought us a CD of a set that [legendary British house duo] Sasha & John Digweed had played on Radio Kiss 100. That CD really touched us at that time because the atmosphere on those songs was really close to how we felt. Later we also became inspired by people like Recondite and Tale of Us, but Sasha & John Digweed were our first inspiration.”

The pair began to DJ and later began to dabble in production, learning techniques for both from VPN-enabled Youtube videos and getting mp3s and WAV files from the same sources as their western counterparts. “In Iran people call the internet the filternet,” he says. “Everything is filtered, but somehow Beatport and Resident Advisor (the world’s leading sources of electronic music files and journalism respectively) aren’t, I guess just because the government has no idea they exist, so we were able to read about and access electronic music from the west quite easily. With Youtube we had to use a VPN to find videos, but young people in Iran all know how to do that so it wasn’t too difficult either.”

The National:

Iran’s vast deserts are a common refuge for citizens looking for a little respite from the regime, and Anoosh and Arash chose it as the setting for a twice-yearly rave, with the threat of arrest hanging over them at all times, despite its remote location. “We started holding the raves in 2008, and I tried to model the party on the Burning Man festival in Nevada. A couple of hours into the event everyone was asking each other ‘are we in Iran right now?’” he laughs. “Nobody could believe this was happening somewhere in their country, and that reaction was what motivated me to continue doing it again and again. The police caught us after two years though, so we moved the location, changed it to once a year and downsized the numbers invited from around 100 people to 40 or 50 for safety.”

“I was arrested many times over the years but the deal there is that if you are able to pay the police some money then they will release you. Jails in Iran have been full of political prisoners for 37 years now, so they don’t have enough space to keep DJs in there as well,” he laughs. “So most of the people who DJ in Iran are from the middle-classes – they have the money to pay the police if they are caught, and having that money to hand to get yourself out of trouble when you do get caught is a basic requirement of DJing there.”

Much of the movie's footage was filmed by Anoosh and Arash, a lot of it secretly using a concealed iPhone. It follows the pair as they hold one last rave in the desert, as well as unsuccessfully trying to get exposure for the “satanic” album that they had made together. “This kind of music isn’t tolerated,” they are told in a secretly filmed scene in a government office in the course of a doomed attempt to gain official permission to distribute the music. “Only classical piano and traditional music is allowed.”

The pair are also seen sending the record to promoters abroad, and they eventually get a call out of the blue asking them to appear at Lethargy Festival in Zurich. There follows a tense wait to get permission from the government to take up the offer, and discussion with family and friends about whether they should come back to Iran or claim asylum in Switzerland. The pair eventually head for Zurich, play their set, and attempt to deal with the enormity of the difference between Iran and Switzerland. “The thing that shocked me most when I arrived was seeing people act the same way outside as they do inside,” Anoosh says. “I was like ‘wow, these people don’t need to lie to anyone, even the government.’” 

“I love Iran,” Anoosh says. “My roots are there, and I miss my family and the weather. It won’t be safe for me to go back to visit for a long time, but I can’t say that I miss the country or regret the decision at all because my work is music, and everything about the music I make exists in the west. So I need to be here, as hard as it has sometimes been. After the moment in the taxi where the film ends we were sent to a refugee camp for two years. It was on a mountain in a village far away from Zurich and Geneva and any other big city, and it was a nightmare. Our refugee permits finally came through very soon after the film was first released last April, though, which was such a huge relief for us.

“The film clearly influenced the decision, and being given that status allowed us to move away from the camp to Zurich, and we have our blue refugee passports now too, which means we can travel and play in other countries. If it wasn’t for Raving Iran I think we would have been stuck in the camp for another couple of years, and eventually we might just have decided to give up and go home. So I can honestly say that this movie has saved our lives.”

Glasgow Film Festival and the Sub Hub present the UK premiere of Raving Iran at Barras Art and Design at 54 Calton Entry, Glasgow, tomorrow. Doors noon with a Persian food menu available all day, music from 3.30pm, and film screening at 7.45pm, tickets £14/£12 concessions