A French Musician in the Qajar Court

Army musician Jean-Baptiste Alfred Lemaire (*1842) was sent to Iran in 1868 to reorganize music education at the state orchestras. In 1875, he composed the first Persian national anthem and founded the first music conservatory in Tehran. At the same time, he was an important political and economic actor. Lemaire died in Tehran in 1907. “A French Musician in the Qajar Court” presents an exuberant richness of historical material and was created after six years of research. “The film aims to acquaint the audience with the life and work of Lemaire, who spent 40 years in Iran and yet is only known to a few French or Iranians,” says Mehran Pourmandan.