Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life is a silent documentary film which follows a branch of the Bakhtiari tribe of Persia as they and their herds make their seasonal journey to better pastures. It is considered one of the earliest ethnographic documentary films. It was written by Richard Carver and Terry Ramsaye. The film is Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack, and Marguerite Harrison's documentation of their journey from Angora to the Bakhtiari lands of western Iran, in what is now the western part of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province and the eastern part of Khuzestan. They then follow... Haidar Khan as he leads 50,000 of his people and countless animals on a harrowing trek across the Karun River and over Zard Kuh, the highest peak in the Zagros Mountains. In filming the journey, Cooper, Schoedsack, and Harrison became the first Westerners to make the migration with the Bakhtiari. The film highlights the extreme hardships faced by nomadic peoples, as well as the bravery and ingenuity of the Bakhtiari. At the same time, the film is also a reflection of the context out of which it emerged, that of Hollywood in the 1920s.
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