The Mightiest

The Mightiest

[8 minutes, 2014]

When I was asked to make a film about the Cyrus Cylinder tour’s stop at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, I set out to make a film that touched upon how a Greek text about a Persian emperor came to influence the Founding Fathers of the United States. On the opening day of the Cylinder exhibition, a young African American man, Carnell Marcus Moore, walked into the ticketing area of the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston armed with a semi-automatic rifle (a Smith and Wesson AR-15) and a Glock 40-caliber handgun. After firing a few shots in the air he shot and killed himself. My in-laws were in the same terminal at the same airport at the time, making a connecting flight to their home in South Texas. Houston was also hosting the National Rifle Association’s Annual Convention the same weekend. The film came to be a reflection on this confluence of events and the ethics of war and governing, for which Cyprus was much praised and admired, as well as a study of some of the landscapes of Texas as I traveled with my husband from Houston to South Texas where he grew up. This film was commissioned by the Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF); views expressed in the video are the director’s and do not reflect the views of IHF and other related parties.