Never heard of the island of Kish before? It would be easy to confuse it with another Kish, in Iraq, an ancient Sumerian city near the Euphrates River that flourished in the 4th millennium BC. But look instead for a tiny spot on the map in the Persian Gulf about 15 kms off the Iranian coast - not far away from neighbouring Brahaim and Kuwait.

Ask anyone in Tehran about the place, and you'll get a prompt answer: "duty-free - and you don't need a visa to get there."

For some, Kish is already the country's number one tourist attraction. For the rest of us, here's a charming little omnibus film titled Ghessé Hayé Kish (Kish Tales) to whet your appetite.

The idea for making these tales for, about, and set in Kish came originally from the island's tourist office. Then, when an enterprising producer stepped in to approach some film directors in Tehran about making a short film of their own choice and length - as long as it didn't run over a half-hour - the response was immediately positive. Altogether, five films have been completed - by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abolfazl Jalili, Nasser Taghvaï, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, and Bahram Beizai - and a sixth, by Dariush Mehrjui, is currently in production. The Cannes festival committee thought so highly of what they saw that three films were arbitrarily linked together to form a competition entry under the title Ghessé Hayé Kish.

Nasser Taghvaï's The Greek Boat tells the story of workers on the island who go regularly to the sea to gather up flotsam washed up on the beach by passing ships: bottles, crates, boxes, sometimes valuable objects that have been thrown overboard. One family dries out the crates - covered with insignia from foreign companies - to build a house. But when the wife gathers some objects left by a passing Greek merchant ship, she is later struck down by a strange illness that the village medical-man claims came from the Greek vessel.

A director with a style of film-making anchored to realism, Nasser Taghvaï will be remembered for the prize he won in Locarno for Captain Khorshid (1987). Abolfazl Jalili's The Ring describes the fate of a young man from the rural mainland who arrives illegally on the island to find work. When his sister writes to say she needs a modest piece of jewellery, the lad is determined to raise the money needed to buy it, although he doesn't quite know how to go about it. Jalili is the director behind the critically acclaimed Det, The Little Girl (1994).

The final part, The Door, is by Mohsen Makhmalbaf - the best known Iranian director of the trio - whose Time Of Love (1990), Salaam Cinema (1994), and Gabbeh (1995) were seen previously at Cannes.

It's not really a story at all, more a lyrical, impressionistic sketch of a man tramping across the dunes with a wooden door on his back, followed by his young daughter with a goat in tow. When the pair reach the sea, they meet a man who offers to buy the door, which is actually a valuable antique.

Advance word suggests that the other trio of films in the sextet are also worth seeing: one by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, widely recognised as one of Iran's foremost female directors; a second by Bahram Beizai, which focuses on a woman in the port who converses with arrivals about the island's customs and beliefs; and a third by Dariush Mehjui, who is thinking about extending his short tale into a feature length film.

All of which says that this isolated haven of untouched natural beauty, with its rural life and closely knit communities, has much to offer visitors from the mainland as well as strangers from further afield.
Ron Holloway