Nisimazine Tehran #3

Thursday 16 October 2008

Nisimazine Tehran 3 A Magazine Created By Nisi Masa, European Network Of Young CinemA

Statues of Tehran May '68 Inka Straface

Photo by Pablo Garcia (ArtPau)

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Editorial

NISIMAZINE TEHRAN Thursday 16 October 2008 A magazine published by NISI MASA – network of young European cinema, in cooperation with the Cinéma Verité - Iran International Documentary Film Festival,

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ilmmakers are full of prejudices. We journalists are too, just like you readers.

The crucial thing is to recognize our shortcomings.

Films can be a bridge between people. A good one even gives you a feeling of being there – as is often the ambition of the genre this festival gets its name from.

But nothing beats the experience of really going to a place yourself.

and with the support of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Iran.

EDITORIAL Editors-In-Chief Matthieu Darras, Jalil Akbari Sehat Editorial Secretaries Jude Lister, Kaveh Jalali Art Director Hossein Norouzi Contributors Maartje Alders Ali Ameri Pablo Garcia Mateo Lasse Lecklin Réka Szalkai Farzaneh Tariverdi Anna Weitz Rebecca Wilson Ladan Zarei Nilofar Zarei

The making of Nisimazine is not only about seeing eye-opening films. It also brings a trans-European editorial to new exciting places. With only a week in Tehran behind us, we still stumble on a few prejudices, but thanks to our real life Iranian experiences, every day new nuances are added to our palettes.

In Mahvash Sheikhol Eslami’s new documentary Second Home (screened on Sunday at the festival) Iran’s potential as a tourist country is highlighted. “Hospitality had to be redefined after I came to Iran”, says a Mexican woman in the film, and I can only agree. Unfortunately travelling is the luxury of few.

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When it comes to filmmaking, despite the digital revolution, in a global perspective most people never get to tell their own story. However, by involving a film’s subjects in the filmmaking process itself, they tend to be portrayed less stereotypically. Pioneering director Jean Rouch used this participatory approach already in the 50s, as told in Friends, Fools, Family (see page 4).

Cover photo: by Pablo Garcia (ArtPau) NISI MASA (European Office) 10 rue de l’Echiquier 75010, Paris, France +33 (0)6 32 61 70 26 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com

Anna Weitz

Picture of the Day

Photo by Pablo Garcia (ArtPau)

Film of the Day Iraqi Short Films Mauro Andrizzi (Argentina) “This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought. It was easily felt as an influence, and those who went into the desert long enough to forget its spaces and its emptiness were inevitably thrust upon God as the only refuge and rhythm of being.” These words of British soldier T. H. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, features in Iraqi Short Films, by the Argentinean Mauro Andrizzi, a compilation of footage shot by Iraqi militias, American soldiers and private security forces.

Lawrence of Arabia fought with the Arabs against the Turks during the First World War, thus protecting British interests. Why then start a review of a film about Iraq with a quote from an exponent of western colonialism? Because his words are the only thing in this film that show some interest in ‘the other’ and an attempt at understanding him. The extent of aggression on both sides in the present war make you numb.

The American military is officially not allowed to film its actions, explains the introduction, but many have done so anyway. A lot of the footage is shot through the window from inside a moving army vehicle. The viewer gets a sense of how the enemy is seen, and it’s not a pretty sight. A group of soldiers tear after someone in an armoured car, all screaming excitedly: “Shoot

the motherfucker.” It sounds as if they’re playing a computer game rather than trying to keep the peace in a real country. Or they sit in their car, watching from a distance as a rocket lands on something that looks like a row of normal houses.

Watching from a distance is something the Iraqi militia seems to do a lot too. According to Andrizzi, they film their actions – American cars being blown up for instance to use for recruitment and to raise money. They also have their own broadcasting offices where they add their own logos and songs.

Instead of using swearwords, they invoke God. All of us have seen images like this before; why then see them again in an endless parade of violence?

This is polarizing and sensationalist, yet in the end acceptable.

Using amateur documentary footage seems to be the cinéma vérité of the millennium; it shows from multiple viewpoints what this war really looks like, without the intervention of official media channels.

And it shows you how those who shape this war see its reality, and how they try to make sense of it.

“I don’t know how I feel anymore, ever since I got signed I can’t tell what’s real anymore” are the lyrics to the hip hop song accompanying images of an Iraqi street shot from a tank. Music plays an important part in Iraqi Short Films. The Western soldiers seem to enjoy making amateur music videos during their free time on the base. As a viewer, you feel shocked by this flippancy after seeing so much violence; yet you can’t help laughing at the funny dances they do with their

3 machine guns. At least it shows their human side. This cannot be said of the militia music video in which the singer proclaims himself honoured to be a terrorist, inspiring only fear. Mauro Andrizzi and his Editor Francisco J. Vazquez Murillo’s intent was most probably to come up with a balanced compilation. Yet there is apparently no ‘human’ footage available from these militias. Can we draw any conclusion from this, or are these images distorting reality again?

Who is to say?

Rebecca Wilson

You can read all previous issues of Nisimazine on www.nisimasa.com

Excerpts from the Message of Mohammad reza Ja’fari Jelveh, Deputy of Minister for Cinema and Audio-Visual Affairs on the Occasion of the 2nd Annual Cinema Ver

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n the Name of God The union of Documentary Cinema with knowledge and raising awareness is long deeply rooted. Consciousness of one’s own conditions and awareness of existing capabilities and pitfalls, as a regular theme in many documentaries, is an undeniable necessity in the path to sublimation and growth. finding one’s own potentials and achievements, while being

able to evaluate the performance of others, promises the opening of new horizons and perspectives.

Documentary cinema employs its diverse potentials to reflect the Islamic Iranian culture and identity, to underline the realities of this society and to be their concerned critic. It is also an artistic endeavor to go beyond these realities towards the ideal truth and the promise kept within

each reality. This means reflecting hope, kindness and compassion, perception and looking at what is there instead of concentrating only on what is not. In this path, if we were to gain a better knowledge of each other and a deeper understanding of our conditions, we would be able to take more confident steps; and this is a requirement, towards which the documentary cinema displays an amazing efficiency.

Reviews Final Fitting Reza Haeri (Iran)

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People follow their leaders”, says a Qur’anic verse. According to Mr. Arabpour, this means that whatever dress the leaders wear, all do the same. Nowadays, they all wear labadehs (modern robes). Mr. Arabpour should know what the leaders wear: a tailor in his eighties, he is the proprietor of the most famous tailor shop in Qom, a holy city of the Shiite muslims with one of the biggest religious schools.

An Iranian film by Reza Haeri, Final Fitting gives the stage to the tailor master, who tells anecdotes from the path of his 58-yearlong career and presents the current fashions in traditional costumes. Fashion is a delicate matter in Iran, where women cover their hair and body in hijabs whereas menswear is much freer, at least when it comes to the ordinary people - for men in religious or political positions there is an important dress code.

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Long abbas (robes) and ammamehs (turbans) are a must. Although nowadays seminar students are allowed to have a watch on their wrist, they can wear trousers (some even wear jeans), and their hair can be shown from underneath their turbans. Mr. Arabpour explains that even the traditional dresses adjust to the current time: the latest designed labadehs have plenty of pockets for all the necessary accessories, such as mobile phones.

During his career Mr. Arabpour has tailored for the most important Iranian religious leaders: from the late Ayatollah Khomeini to the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, as well as the former president Mohammad Khatami. This has merited him an international clientele as well. Through the portrayal of one person, Final Fitting talks about Islamic customs and their delicate, yet reformist changes. Small, but interesting.

Lasse Lecklin

Friends, Fools, Family Berit Madsen and Anne Mette (Denmark) Friends, Fools, Family is a film that a festival called ‘Cinéma Vérité’ was naturally entitled to screen. Co-directed by Danish Berit Madsen and Anne Mette, it tells a simple story about a unique Euro-African collaboration in a specific cinematographic field: ethno-fiction.

It also tells a lot about the father of this genre – and leading figure of so-called ‘Cinema vérité’: Jean Rouch. French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch spent most of his life in Africa, where he eventually died at the age of 87, whilst driving through the desert.

Friends, Fools, Family shows an unknown aspect of Rouch’s work: the human and working relationships he built in Niger.

Through the words of his African collaborators Tallou Damouré, Moussa and Lam, the audience reconstitutes the Rouch way of doing anthropology: creating the best environment for people to express and build their own images and history themselves. This was

done by helping them in developing specific skills in filmmaking.

Consequently, the four companions of Rouch have become sound engineer, cameraman, screenwriter and actor beside their work as village doctor for one and shepherd for another. Rouch’s award-winning ethno-films were born from the spirit, ideas and points of view of the native African people.

Friends, Fools, Family is an unpretentious documentary and not especially remarkable in terms of cinematography. Nevertheless it is effective as a memory valve, taking us back to Rouch’s cinema and to those who he considered as his masters: Dziga Vertov and Robert Flaherty, representatives of unforgettable pages of cinematic history.

Mirtha Sozzi

Interview INKA STRAFACE

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Documentary maker Inka Straface has come from Australia to the Cinema Vérité festival. Her movie is called Hope in a Slingshot, a strong exclamation mark from the Palestinian side in the long and ever-lasting conflict of our century.

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id you go to any film school?

No, I didn’t. I studied audiovisual technology though.

It was more like the science side, for example sound and light, rather than things like form and narrative – which now I’ve found out are very important! I didn’t want to be taught how to make a film. It sounds very rebellious and cool, but it came with quite a heavy price, a steep learning curve. For short films you can get by with the attitude I had, but making a feature film was very difficult. I thought it would be about 10 times more work, but it was more like 100 times.

So what was your personal motivation for this film? Do you have roots in Palestine?

No, I don’t have any personal roots there. But I felt a kind of spiritual obligation to do it – it has nothing to do with Catholicism, though I am also a Catholic. I questioned my emotional response to this conflict to the nth degree. I couldn’t understand why I was so affected by it, but in the end I just stopped questioning it. As a filmmaker and as someone who has always been quite proud of being defiant, in the eyes of authority, I felt an obligation to put those factors of my life – the fact that I know how to make a film and the fact that I’m made the way I am – to go to Palestine and show people that everyone should go there to see what’s going on. I do have a background of activism, so it also comes from this spirit.

But because I wanted to make a good film, I had to work – I didn’t just make an ‘activist film’, I had to present it so that it doesn’t come across that way.

How did you get the contacts in Palestine?

Part of me feels a little blessed, like I was meant to do it, so things worked out. But if you don’t want to prescribe to that, it was that I received real warmth in Palestine. When people realised that I was by myself, and understood the motivation behind what I was doing, the information and the help came.

Were you worried about the film being one-sided? Too much on the Palestinian side and not enough Israeli points of view?

Looking back during post-production I kind of wish that I

had more from the Israeli side, to be able to present something maybe a bit more convincing. But I really did make the film I set out to make in the beginning, just remembering my motivation and fire to tell about the Palestinians’ truth. I feel that the Israeli side has gotten a lot of airplay, people know about their side. The cost of their security is something that we don’t know about.

And did you speak some Arabic?

I was born in Malta, and came to Australia when I was twelve.

The Maltese have an Arabic-based language – the only Arabic dialect which is a language in its own right – but Maltese people usually like to identify themselves with Europeans, so the Arabic thing is underplayed. In Palestine I could understand a lot of what they were saying. This Maltese origin also has to do with the whole spiritual thing, from here may also come a ‘my people are suffering’ feeling. Actually, I did feel there: Palestinian people are suffering for the sins of human beings.

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Photo by Lasse Lecklin

Where has your film been screened?

I had two screenings so far. Checkpoint 303, a French-Palestinian group came to play a gig in Australia. I got their song – ‘Gaza Calling’, as the last song for Hope in a Slingshot. I showed my film – though still under editing – at that gig. Otherwise there was one other private screening, also in Australia. My ambition is to show my film on Australian television, since our TV is full of the Israeli side. It is such an unbalanced war, and it is important to know both sides in order to achieve peace. But entering festivals is difficult with Hope: Maybe because of the topic of the film. That is why I am very happy to be here, in Tehran.

Réka Zsalkai

Into the Festival ASK THE AUDIENCE !

Anna Azevo, Brazil, director of Dreznica “I am very excited about the festival and spent all afternoon in the theatre. I have seen the Polish Panorama, some films from the international competition and some of Richard Leacock’s films. It’s a good programme, especially the retrospectives of Jørgen Leth and Richard Leacock – and it’s very nice that they are here as guests too.”

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Helia Asgari, Tehran

Shahab Mostafavi

“It’s the first day I am here and I’ve already seen two Iranian films that I like very much – Final Fitting and the First Door in the Sky. I am a member of the Young Cinema Centre and I’m interested in documentaries because I like to know what is going on both in Iran and in other countries. I want to know how people in other places live and how they think.”

Helia Asgari

Hiwa Aminnejad, Tehran, director of Magic “I am mostly interested in Iranian documentaries and my favourite film in the festival so far is Desiring Good Deeds. But the advantage of this festival is that it’s international.

Iranian documentaries are famous abroad, but in spite of this we haven’t watched them much ourselves. This is being solved with Cinema Verité Tehran!”

Shahab Mostafavi, Tehran

Photos by Pablo Garcia (ArtPau)

Anna Azevo

“I am a film student and during these two first days I have seen between 10 and 15 films. Most of all, I liked the Polish films Anything Can Happen, 89 mm From Europe and Practice Exercises. The director Marcel Lozinski was present at the screening and although I think the Q&A session was a little short, he gave very interesting explanations to his films.”

Anna Weitz and Farzaneh Tariverdi

Hiwa Aminnejad

Work in progress

On the 10th of May 1968 the Asian Football Confederation’s Cup kicked off in Tehran. The very same day 367 people were wounded in riots in Paris. In France – and more generally in Europe, images of the Parisian barricades are embedded in people’s minds. ‘May 68’ stands for an era when student demonstrations turned into a cultural revolution which spread throughout many countries of the world.

At that time filmmakers were active in these social movements. Even when they weren’t directly reporting the events, they were mirroring the main convulsions of the period, like the war in Vietnam (Far from Vietnam by Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and others; 1967) or the feminist movement (L’une chante, l’autre pas by Agnès Varda; 1976). However, by no means did the spirit of ‘68 end on the 31st of December 1968. In fact, it continues to persevere, even four decades later.

So what about the relationships between cinema - fiction or documentary - and ‘68 today? A bunch of feature films have been keen on pointing out the “romantic-revolutionary” aspect of the movement. Bernardo Bertolluci’s The Dreamers (2004) and Olivier Ducastel’s Nés en 68 (2008) are two examples of fictions whose main focus is the changing relationships between men and women. On the other hand, there is a whole new slate of documentary films appearing for the 40th anniversary of 1968. So it comes as no surprise if several films of the festival share the thematic this year.

Hear my cry by Maciej J. Drygas

A shocking example of personal drama related to the revolts of 1968 is Hear my cry (1991), by Polish director Maciej J. Drygas. The film tells the story of a Polish clerk, Ryszard Si-

“Be young and shut up”

1968, 40 years after and beyond

wiec, who set himself on fire during a festival celebrating the harvest in Warsaw in September 1968. This desperate act is obviously to be interpreted as a protest against communist totalitarianism.

Also focusing on the violence prevalent during the period, Jean-Luc Magneron investigates the unfriendly relationships between activists and policemen in his documentary May 68, La belle ouvrage (2008). The film starts with a TV speech of General Charles de Gaulle honouring the public forces. Magneron follows this opening scene with a series of archive footages and interviews of people - journalists, doctors, students, psychologists, etc., who were witnesses and/or victims of cruel police brutalities.

Patrick Rotman’s 68 (2008) does not only focus on the riots in France, but also on the events in the USA, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan and Latin America. Rotman establishes the connections between the war in Vietnam and the student demonstrations all over the world, and between the Afro-Americans’ fight for equal rights and the waves of protest. 68 is a successful mixture of political reportage and atmospheric creative documentary, underlined by a soundtrack typical of the times. Rotman’s conclusion is that all of these movements were initiated and carried on by youths who had read the same books, shared the same icons and were united by the same certitudes. It was time for change, it was time for revolution.

Rotman, a French historian and filmmaker, had lived 1968.

So had Jean-Luc Magneron. One could get the impression that the process of commemoration is mainly undertaken by the people who experienced this explosive year. A different approach is chosen by Simon Brook, a quite young filmmaker, in his recent documentary Generations 68 (not shown at the festival). Like others, he has interviewed people involved in the revolts, but he only uses their voices for supporting archive material. Brook’s point is that for giving the feeling that 1968 was a movement of young people, old faces shouldn’t appear onscreen.

It will be interesting to see what kinds of films will be made for the 50th anniversary in 2018, because by then an even bigger gap will separate the generations: the elderly people who actually experienced the events and the new generation for whom 1968 will only appear as another page of history.

Nina Henke

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Photo by Satyar Emami

Bahman Kiarostami

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Portrait

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rriving in the dark as an outsider who had never been to this city before, one of the first things I noticed while pressing my nose against the taxi window was little twinkly lights floating by along the side of the roads, in green, red and bright blue. Something I am only used to seeing around Christmas. By daylight travelling in cars again, I sometimes caught a glimpse of some more unexpected decorations. A group of iron people, raising their fists in a communist-like fashion. A brown painted man who looked like he had seen better days, and in the median between two expressways, I think I saw deer grazing. To my surprise, not too long after this I watched a film with exactly this as its topic, Bahman Kiarostami’s Statues of Tehran (Mojasamehay-e Tehran).

Bahman Kiarostami was born in 1978 in Tehran and yes; his father is well-known cinema master Abbas. Creating his own style, Bahman has been hunting reality, and the artists that inhabit it.

They form a clear theme in almost all of his works, the latest one being Statues of Tehran. Kiarostami made his first documentary, Morteza Momayez: Father of Iranian Contemporary Graphic Design, when he was eighteen years old. After that followed many more artists such as professional mourners in Tabaki (2001), an international quintet in Nour (2003), two musicians that play the ancient instrument kamancheh in Two Bows (Do Kamancheh, 2004), Iranian artists in a group project Persian Garden (Baghe Irani, 2005), and an unexpected Pullitzer prize in Anonymous (Gomnam, 2007, in cooperation with Kaveh Kazemi) to name just a few.

I think it is safe to say that Kiarostami has a strong fascination with artists (in the broadest sense of the word) and how they relate to the world (I wasn’t going to mention his father, but maybe his work in many fields of the arts has something to do with it). Weaving a long line from music to performance past

the visual arts and after maybe left back to music, or right on to photography, his films are more than mere recordings. They always give insights into society as a whole. Statues of Tehran is no exception. It shows the many statues of Tehran in their many shapes, forms and uses.

The film has two main storylines, both representing a different period in Iranian history. Bahman Mohassess’ sculpture was the first modern work of art erected in Tehran but it was taken down after 1979. The piece of art was considered unfavourable.

The other is a relief statue representing the revolution by Iraj Esskandari, which is also not on display anymore, due to the construction of a new metro station. Modern times are taking over. Besides the passing of time itself, these two works represent a contrasting approach to ideology and art, nicely visualized through a telephone conversation between the two men.

Kiarostami cleverly exposes the make-up of the city by starting to look at its cosmetics. Many layers form an unconventional cityscape via a gallery of characters: a city clerk (“Do you know who I am? I am responsible for the building of the metro system, but nobody knows about this.”), a theatre director (“The fact that you keep filming even though you knew beforehand you were not getting permission, exposes your intentions.”), and a proud but hurt sculptor, who sees his statue removed to make way for a new era.

People picnicking on the grass beside a highway, making family portraits beside a statue of a clown and adorning their streets with artificially-lit fake trees, shows a side of the city that you sense when you first drive through it, but cannot really put into words. Kiarostami’s focus untangles the layers of convention that you want to see through, as a foreigner coming to Tehran.

Maartje Alders