Tea & cinema: visitors to the Tea House/Gallery Inside Iran (located at Schouwburgplein 54, on the corner of De Doelen) soak up the inspiring atmosphere at the opening yesterday. Keep an eye on the Daily Tiger for regular updates on the Tea House programme, which features film, music and art from and about Iran. photo: Bram Belloni
Inside stories IFFR’s focus on Iranian cinema expresses the country’s political realities in both oblique and direct ways. By Geoffrey Macnab
Six months ago, the Western media was buzzing with reports that Israel was planning to bomb Iran. At the same time, film festivals around the world were protesting against the Iranian government’s treatment of filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was put under house arrest in 2010 and banned from filmmaking. Meanwhile, Western festivals noticed they weren’t receiving the usual amount of films from Iran. This was the backdrop as Rotterdam programmers Bianca Taal and Gertjan Zuilhof began to pull together the Signals: Inside Iran programme for this year’s festival. Perspective
Zuilhof had met many Iranian directors in exile and had been struck by the way they talked about their country’s film culture. “It was very different from my perspective of this big, grim Islamic Republic”, Zuilhof notes. He discovered that filmmaking was still thriving in Iran – but in the domestic, private sphere. “It turned out that there is still quite a bit of liberal culture possible, as long as it is indoors, in private. I was not too aware of this.” Intrigued, Zuilhof made a first trip to Iran. Through his contacts abroad, he was able to meet filmmakers still working in the country and to scout movies to bring to Rotterdam. “Also, I think quite quickly the word goes round, so we received a lot (of films) as well”, Taal notes. It helped,
too, that the programmers were able to draw on the network of filmmakers supported in the past by the Hubert Bals Fund. The political and religious situation in Iran isn’t encouraging for filmmakers. The country’s most prominent directors, notably Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, have been making their recent films abroad. However, there are many other directors who – as Zuilhof puts it – “don’t have this big name and don’t have this close relationship with an MK2 producer in France or something like that.” Symbolic
The Rotterdam programmer acknowledges his surprise at the films that were being made in Iran. He points to Mohammad Shirvani’s Hivos Tiger Awards contender Fat Shaker, which has a strain of stylization and absurdist humour that you don’t always find in films by Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf. Such work is not directly related to “real life” and therefore less likely to fall foul of the censors. “It’s maybe very symbolic and metaphorical, but it is not directly related to any political situation.” Shirvani has also provided an installation, Elephant in Darkness, for Rotterdam. “Unfortunately, because of political matters, the voices of Iranians cannot be heard very well in different countries”, the Iranian director says. “Next to Persian carpets, pistachios and all the nuclear weapons stories, cinema is a door to show how the Iranian people really are.” Elephant in Darkness is a box with a number of different holes. “I want to show that you can’t know the truth and
everything about something only by using one of these holes – by only by having one source.” New generation
There is a new generation of filmmakers who are breaking away from their older peers. Swedish-based director Nahid Persson Sarvestani’s new feature doc My Stolen Revolution (a world premiere at IFFR) screens in Inside Iran. She argues forcefully that young activists and artists in Iran faced the same harassment, intimidation and torture after the disputed Presidential election of 2009 that her generation suffered after the Iranian revolution. The human rights abuses have been well chronicled. These abuses are not being ignored. Artistic expression in Iran, however oblique, is still often a form of political protest. Ideal ideal
Certain films being shown in Rotterdam address political questions in a very direct way. For example, Abolfazl Jalili’s Darvag, about a loan shark, reveals the effect economic sanctions and political turbulence have had on day-to-day life. Meanwhile, exiled filmmakers continue to explore Iranian history and identity in their work. Zuilhof cites the examples of Maryam Najafi’s Kayan, which is ostensibly about the inner workings of a Lebanese restaurant in Vancouver, and of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The Gardeners, about Iranian exiles of the Bahá’í faith in (of all places) Israel. “They (exiles) develop a kind of ideal ideal about their past and their country”, Zuilhof suggests. “Kayan is like the fairy tale idea
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of the Middle East – how people eat, how they drink, how they dance, how they talk… they strongly have this nostalgia for Iran and their experiences there.” Different experiences
Alongside the Iranian films screening in Rotterdam, there will be discussions and debates. The Festival has created a Tea House and gallery where work can be shown and debates pursued in informal fashion. Taal and Zuilhof had very different experiences on their trips to Iran. Taal was a guest at the Isfahan festival. “I’ve never been to a festival where there was no catalogue or film programme for us to see”, she says. “I was very glad I was there but it was very frustrating because I came there to work. It was not possibile to meet any filmmakers, except for a couple of hours in Tehran.” Zuilhof had much more freedom. He arrived in the middle of Ramadan. For three days, he was left to his own devices. The authorities even apologized that they were too busy to keep an eye on him. “I have been travelling in Islamic countries before and Ramadan is a good period for meeting people. They have more time and they organize a lot of social events after hours.” Filmmakers, starved of international contacts, were delighted to have Zuilhof in their midst; keen to show him their work and to help him with translations. As for the Iranian authorities, they are aware of the Rotterdam programme and haven’t made any complaints. “Just a few days ago, I got invited to some party at the Iranian Embassy in the Hague – so I guess I am still on the good list!” Zuilhof notes.