Iranian New Wave 1960s-1970s (Film Series)

November 2-22, 2013  Asia Society and Museum

Banned both before and after the revolution, Bahman Farmanara's village drama Tall Shadows of the Wind (1979) screens on November 12. Courtesy Asia Society.

This film series features rarely screened films of the Iranian New Wave, an exceptional film movement that took place before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. During the cosmopolitan and yet turbulent period of the 1960s-1970s, an auteur cinema emerged and responded actively to the cultural, political, and social conditions of the time. Iranian New Wave is distinguished by its philosophical inclination, social critique, poetic disposition, and vigorous experimentation. This innovative spirit resonated with new cinematic trends sweeping across the globe at the time, from France and Czechoslovakia to Brazil and Japan. Collectively, the films present the artistic vision, humanism, and social consciousness of a generation of Iranian filmmakers. These films have left an important legacy and laid the groundwork for later generations. This series offers an extraordinary opportunity to survey these works and provides a window into Iranian life during this period. A documentary film about the Iranian New Wave is included in the selection.

Interview: 'Iranian New Wave' Film Curator Uncovers a Precious, Threatened Legacy

by Jeff Tompkins, Asia Society

Screening over three weeks in November, Asia Society New York's film series Iranian New Wave offers a rare opportunity to explore a vital yet little seen period in Iran's film history. Responding to the same currents that were then electrifying cinema from Paris to Prague to Tokyo, Iranian filmmakers of the 1960s and '70s produced a range of formally innovative, socially conscious and philosophically searching films that paved the way for the later, more internationally recognized generation of auteurs that includes Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Ashghar Farhadi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. (Underscoring this continuity, the series concludes on November 22 with Kiarostami's early work, 1974's The Traveler.)

Presented in conjunction with Asia Society Museum's Iran Modern exhibition, Iranian New Wave encompasses fiction features, documentary shorts and a documentary about this era of Iranian film in seven programs. Below, Asia Society Film Curator La Frances Hui discusses the genesis of the series and some of the hurdles she had to overcome in bringing these rare films to New York in 2013.

The seven programs in Asia Society's Iranian New Wave series uncover an era in world cinema that's likely to be unfamiliar even to veteran fans of international art films. Can you summarize what's distinctive about these Iranian movies — what makes them "New Wave," for instance? 

Most international film audiences were not exposed to Iranian cinema until the late 1980s and early 1990s. Works by filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf enthralled audiences around the world with their realism, humanism and lyricism. What most of these audiences don't know is that Iran has had a long and rich tradition of cinema. A major artistic breakthrough occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, the immediate decades before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Unbeknownst to many, especially young people, Iran was an active player in the international art scene back in those days. Iranian artists were exposed to artistic trends around the world and their works were presented overseas. There was an explosion of activity in all artistic fields including film, visual art (as seen in our current Iran Modern exhibition), and theater. Openness in the arts might not exactly have mirrored the everyday experience of regular Iranians, but filmmakers did enjoy the relative freedom to create innovative works. Many were especially inspired by their immediate cultural, social, and political environments.

During that time, new cinematic waves were sweeping across the globe from France and Czechoslovakia to Brazil and Japan. Many Iranian filmmakers studied overseas, such as Dariush Mehrjui at UCLA, Bahman Farmanara at University of Southern California, and Kamran Shirdel at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Italy. This generation of filmmakers experimented with the film language alongside their counterparts around the world. The spirit of innovation evoked an international flavor but the motivation was deeply grounded in the desire to tell Iranian stories. Realism and humanism — the hallmarks of later Iranian films — were already evident. When we look at contemporary Iranian cinema, it is important to not overlook the legacy of this period. In fact, some of the filmmakers active today, such as Kiarostami and Amir Naderi, honed their skills and developed their vision back in those days.

This film series, although small in scope given the richness of cinema during that time, will not only allow audiences to sample and appreciate a selection of works representative of Iranian New Wave, but also provide an opportunity to look at life pre-revolution.

Since most of these films are so rare, I'm curious to know about some of the challenges you faced in curating the series. Did the turmoil of Iran's revolution and its aftermath affect the availability of these movies?

I am glad you asked. It is in fact very difficult to put together a film series focusing on this period. The country went through a tumultuous revolution. Some filmmakers were exiled. Many films, if not lost or destroyed, were locked up. Several filmmakers I contacted directly told me they didn't know where their films went. Most don't even have a high-quality copy of their own works. A lot of film prints scattered around the world have since deteriorated. Several film archives informed me that the prints in their possession were of a quality unfit for projection, pending restoration. I heard so many sad stories that I am starting to really worry about the loss of Iranian cinema's legacy. Bahram Beyzaie's Downpour (1972) was lucky enough to have been restored recently by the World Cinema Foundation. A high-quality digital copy is now available and is here to last. Most other films have not yet met this lucky fate.

As a film curator, I am committed to presenting films in professional formats fit for public screenings. Although the series is not comprehensive of the period, I am delighted to be able to include significant and representative works. Other great films were also made during that time, such as Farrokh Ghaffari's The Night of the Hunchback (1964), Masoud Kimiai's Gheisar (1969), and Sohrab Shahid Sales' Still Life (1975), to name a few.

It's likely, of course, that most people won't be able to attend the full series. Are there any particular highlights they should make a special effort to see?

It's hard for me to name one or two highlights since they are all great films. Audiences who are familiar with European art films would be delighted to discover The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969) and Downpour (Bahram Beyzaie, 1972). In these two films, you will find stylistic parallels to French New Wave and Italian Neorealism. Those who are interested in exploring the politics of fear and surveillance during that time might want to check out Dead End (Parviz Sayyad, 1977) and Tall Shadows of the Wind (Bahman Farmanara, 1979), in which seemingly ordinary life is overshadowed by political terror. Kamran Shirdel's documentaries expose viewers to the life of the marginalized but with a keen cinematic eye on experimentation. Fans of Kiarostami will enjoy The Traveler (1974), an early testament to the director's brilliance. The Lost Cinema (Jamsheed Akrami, 2007) is an informative and insightful documentary about this period of Iranian cinema.

I am extremely excited that directors Sayyad and Akrami will attend post-screening Q&As. Iranian film scholars Negar Mottahedeh (Duke University) and Hamid Naficy (Northwestern University) will also join discussions to help us look more deeply into this period of Iranian film.

The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969) launches Asia Society's Iranian New Wave retrospective in New York on November 2, 2013. Courtesy Asia Society.

Downpour (Bahram Beyzaie, 1972) screens on November 15 in a 2011 restoration by the World Cinema Foundation at Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory. Courtesy Asia Society.

Never shown in Iran, Dead End (Parviz Sayyad, 1977) won actress Mary Apik the Best Actress Award at the Moscow Film Festival. Courtesy Asia Society.

Tehran is the Capital of Iran (1966-1980) is one of four documentary shorts by Kamran Shirdel screening on November 20. Courtesy Asia Society.

The series concludes on November 22 with The Traveler (1974), an early work by Abbas Kiarostami. Courtesy Asia Society.

Program 1:
Saturday, November 2, 2013, 6:00 pm

The Cow
Dariush Mehrjui. 1969. Iran. 100 min. B/W.

Mash Hasan (Ezzatolah Entezami) is the owner of the only and much treasured cow in his impoverished village. One day while he is away, his beloved cow is mysteriously killed. Afraid to hurt Mash Hasan's feelings, fellow villagers tell him the cow has run away. Distraught, Mash Hasan descends into madness and assumes the identity of the cow, as the village deals with a collective psychological breakdown. Although funded by the state, the film was banned for a year due to the unabashed depiction of poverty in the countryside — a stark contrast to the image of modernization promoted during the Shah's reign. The film was smuggled to the 1971 Venice Film Festival where it received the Critics' Award.

Program 2:

Friday, November 8, 2013, 6:30 pm

The Lost Cinema
Jamsheed Akrami. 2007. USA. 100 min. Color & B/W.

This illuminating documentary examines the background and significance of the Iranian New Wave. An artistic and political awakening gave birth to films that rejected uninspiring mainstream offerings and dominating foreign imports led by Hollywood. Made by Jamsheed Akrami, filmmaker/critic/scholar, the documentary sheds light on the political messages these films carry, and the reasons why many were banned pre- and post-revolution and continue to be inaccessible in Iran even today. Included are in-depth analyses of films such as The Cow (1969), Dead End (1977), and Tall Shadows of the Wind (1979), accompanied by insightful filmmaker and expert interviews. Followed by director Q&A, moderated by Negar Mottahedeh, Associate Professor of Literature and Women's Studies, Duke University. 

Program 3:
Saturday, November 9, 2013, 6:00 pm 

Dead End
Parviz Sayyad. 1977. Iran. 95 min. Color.

A young woman (Mary Apik) lives on a dead end street with her family. A mysterious man has been following her. Who is he? Is he a secret admirer or someone who is plotting harm? While the young woman draws up romantic fantasies, fear sets in as the man’s omnipresence alludes to the pervasive surveillance carried out by the secret police force, SAVAK, set up by the Shah's regime. Due to the film’s underlying political theme and the portrayal of female subjectivity, it became banned by both regimes pre- and post-revolution and continue to be inaccessible in Iran even today. Although never shown in Iran, the film won actress Mary Apik the Best Actress Award at the Moscow Film Festival. Followed by director Q&A, moderated by Jamsheed Akrami, director of The Lost Cinema and Professor of Media Studies and Production, William Paterson University.


Program 4:
Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 6:30 pm

Tall Shadows of the Wind
Bahman Farmanara. 1979. Iran. 90 min. Color.

Based on a short story by Houshang Golshiri, who also collaborated with director Bahman Farmanara on his breakout feature Prince Ehtejab (1974), this film centers on mysterious and chilling events that take place in a village. A group of superstitious inhabitants have erected a scarecrow for protection but soon find themselves terrorized by multiplying scarecrows. Made at the end of the Shah’s reign, the film offers a metaphorical reflection on power relations—how people create their own idols who turn around to terrorize them. The film’s alleged political message was found so dangerous that it was banned both pre- and post-revolution. The film was presented to great acclaim in Cannes Film Festival’s Critics' Week section.

 

Program 5:
Friday, November 15, 2013, 6:30 pm

Downpour
Bahram Beyzaie. 1972. Iran. 128 min. B/W.

A teacher has been transferred to a school in a poor and conservative district. He encounters the beautiful sister of a student and develops feelings for her. Although this young woman is intrigued by his attention, she is already engaged to a local butcher. In this small community where social codes are strictly followed, gossip about the two soon start to spread. Suddenly this modern intellectual finds himself under bizarre surveillance. This feature debut evokes French New Wave for its youthful impulse and Italian Neorealism for its realistic portrayal of local life. (Restored by the World Cinema Foundation at Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna/ L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in 2011. Funding provided by Doha Film Institute.)

Program 6: (Four short documentaries screened in one program)
Wednesday, November 20, 2013, 6:30 pm

Kamran Shirdel - Social Documentaries

A foremost figure in Iranian sociopolitical documentary, Kamran Shirdel studied filmmaking in Italy, with teachers including Roberto Rossellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. After returning to Iran, he made many documentaries focusing on the marginalized sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Art. But due to his revelations of the dark side of society at a time of seeming economic progress, Shirdel was expelled and exiled. Women’s Quarter and Tehran is the Capital of Iran had to be completed years later since materials were confiscated during production. Screening introduced and followed by a Q&A with Hamid Naficy, Professor of Radio-Television-Film and the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Professor in Communication, Northwestern University.

Women's Prison
1965. Iran. 11 min. B/W.

In this Tehran jail, over 200 women and girls are housed, convicted of crimes such as murder and drug addiction. Beyond depiction of peaceful literature and handicraft classes are desperate personal stories of women held behind bars.

Women's Quarter
1966-1980. 18 min. B/W.

Shot in the red-light district of Tehran, this film portrays the bleak existence of prostitutes. A text recited in a classroom about the progress the country has made is juxtaposed with candid interviews with prostitutes, who tell their stories of capture, escape, poverty, and daily struggles.

Tehran is the Capital of Iran
1966-1980. Iran. 18 min. B/W.

A text glorifying the Shah's regime is set to ironic images of a poverty-stricken district in Tehran, populated by homeless people, blood sellers, and petit criminals.

The Night It Rained
1967. Iran. 35 min. B/W.

A village boy  is hailed in the media for heroically preventing a train’s derailment. Shirdel arrives in the village and unexpectedly hears opposing accounts of what happened. By presenting the different accounts, each serving the individual subject’s self-interest, Shirdel explores the possibility of truth.

Program 7:
Friday, November 22, 2013, 6:30 pm

The Traveler
Abbas Kiarostami. 1974. Iran. 74 min. B/W.

A young boy in a provincial town is a diehard soccer fan. He steals, scams, lies, and skips school in order to gather enough money for an overnight bus trip to Tehran to watch his favorite team play. At times comical, the film is infused with poignancy as the camera lingers on this tough and yet vulnerable boy with deep affection. This self-assured work is an early testament to the brilliance of director Abbas Kiarostami, who is acclaimed for his affecting portrayal of children and philosophical study of human behavior. His celebrated works include Close Up (1990), Life, and Nothing More… (1992), and Certified Copy (2010).

This film series is curated by La Frances Hui.
Interns: Daisy Yiwen Cai, Hsin-Yuan Peng, Nai-Yun Peng, Jane Jingyu Shi, Bahar Pour Tabatabaei


Via Asia Society

Iranians turn to art as a weapon for survival

A photo of the Rain series, by Abbas Kiarostami. Courtesy of the artist.

by Salman Siddiqui, Gulf times

Despite strict censorship and a regime considered oppressive by the Western world, internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami believes that art and culture is flourishing in his part of the world.

The filmmaker is in town as part of an invitation extended by the Doha Film Institute, which is presenting a  programme of Kiarostami’s early works, documentaries and award-winning feature films including Taste of Cherry (1997) and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) at the Museum of Islamic Art from  September 13 to 21.

In an interview with Gulf Times yesterday, Kiarostami said that “people [in Iran] are all turning to art as a shelter; as a weapon for survival. This is the only choice that they have in order to be able to undergo and overcome the social and political pressures.”

He said that if one looked at the history of Iran, one would observe that whenever there had been political repression, art production gained strength and quality. “This is what you can see in Iran today also. These days everybody takes calligraphic and painting classes.”

In his opinion, there was no doubt that Iranian cinema was flourishing. He said there was very little part of it which was seen by the world abroad. “There is this big unknown part of it which is made outside of the great cities, out of small budget, sometimes using just only mobile phone cameras. We are witness of a growth of creativity and development of Iranian cinema.”

According to him, the background of this art expression is the poetry that is part of Iranian culture.  Also, he recalled that when the Lumière brothers invented the first camera, Iran’s king went to France six years later and brought the camera to his court . “That’s the reason why there are some Iranian films that are more than a 100 years old.”

He said there were two possible reactions to censorship. Either you let it destroy you or an artist becomes more imaginative in finding ways to circumvent it.

About his experience of freedom in Iran, he said: “Total freedom is something I’ve never felt. But I never expected it either. How can I imagine having total freedom in the Iranian situation to make the films I want to?”

But at the same time for every single film and piece of art he created, he said that he never felt restricted either because he said he ‘predesigned’ his films in such a way that they could escape censorship.

Interestingly, the filmmaker said that none of his films were inspired by literature or other cinema or books. “It’s always been inspired by either my own experience of life or people around me and the stories they’ve told me. My inspiration for films is life itself. I’m like collecting pieces from real life and showing them on film,” he said.

Kiarostami has been an active filmmaker since 1970 directing over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. He attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker Trilogy (1987–94), Close-Up (1990), Taste of Cherry (1997), and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999).

Censorship and hardship in filmmaking also made Kiarostami go abroad and experience filmmaking in a different culture and a different language. In his recent films, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran, in France and Japan, respectively.


Via Gulf times

Edinburgh Int’l Film Festival 2013: From Tehran to London

by Michael Pattison, Front Row Reviews

At the present crossroads, the conditions under which Iran’s national cinema is being made (or not being made, as is often the case) are as worthy of analysis as the films themselves. Precisely because Iranian filmmakers are currently under threat of artistic censorship and/or legal restriction (such as house arrest or even a prison sentence), however, their output has enjoyed an unquestioned critical status, as if an artist working within and against such suppression is by default a genius. As Jafar Panahi’s This Is Not a Film demonstrated last year, though, courage is not equable to insight. Condemnation of a political regime does not therefore preclude criticism of the art conditioned by it; for too long now, Iran’s more internationally celebrated filmmakers have, for numerous reasons, misplaced their focus and/or shirked the grander questions facing them.

In the case of Mania Akbari’s latest work From Tehran to London, it’s unlikely that anyone will see the film without prior knowledge that only half of it was completed. It opens with a dedication to “all the filmmakers in Iran, who have served a prison sentence and the ones who are still in prison”, and toward the end of its 45 minutes the director herself tells us in voice-over that production was stopped after crew members were arrested; to begin with, Akbari had never been granted permission from the Iranian government to make the film. While it’s important to draw attention to this continually criminal administration, the fear is that the film itself is consequently celebrated as an inherently perceptive work.

This is not the case. From Tehran to London, originally titled Women Do Not Have Breasts, unfolds as a series of conversational exchanges between a petty bourgeois couple Ava (Neda Amiri) and Ashkan (Bijan Daneshmand), living in their plush home on the outskirts of Tehran, and their housemaid Maryam (Elahe Hesari) and Ava’s sister, Roya (Akbari). The film’s single-take set-ups will be familiar to those who have seen Akbari’s notable debut 20 Fingers (2004), as will the kind of talky intellectualising and cerebral but tempestuous self-assessments with which its characters converse. Sourness is never too far away.

20 Fingers starred Daneshmand and Akbari as the often-bickering couple; here, Daneshmand and Amiri, both playing artists, talk through their trivial problems while getting ready for an evening out in their spacious bathroom (“can you flush after you piss” / “you don’t even put the toilet seat down”). Outside, meanwhile, dogs bark and thunder rumbles, both of which contribute to the general claustrophobia, heightening tensions while providing sonic evidence of this couple’s walled-in seclusion. As characters talk over one another, that too-easy conversational claustrophobia begins to grate, and the irritation that stems from being made witness to the daily travails of pretty unpleasant folk – which also pervaded Kiarostami’s Ten (2002), in which Akbari acted – sets in to linger like an odious stench.

Perspective is everything. As one character notes, “sometimes people are so close that they cannot see each other”. But from this mannered swamp, a question emerges: what insights are we meant to draw from an artistic representation such as this? That men are shits and that Iranian society is patriarchal? At least one of those true, but is it not possible that Akbari’s own narrow perspective prevents her from seeing (let alone analysing) the material social conditions by which this might be the case? As it is, From Tehran to London’s problem is fundamental: it was an incomplete picture long before it became a “half-finished film”.

Via Front Row Reviews

Cinema and Censorship

Iran's Farhadi and China's Jia make Cannes splash

From left, directer Asghar Farhadi, actors Berenice Bejo and Ali Mosaffa listen to questions during a press conference for the film The Past at the 66th international film festival, in Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 17, 2013. Photo Courtesy AP /Virginia Mayo.

by Jill Lawless, The Associated Press

Two directors from countries with tough film censorship brought bold and probing movies to the Cannes Film Festival on Friday — one exploring China's social problems, the other delving into the mysteries of the human heart.

Jia Zhangke's "A Touch of Sin" depicts facets of fast-changing China the government prefers to avoid: corruption, greed, violent crime and the growing gap between economic winners and losers.

"The Past," by Academy Award-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, is an unsparing tale of domestic upheaval, set in and around Paris and made with a largely French cast.

Both films are competing for Cannes' top prize, the Palme d'Or — and both have been cleared for release in their homelands, where filmmakers often fall foul of restrictions.

Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has approved "The Past" for screening, and "A Touch of Sin" is due to open in China in the fall.

The two directors are pleased their films will be seen at home, but they gave very different descriptions of working in settings where official censorship is an everyday reality.

"I'm someone who is deeply attached to my creative freedom, and I always do my utmost to ensure I don't indulge in any form of self-censorship," said Jia, who has explored China's rapid transformation throughout his career — from early underground films such as "Unknown Pleasures" to documentaries to the Venice Film Festival prize-winning 2006 feature "Still Life."

Farhadi, though, said the effect of censorship was more insidious.

"One can try to free oneself of the past, but the past doesn't let you do that," he said — both a theme of "The Past" and an observation of his own situation.

"There are two kinds of censorship," he told reporters. "You have official censorship which works in a certain way. But there is also self-censorship. You impose it on your innermost self."

Iran's authorities have long had an uneasy relationship with the country's filmmakers, and influential clerics have often denounced the domestic cinema as dominated by Western-tainted liberals and political dissenters. Some directors and actors have faced arrest or fled the country.

While Farhadi shot previous films including "A Separation" — the 2012 foreign-language Oscar winner — in Iran, "The Past" was made entirely outside the country. It follows an Iranian man (actor-director Ali Mosaffa), who returns to France to finalize a divorce from his ex (Berenice Bejo, from "The Artist"), but soon becomes entangled again with her, her children and her new love ("A Prophet" star Tahar Rahim).

The film premiered at Cannes on Friday and was hailed as the first Palme d'Or contender of the festival. Critics praised its meticulous and non-judgmental look at the messy effects of relationships and their breakdown, on adults and on children.

Farhadi admitted that he felt "more secure" shooting outside Iran, free of external restrictions — but not of his own inner guidelines. He said he tried to see these "not as an obstacle but as an asset" — part of his creative makeup as a director.

Like his previous work, "The Past" is emotionally revealing but not overtly political. The director said he was happy to keep working on an intimate canvas, exploring the dynamics of personal relationships.

"There is so much suffering and pain attached to a couple, but the suffering and pain is always unique," he said. "I could spend my whole career exploring this theme without ever exhausting it."

Farhadi said he doesn't know what he will make next — or whether it will be in Iran.

"I won't decide where it will take place," he said. "It's history that will decide for me."

In contrast, "A Touch of Sin" feels strongly political. Made up of four linked episodes focusing on uprooted citizens of the new China, its story lines have been ripped from the headlines. There's a villager driven to violence by official corruption; an amoral killer roaming the land; a factory worker driven to suicide.

Jia — whose film "24 City" played at Cannes in 2008 — said he became preoccupied by the increasingly frequent stories of violence he saw in the media, and wanted to dramatize the stories for Chinese moviegoers.

"In society people often hear about these violent events, but they quickly forget," he said. "It's not by turning your back on violence or hiding violence that you make progress."

Jia said he didn't think the topics he depicted "are particularly touchy or secretive in any way, because they were already covered in the Chinese press and on the Internet."

But the director also was careful to stress — and the censors no doubt happy to hear — that the stories were timeless, not the product of modern politics, economics or technology.

"If these people were alive 100, 200, 300 years ago, at the time of the emperors, their motivation for acting like that would be exactly the same," he said. "We live in the era of the Internet and high-speed trains, but have people changed?"

___

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless


Via  The Associated Press

Iranian film-maker Mohammad Shirvani takes aim at weighty issues

Fat Shaker, a surreal film about an obese and oppressive father and his son, is a refection on wider frustrations and corruption

Levon Haftvan in Mohammad Shirvani's Fat Shaker. Courtesy Guardian.

by Tara Aghdashloo for Tehran Bureau, Guardian

There is something about the way he breathes, about the way he carries the weight around his waist, and the way his lips hang from his face.

Levon Haftvan's physique is as heavy as his acting, and he is ideally cast in Mohammad Shirvani's latest feature, Fat Shaker (2012). The strange, frustrating, dreamlike story of the relationship between a father (Haftvan) and his deaf son (Hassan Rostami), unsettled by the entrance of a young woman (Maryam Palizban), defies expectations and exercises a daring liberty in the process. The film gained international attention when it won one of the Hivos Tiger awards at the Rotterdam film festival, and it became the first Iranian feature to be screened at the Sundance film festival.

Although the plot may sound recycled at first (man and boy meet woman, compete for her attention), it is actually more nuanced and psychologically puzzling. The obese father's indolent patriarchal attitude and weary demeanour as he freely lies, grifts, and abuses his son are windows to a deeper distress that perhaps comes from his corrupted surroundings in Iran, a country engulfed in an economic crisis, troubled leadership, and a frustrated society. The few instances of actual plot are mere landscapes to locate the film in Iran. In the city, for example, we witness the father posing as a basiji (a member of the paramilitary forces, the basij, who often act as morality police) using his son to con young women. Later on, the tables turn at the villa when a basiji officer bursts in and, with icy confidence, harasses the father and son for possessing alcohol.

Throughout, the innocent eyes of the son – played with precise harmony by Rostami, who is deaf in real life – reveal more than just care and submission; they warn of an impending crisis. And Palizban, portraying the only female character, carries the burden of womanhood within a masculine gaze, fulfilling the "exotic female" role, yet with a distinctly subversive and mysterious presence. At one moment, witnessing an act of irrational contempt, she slaps one of the men so hard it makes him bleed.

Over the course of the nonlinear narrative, we follow the threesome's trip to Shomal, the northern part of Iran by the Caspian sea, which immediately evokes feelings of freedom from the urban plagues of gridlock, smog, bribery, and the rest. They get in trouble with the law and with each other, and these interactions climax on a darkening beach, ripe with pathetic fallacy. Describing the scene, Palizban and Haftvan recalled the level of emotional engagement and liberation it took from all three actors, as well as Shirvani, in a spontaneous, unravelling performance that was shot in one take. "It was like theatre," Haftvan said. He has a long history on stage, both in Canada and Iran – so he would know. "Cinema is not my medium. Not for directing, at least," he says. But his flirtations with film acting are becoming more frequent (he recently played the lead in Majid Barzegar's Parviz).

Palizban also comes from a theatre background. In fact, Fat Shaker is her first movie since she won popular acclaims with her breakthrough role in 2001's Deep Breaths. After that, she avoided cinema despite many offers, and stayed close to her theatrical roots, writing and directing plays while getting her PhD in the science of humanities in Germany. "I didn't want to be typecast, and most roles I was offered were similar," she said in an interview over Skype. Her involvement with Fat Shaker wasn't planned, and came out of a chance meeting with Shirvani, who has a reputation as an experimental filmmaker with a background in fine arts. So she knew it would be a different kind of film.

The pairing of such volatile actors, who seem to resent cinema as much as they love it, adds a layer of self-reflectivity and intensity to the screen, which in Fat Shaker is filled with their faces, shot repeatedly in close-ups mostly. Shirvani did the cinematography himself, as a last-minute resort when he couldn't find anyone he really wanted for the job. Both Haftvan and Palizban described his filming process as itself a kind of acting. With only one camera in hand, he gets close – too close sometimes – or he gets distracted and turns away from exactly what the audience may want to follow. The resulting visual experience is difficult and claustrophobic, a cinematographic reflection of the father's spiritual turmoil.

Fat Shaker may be seen as a surrealist film, and in that sense, it opens a new, daring cleft in Iranian cinema. It's not that other contemporary Iranian directors haven't experimented with surrealist approaches – think of Bahram Beyzai's Mosaferan (1992) or Massoud Bakhshi's Our Persian Rug (2010). But none have done so as assertively. "This work moves away from the typical social drama genre, which is popular with Iranian cinema because there's a lot of curiosity to know what goes on inside the country," Palizban says.

That curiosity is only natural given how tightly the government controls media production.

For the past three decades, Iranian film-makers have been festival favourites – a Palme d'Or at Cannes for Abbas Kiarostami, Venice's Golden Lion for Jafar Panahi, and a Golden Shell at the San Sebastián for Bahman Ghobadi are just some of the successes.

While this recognition began before the 1979 Islamic revolution with the likes of Shahid Sales and Forugh Farrokhzad, under the influence of Italian neo-realism and with a bold new minimalist aesthetic, these film-makers inspired a new generation of directors. Post-revolutionary Iran's investment in the film industry was mostly geared towards promoting the regime and propagating Islamic ideology, implementing a set of rules that was simultaneously strict, yet inexplicit and thus always somewhat open to interpretation. All films had to be approved by the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance. These restrictions, many argue, fostered a new language for cinema that came out of the need to transmit meanings indirectly, and trade in overtly sexual or violent content for the poetic and suggestive. Fat Shaker had permission from the government for production, but now it's been called "anti-Iranian" by the state and state-aligned media.

Over the years, the sort of Iranian films honoured at international festivals became formulaic in their rhetoric. Eventually, even Kiarostami, one of the pioneers of this style of film-making, moved on and began experimenting, though not always successfully. Asghar Farhadi's Oscar-winning drama, A Separation (2011), intended to break this mold, and showed his ability to breach the festival/popular polarity, gaining recognition from both Iranian and non-Iranian audiences. Shirvani takes this pursuit a step further. He uses well-trained actors and lets them improvise, but then regains control in the edit room, where he hacks the plot until we barely see one. "I left myself very open, and acted very intuitively," Haftvan says.

"Because there wasn't really a script as such, we improvised, and Mohammad would direct us while filming. Sometimes we rejected his directions and the plot would take a different path." These are the elements that distinguish Fat Shaker, and radically separate it from the corpus of previous Iranian art house films.

Despite the journey, Shirvani deals most of his cards in the beginning of the film, in the scene where leeches suck blood out of Haftvan's meaty back. It is a grotesque, mesmerising scene, and easy to imagine on a loop as a work of video art in a well-curated exhibition. This reliance on the materiality of the scenes, especially in a feature-length film, makes it a challenge to prolong that moment of awe. As a result, Fat Shaker is never fully surreal, and not entirely real – it is this inbetween-ness that dampens the final impact. And still, Fat Shaker grips you, shakes you up, and tears you down, all the way through.

Fat Shaker will be screened at the Denmark film festival and at UCLA on 25 April

Via Guardian

The tragic endings of Iranian cinema

Iranian cinema has effectively undergone a "brain drain" due to the policies of the Islamic republic.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi, among many others, has been banned from filmmaking in Iran. Courtesy Reuters and Al Jazeera

by Hamid Dabashi, Al Jazeera

They say choose your enemies carefully, for you will end up most resembling them. The trap is particularly treacherous for artists living under political tyranny. One can now see the wisdom of why the leading Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has so carefully skirted politics, even in the direst circumstances, and thus safeguarded his cinema from falling victim to that overriding wisdom. One hundred years from now, the best of Kiarostami's cinema will still mesmerise, baffle, and reward, when many other politically potent filmmakers will scarce be remembered.

Kiarostami's longtime protege Jafar Panahi, however, has not heeded that wisdom, or the logic of his own mentor, and thus now seems like one of the most precious victims of the brutal theocracy he has valiantly opposed and to whose trap, alas, his cinema is falling head first.

Jafar Panahi's most recent film, Parde/Closed Curtain (2013) "has won the top prize for best screenplay at the 63rd Berlin film festival". Co-directed by Kamboziya Partovi, and in defiance of a 20-year ban on filmmaking, "the winner of the 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Panahi has been held under house arrest since December 2010 for allegedly making antigovernment propaganda".

Needless to say, the custodians of the Islamic republic weren't very happy with the events in Berlin: An Iranian filmmaker that was banned from making any films went ahead and made a film that won a top prize at a major European film festival.

According to reports, "Iran has protested against the awarding of a Silver Bear to Jafar Panahi for his film Closed Curtain (Parde) at the 63rd Berlin film festival, the ISNA news agency reported."

What would become of a filmmaker when his work of art is so crowdedly fused with the politics of his time?

Cinema and politics

Because of his active and courageous support for the Green Movement in Iran, Jafar Panahi has been given a prison sentence and banned from filmmaking for twenty years. Defying that ban, he has made two films - This is not a Film (2012) and Closed Curtain (2013) - both screened at Berlin Film Festival and then to an appreciable global celebration.

Both these films, alas, are self-indulgent vagaries farthest removed from the masterpieces like Offside (2006), Crimson Gold (2003) or Circle (2000) that have made Panahi a global celebrity. He should have heeded the vicious sentence and stayed away from his camera for a while and not indulge, for precisely the selfsame social punch that have made his best films knife-sharp precise has now dulled the wit of the filmmaker that was once able to put it to such magnificent use.

Not only physically but also mentally and emotively, Panahi is not in a position to think and film in his habitual engagement with his homeland. He is angry, and rightly so - and anger should never be the paramount sentiment when one stands behind a camera or in front of a keyboard. Given the political sentiments that film festival authorities around the globe have for Panahi, they indulge him in a political solidarity that dulls the wit of his cinematic judgment. These consolation prizes are a curse in disguise.

Panahi is not the only Iranian filmmaker who has become a victim of his courageous political stands. Another major force in Iranian cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, shares his fate. After years of celebrated filmmaking in his homeland, Makhmalbaf began to make films in surrounding countries - Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Tajikistan - before he and his filmmaking family moved to Europe, and eventually lived initially in Paris and then London. Most recently, he has travelled to Israel and made another film, Gardener (2012) - this time in a Bahai temple.

Far from his natural habitat in the urban settings of his homeland, Makhmalbaf and his family are like fish out of water - with critical tenacity and remarkable cinematic verve continuing to make films, but, again, alas, his panache for virtual realism has now degenerated into angry and futile denunciations of his own culture and clime. The golden period of Makhmalbaf's filmmaking in the 1990s - with masterpieces like Once Upon a Time Cinema (1992) and A Moment of Innocence (1996) - now seems like the distant dreams of another lifetime, when Makhmalbaf had his hands on the pulse of his people.

Following Mohsen Makhmalbaf, another icon of Iranian cinema, Bahram Beizai, has also left Iran and now lives in California. So far, he has judiciously stayed away from his camera and busied himself with staging his old plays, and with research and writing. For thirty years, Beizai has been subject to the vicious censorial policies of the Islamic republic that scarce allowed him to make films, and on the rare occasion he's allowed, his cinema exudes with his creative genius though marred with much existential angst, anger, and arrogance.

Long before both Makhmalbaf and Beizai and is yet another major force in Iranian cinema, Amir Naderi left his homeland for good and moved to New York (with recent sojourns to Japan), where he has made a number of critically acclaimed films in his adopted settings - films like Marathon (1997) or Cut (2012) - that can scarce be considered part of "Iranian cinema" anymore. With remarkable tenacity and under exceedingly difficult circumstances and almost non-existent resources, Naderi has kept his cinema afloat, but his vision and imagination have long since departed from his homeland.

Even those who have opted to stay in Iran have not faired any better. Consider the doyen of Iranian cinema, Daryoush Mehrjui, whose cinema - graced with such masterpieces as The Cow (1969) and The Tenants (1986) - suffered massively once his literary comrade Gholam Hossein Saedi (1936-1985) left Iran and opted to live with the pain of exile in Paris until his premature death.

Another monumental figure in Iranian cinema, Sohrab Shahid Sales (1944-1998) ran away from the horrid censorial policies of the Islamic republic until his premature death in Chicago. Before his death, Shahid Sales had made major inroads into German New Cinema, by making some of his best films in his host country. But just like Naderi, this aspect of his cinema is scarce known in Iran, let alone being part of "Iranian cinema".

Even before Shahid Sales, Parviz Sayyad had left his homeland in disgust and opted to live in Los Angeles, smack in the heart of the infested environment of the most useless and pestiferous Iranian community, to which the ugly faces of the Shahs of Sunset does perfect justice. Thus Iranian cinema lost one of its most gifted filmmakers from the robust environment of 1970s Iran to the sick and corrupt life of Tehrangeles.

Another vastly promising Iranian filmmaker, Bahman Qobadi began his career with making groundbreaking films like A Time for Drunken Horses (2000) and Songs of my Motherland (2002) - to which it was later opportunistically titled Marooned in Iraq to bank on the market of US-led invasion of Iraq - but soon began losing connection to his natural Kurdish habitat long before he left Iran, and became a businessman with an eye to the deeply divided and flawed Iranian expat community, with his most recent film simply unwatchable.

But not all Iranian filmmakers who left their homeland lost their senses of who and what they are. Like Amir Naderi, Susan Taslimi, a prodigious actress who graced Iranian cinema and theatre for decades, left Iran and opted to live in Sweden where she became an exceedingly successful actress and director in her adopted language and culture - and today, for all intents and purposes, she is a Swedish actress and filmmaker.

Examples abound and the point here is not to be exhaustive, but simply to mark the historic moment when the ungodly censorial polices of the Islamic republic, the injudicious choices of some filmmakers, and perhaps even more critically the aesthetic exhaustion of Iranian cinema as we have known and admired it for decades has brought a magnificent artistic adventure to an end.

Towering over all his colleagues, Abbas Kiarostami has made his last few films outside Iran - and scarce his compatriots have seen these films let alone have any affinity with them. While expanding his cinematic repertoire in new and perhaps even unchartered directions, a film such as Like Someone in Love (2012) shot in Japan or Certified Copy (2010) set in Tuscany, can hardly be called an "Iranian film".

Unnatural rule, misty dreams

The ruling regime in Iran has succeeded in ripping the leading Iranian filmmakers from the fabric of their society and cast them into vague and ambiguous environments about which they know very little. Given their creative ingenuity - as now perhaps best evident in the works of Jafar Panahi or Mohsen Makhmalbaf - they can manage to create almost anywhere, from their living room to the occupied Palestine, but the result begins to abstract the filmmakers from that certain intuition of transcendence that approximates an artist to the sacred precincts of her and his culture.

Cultural production is not a monogamous proposition. Art is promiscuous and keeps changing creative partnership - with poets one day, novelists another, and then off to filmmakers, dramatists, bloggers, musicians, journalist, you name it. Today, Iranian underground music is in tune with the pulse of the nation with the same verve and pulsation that Iranian cinema once was.

This is not to say Iranian cinema has no future - but that future is being mapped out and navigated on unchartered territories far from major European or even non-European film festivals. Under the radar is now a young generation of filmmakers whose courageous and imaginative works are yet to receive any recognition in their own homeland or celebration in any major film festival. Right there, in the misty excitement of that haphazard anonymity, there is a Forough Farrokhzad feeling her way towards the making of her House is Black, and keeping her company are her legendry contemporaries - here is the young Daryoush Mehrjui, and there is Amir Naderi, and I see Bahram Beizai standing there - and how fortunate that they still don't know who they are, and how unfathomable is the dream they are yet to narrate and name.


Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. Among his books is Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema (2007).

Via Al Jazeera

Behind Closed Doors

Iran's International Fajr Festival

Smog covers the Milad telecommunications tower as it appears behind traffic lights in northwestern Tehran. Courtesy of AFP/Getty Images and Qantara.

The organizers at this year's Fajr Festival appear to have been chiefly concerned with issuing the mandatory conclusion that in view of the countless protest movements, the West is at the end of its tether. But even at this state-sponsored cultural event, Iran's very own crisis is tangible.

by Amin Farzanefar, Qantara.de

The Iranian capital Tehran is one of the most polluted cities in the world. At an altitude of 1,500 metres, the thinning air is exacerbated by the fact that due to fuel supplies limited by sanctions, three-and-a-half million cars run on home-brewed diesel. On good days, you can just about make out the Milad Tower – the film festival took place on the ground floor of the 6th tallest tower in the world in the world – through the haze of smog. But even here, Iran's crisis is tangible.

For a while, it was touch and go whether the festival would take place at all, due to concerns that there was barely enough celluloid material to make the film copies. Organisation was more chaotic than usual: The catalogue wasn't ready until three days after the festival had had begun, few of the films had been subtitled, and simultaneous interpretation for foreign correspondents and curators, of which there only appeared to be a handful on this occasion, also came to an end at some point.

There were nevertheless a few choice films for local audiences: Michael Haneke's "Amour", Volker Schlöndorff's French resistance film "The Morning Sea" and Roman Polanski's biting comedy "God of Carnage".

Discussing Islamophobia and Iranophobia in Tehran

A conference held on the sidelines of the festival – the "Third International Conference on Hollywood and Cinema" – attracted considerably more international guests than the event itself.

Laming enthusiasm: Ticket sales at this year's Fajr Festival were lower than usual. Moreover, organisation was more chaotic than usual: The catalogue wasn't ready until three days after the festival had had begun. Courtesy of Qantara.

Held at the luxury Azadi Hotel – the name means "freedom" – the meeting involved 50 experts from mostly western nations spending four days discussing the subject of Islamophobia and Iranophobia: the negative clichés of western movie culture in relation to Islam and Iran.

Special attention in this debate was afforded to Ben Affleck's "Argo", which has just won an Oscar. The film is set in 1979 during the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran, when a CIA agent smuggled six hostages out of the country by claiming they were working on a trashy science fiction movie.

Shortly before, the Iranian government had announced it would be financing a movie to correct what it claims is the distorted and one-sided US reading of the story with a version based on historic truths as told by eyewitness reports. It remains to be seen whether or not this new Iranian version will include the embarrassing detail that the authorities took seven days to realise that the hostages had escaped.

Part of a worldwide anti-imperialist movement

When conference participants demand that the omnipotence of Hollywood movies should be countered by a bolstering of independent media and the Internet, it should be noted that this demand is being issued in a country with strict Internet censorship, where just a few days previously, 16 journalists were arrested...

Conference participants meanwhile perceive themselves as part of a worldwide movement encompassing Africa, Asia and Latin America and seeking affiliation with the Occupy movement. An honourable approach, but its concrete configuration turned out to be highly tendentious: The US film industry is essentially viewed as part of a Zionist-Imperialist conspiracy.

"Distorted and one-sided US reading": Ben Affleck's "Argo" tells the story of the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The Iranian government has announced it will be financing a movie according to the Iranian version of events. "Argo" recently won three Oscars, a further provocation for Tehran. Courtesy of Qantara.

Whether by reputable or dubious means, organisers appear to have been chiefly concerned with issuing the mandatory conclusion that in view of the countless protest movements, the West is at the end of its tether and that only Islam can offer salvation.

The peculiarities of Iranian cinema

Conditions for filmmakers in Iran have never been ideal, but censorship has led to the development of a complex, ambiguous pictorial language. Constraints are especially invasive at present – although 80 films have again been made despite the restrictions. The children featured in many Iranian movies of the past, and which enjoyed success at international festivals, have now grown into young adults, tired and mellow. Iranian cinema used to be about solidarity, now it's all about an unbridled greed for money.

"We've become wolves for each other," says a taxi driver on the way to the Milad Tower. You hear utterances like this frequently, in taxis and in movies.

Social criticism is acceptable to a certain degree – as long as it is not open criticism of the system. Asghar Farhadi's sensational Berlinale and Oscar success "A Separation", for example, which is representative of a whole series of social-realist films on the crisis of a middle class crippled by heightened economic and ideological limitations.

But all in all – and in particular following election unrest of 2009 – filmmakers now have even less room for movement: Arrests have been made, people have been banned from pursuing their profession, and the independent alliance "Khaneh Cinema" was closed down.

Iran's sordid isolation

An observation: international isolation and control of the public arena are increasingly leading to a transposition of the action to places behind closed doors, also in films. Following a breathtaking opening sequence heralding something more akin to a roadmovie, Parviz Shahbazi then consigns "Darband" to the rooms of an illegal female student flatshare. This movie also addresses the issues of money, greed and deception: In the end, a female student absconds to the West with her roommates' cash.

Politics creeping into cinema: "International isolation and control of the public arena are increasingly leading to a transposition of the action to places behind closed doors, also in films," Amin Farzanefar observes. - Scene from Maijid Barzegar's "Parviz". Courtesy of Qantara.

"Acting Class" by Reza Davoudnejad is a quite bizarre family drama –made with a hand-held camera, interspersed with commentaries from the actors and director, in the style of a film workshop – enthusiastic, playful, avant-garde and filmed almost exclusively in an apartment. This conjures up a mercurial, spontaneous portrait of a large Iranian family.

Davoudnejad serves as a kind of master of ceremonies, commenting on the action with a felt-tip pen and a flip chart. "The world's not good," complains the unhappy grandmother in the film. "Then let's just make another one!" says the 50-year-old brightly, erasing the sentence. The spontaneous burst of applause from the audience in moments such as this one is evidence that people do still harbour some hope.

Self-righteous perspectives

Dariush Mehrjui, founding father of the Iranian "Nouvelle vague" in the 1970s presented "How great you're back", a film showing old friends celebrating the return of another friend to the Caspian Sea: a surprisingly familiar middle class milieu experimenting with yoga, healing stones and other substances, as though searching for an alternative to prescribed piety.

Mehrjui, a controversial figure due to the turbulent twists and turns of his own life, contrasted the self-righteous perspectives of this year's Fajr Festival with something Dionysian – although this time, audiences were less receptive to the capers.

Nevertheless Mehrjui's film was screened in a large cinema, while less agreeable movies are hidden away in smaller venues and screened at later times. Independent filmmakers are not really made to feel part of the Fajr Festival, but neither are they embraced anywhere else – so although they may welcome the solidarity of the Berlinale with the persecuted director Jafar Panahi currently under house arrest, they also bemoan the fact that other films made under the most difficult conditions but without publicity, have little chance of being screened at any of the major festivals.

"Parviz" by Maijid Barzegar, without doubt one of the best works shown as this year's event, is one of the few films to have already been screened at international festivals. The 50-year-old, emotionally somewhat retarded Parviz is thrown out of his house by his father, quickly learns how heartless other people can be and begins to establish a reign of terror. This touches on many virulent issues: A lack of perspectives, a lack of social coherence, an order based on power structures, general social and economic crisis.

Long queues gathered for the second late screening of "Parviz" at the Azadi cinema, spectators chanted demands to be let in, with security forces eventually threatening to use tear gas to disperse the crowds. There it is again: protest bubbling up from the street.


Translated from the German by Nina Coon. Editor: Lewis Gropp.

Via Qantara.de

Pulling Bahman Mohassess from history's tide

Mitra Farahani's documentary film "Fifi Howls From Happiness" captures the last two months in the life of Iranian artist Bahman Mohasses. Farahani talked to DW about the film, the man and his legacy. 

Bahman Mohassess, Smoked Out by Mitra Farahani. Courtesy Artinfo

by Helen Whittle, DW

DW: How did you first learn about the work of Bahman Mohassess?

Mitra Farahani: Strangely enough, Bahman Mohassess had a kind of physical absence within the contemporary art scene in Iran - partly because of his disappearance. This absence was always striking to me because of the sheer power of his works. There was a kind of paradox between the fact that he's rarely mentioned and rarely present in history, and the force and the power of his works, paintings and sculptures. One of my objectives was to try to find out how to explain that paradox.

Why did Bahman Mohassess leave Iran?

The very first time that he left Iran was during his artistic formation in his youth during the 1950s, when the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh, who was famous for wanting to nationalize oil, was overthrown in a coup d'état orchestrated by the US and Britain. At this time, like many other artists, he had the opportunity to benefit from scholarships and funding for young artists to go and be trained in Europe. We're talking about the coup against Mossadegh, who most of the artists supported and were committed to in this political context. Obviously the defeat gave them the desire to leave, the disillusionment - that's the very first time he left Iran.

He came back to Iran in the 1960s and 70s and was really productive during this time and acquired some famous commissions from the wife of the Shah. This was the period when he translated and staged important works of theater in Iran by Jean Genet, Luigi Pirandello, Eugene Ionesco. He really flourished during this time. After the Iranian Revolution, he continued to travel in secret between Iran and Europe, especially Italy. Then 2006, the year when his brother died, was a kind of symbolic moment when Mohassess decided he could no longer stand the state of culture, and, let's say, the social environment in Iran. He left the country for the last time and remained in Italy.

In the film, you describe an "incompetent art history" that is unable to deal with the figure of Bahman Mohassess. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Beyond art history, there is history itself as a whole, which has not been recorded and written as such in Iran. It's really problematic that the important historical figures, whether artists or other kinds of people, have not been given the place in history that they deserve. Bahman Mohassess was of such huge importance for modern art, yet it was like only the tips of his fingers were emerging from the wave of history - I had to pull him out of this wave. In Iran, history was more or less written according to the figures in power, to the power of the state and to the power of the monarchy, and so there was no such thing as a history that could be a testimony to the figures outside of the state's power and of the monarchy. The history that has been written in Iran is the history of power and politics and never the history of thought, philosophy or art.

A scene from the film "Fifi Howls from Happiness" (2013) by Mitra Farahani. Courtesy DW

You live in Paris and Iran. How difficult is freedom of expression for you as a female filmmaker and artist in Iran? 

My own belief is that there is no such thing as a difference between men and women on this issue, and you can really be sure that when you work as an artist in Iran you will never be more threatened as a woman than as a man. I never thought about things like this and through such categories because I really think they don't exist. If there are problems or difficulties, then it is for both men and women at the same level.

And what are the difficulties? 

Whether you talk about political pressure or economic pressure - because there are both - I really believe that actually it's about the individual and of course, as I told you, there is no difference, in my opinion, between men and women in front of these various pressures. Look at all the male Iranian journalists who are in prison now. Maybe we don't always think about them as much as artists or filmmakers. But anyway, I really believe that the way that you as an individual face this kind of pressure, the pressure that Western journalists usually point at, like you are doing right now, to me it's down to the individual. It's about how you react to it and how much you are prepared to take and how far you are prepared to go as an individual.

With the film, it seems, you have rescued Bahman Mohassess from being swallowed by history. Given his disappearance and his tendency to destroy his own works, do you think that he actually wanted to be saved?

Well, it's a very good question because I could say that's the whole point of the film. Maybe this contradiction and this kind of vicious play between the need and the desire for being a part of history and this obsessive destructive character, who doesn't want to be saved or who doesn't want to be recorded or heard, maybe this contradiction will never be resolved some how, even if it's resolved somehow by the film itself.

Mitra Farahani was born in Tehran in 1975. Farahani trained as a painter at Azad University Tehran and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, where she made her first documentary film "Just a Woman." The film was selected for the Berlin International Film Festival and received the Teddy Awards Special Jury Prize. Her documentary on sexuality in Iranian society "Zohre and Manouchehr (Taboos)" was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2004. In 2005, she made the documentary film "Behjat Sadr: Suspended Time," a portrait of the pioneering Iranian abstract painter. Her latest documentary film about Iranian artist Bahman Mohassess (1931-2010), "Fifi Howls From Happiness," premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, 2013. 

Interview: Helen Whittle, Berlin. Editor: Greg Wiser.

Via DW