Jafar Panahi, house arrest, This Is Not A Film, 2012
Iranian director Jafar Pahahi has been under house arrest for more than a year now awaiting the outcome of latest appeal of his 2010 conviction of conspiring to overthrow Iran’s Islamic Republic. His latest effort, This Is Not A Film is a documentary of what he describes as “two idle filmmakers,” Panahi and fellow Iranian director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, attempting to make sense out of a nonsensical situation. Filmed mostly inside Panahi’s Tehran apartment over the course of a day and evening, the movie is an interesting metaphor for the likely state of Panahi’s frustrated creative mind right now.
The movie follows Panahi as he eat breakfast and kibitzes with his lawyer on the phone about the possible results of his legal appeal. It then continues with a visit from Mirtahmasb who films Panahi as he describes the scenario for his most recently script, lately rejected by the Iranian censorship board. Panahi and Mirtahmasb begin to block out the film on Panahi’s living room rug, but the process abruptly ends and the documentary goes on several tangents. Somehow Panahi ends up filming Mirtahmasb on his cell phone camera while Mirtahmasb is filming him, in circumspect defiance of the regime’s ban on Panahi making films. The film ends with Panahi interviewing an art student/garbage collector/deliveryman on his trash-collecting rounds as they discuss the difficulties of creating work under the current regime’s oppressive eye.
Attesting to Panahi’s status as one of Iran’s leading directors, we see him in his comfortable flat casually name-checking various members of the Iranian filmmaking pantheon such as Rakhshān (Bani-E’temād) and Khambozia (Partovi). Yet he also seems quite at ease chatting with the art student/garbageman and doesn’t seem to mind riding in an elevator with a smelly trashcan.
Jafar Pahahi, blocking, This Is Not A Film, 2012
This Is Not A Film has the same watchful intelligence as Panahi’s narrative films (The Circle; Offside; Crimson Gold), and as with those films, this one possesses a sharp critique of the Iranian power structure. Several times Panahi mentions his unwillingness to solicit public support from his fellow Iranian filmmakers due to the risks from the government their aid may cause them and Mirtahmasb at one point asks Panahi to take a picture of him as evidence in case the government retaliates against him for helping out Panahi. Throughout the documentary an uneasy undercurrent of repression flavors the goings-on, adding a furtive guardedness to the proceedings.
Panahi maintains a keen eye for metaphor–he paces fitfully in his apartment, only able to connect to the outside world through remote devices like the cell phone or through TV news, or at a distance, by watching the city’s daily life at a remove on his balcony. The storyline of Panahi’s rejected script involves a young woman attempting to escape the house that her family has locked her in, which of course echoes Panahi’s own real-life house arrest. Tellingly, the recounting of this story and others in the documentary are interrupted and unfinished, adding to the film’s mood of incompleteness and frustration.
Jafar Panahi, frustrated, This Is Not A Film, 2012
Panahi also makes good use of the spectacle of Fireworks Wednesday, the boisterous celebration of Persian New Year. The film ends with Panahi viewing from afar a bonfire just outside the gates of his apartment building as his visitor warns him not to be seen holding a camera or “they will see you.” As he lingers in his doorway he clearly longs to join the celebration, yet his wariness that “they” will censure him constrains him.
This small moment is an excellent representation of the invisible restrictions on Panahi’s freedom and the way in which the Iranian regime holds him captive, as well as the means by which he attempts to subvert that captivity. The doublespeak of This Is Not A Film’s title echoes that subversion, as Panahi tries to find a workaround to his confinement without pushing the regime too far. It’s a delicate, frustrating balance and one Panahi captures pretty effectively in this film. His creative life hangs in the balance and, like the interrupted stories throughout, if the Iranian government prevails, it may never reach its full completeness.
This Is Not a Film (In film nist, Iran 2011), dir. Jafar Panahi
Although I love the overwrought histrionics of commercial cinema (see Agneepath), that’s certainly not the only way to make a movie. Two films that have been on a lot of last year’s top ten lists have recently made their way to San Francisco cinemas. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon A Time In Anatolia and Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation are both riveting pieces of work that deal with the ambiguity and shades of gray found in complex moral situations
Despite a title that harkens back to Sergio Leone’s expressionistic spaghetti Westerns, Ceylan’s Anatolia is an understated, masterfully told story that sidesteps the conventions of most genre films. The film follows a group of local police through a long night on the Anatolian steppes as they search for the grave of a murdered man. The cops are reluctantly assisted by two perps whose memory of the crime wavers in and out of focus throughout the night.
Moral complexity, Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, 2011
As they drive around western Turkey’s vast landscape the police amiably debate the benefits of sheep versus buffalo yogurt, meticulously tot up mileage for reimbursement, and gossip about who among them might have prostate issues, among other mundanities. The narrative unfolds naturalistically, without a soundtrack, with some of the dialogue seemingly improvised or loosely scripted. Themes and plot points emerge slowly and sometimes indirectly—a character’s offhanded comment in one scene takes on great relevance later in the film. Such restraint and respect for the audience’s intelligence is a welcome change from the hamhandedness of most films, where exposition is a blunt instrument used to club the viewer into submission.
The film presents realistic, complex characters, with killers that weep remorsefully, cops that show compassion for criminals, and men who are overawed by the beauty of a young woman simply serving tea by candlelight. Ceylan’s direction brings a deft and subtle touch to the film—the movie concludes with a matter-of-fact autopsy with the unsettling sounds of the procedure, including cracking breastbones and dripping fluids, emphasizing the operation’s dehumanizing effect. Overall Ceylan’s direction is a lovely thing to behold, as he uses the policemen’s wanderings through the Anatolian countryside as a metaphor for the imprecision and ambiguity of humanity’s moral landscape.
While it also looks at the unclarity of human morality, A Separation’s briskly paced and intense storyline takes a different tack than Anatolia’s slower, more naturalistic tale. Farhadi’s political allegory/family drama starts in medias res, with a middle-class Iranian couple arguing their case directly to the camera (standing in for the off-screen judge). Simin, the wife wants a divorce in order to move to the United States against the wishes of Nader, her husband, who feels a duty and an obligation to remain in Iran to care for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father. Simin pleads the urgency of going abroad in order to improve the life of their adolescent daughter Termeh, although the details of this necessity are not made clear. The judge dismisses her suit, and Simin decides to move to her mother’s house rather than stay with her husband. The film follows the aftermath of her decision, with this seemingly small action leading to unexpected, ever-broadening repercussions.
The film features an outstanding ensemble cast including Leila Hatami and Peyman Moaadi, who won Best Actress and Actor awards at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival for their portrayals of the conflicted couple. However the rest of the performances are also excellent, including Sareh Bayat as the devout woman that Nader hires to care for his father, and Shahab Hosseini as her hotheaded husband.
Divided, A Separation, 2011
Director Farhadi makes great use of his locations’ architecture, confining his characters in small, enclosed spaces that stifle communication and hinder movement. He also effectively utilizes windows and doors, often framing the actors separated or trapped behind panes of glass. Several times his characters slam or pound on a rattling, fragile stained-glass door, yet it resolutely resists shattering. The door thus becomes a symbol for the delicate yet impenetrable separations of class, religion, and gender that divide Iranian society.
Farhadi also successfully conveys the illogic of government bureaucracy in a chaotic trial that takes place in a cramped, crowded judge’s chambers. Witnesses shout at each other without hesitation, various people come and go, and criminal charges quickly escalate from theft to battery to murder based on hearsay, conjecture, and unproven accusations.
The film ultimately hinges on 11-year-old Termeh’s choice—which parent will she stay with? Her indecision becomes the crux of the film, symbolizing the impossibility of neatly resolving most human conflicts.
Like Once Upon A Time In Anatolia,A Separation eschews a Hollywood ending—loose ends dangle, storylines are unresolved, and characters remain in limbo. As in real life, clear and easy resolutions aren’t a part of the picture.
UPDATE: As expected, A Separation won for Best Foreign-language Picture at this year’s Oscars, following a similar award at the Golden Globes and, as expected, with Israel on the verge of bombing its irascible neighbor, (with the tacit approval of the U.S. government), the film’s increased profile is being spun by all sides. Although director Farhadi used his Oscar acceptance speech to make a plea for tolerance and understanding, the Iranian government claimed the award was a blow against “the Zionist lobby,” while Iranian hard-liner Masoud Ferasati called the film “the dirty picture (of Iran that) westerners are wishing for.” No doubt more mud will be slung on both sides of the propaganda war.
The Berlinale opened this week and the film festival posted on the front page of its website a powerful and poignant letter from jailed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, whom the Iranian government recently sentenced to six years in prison and banned for twenty years from making films, for supposedly plotting against the regime. In his letter Panahi states, “The reality is they have deprived me of thinking and writing for twenty years, but they can not keep me from dreaming that in twenty years inquisition and intimidation will be replaced by freedom and free thinking.”
It’s heartbreaking to think that an artist as talented as Panahi and as outspoken in his support of human rights might be muzzled for two decades. I’ve only seen his three most recent films but each of them are both innovative and imaginatively made movies as well as clear, uncompromising critiques of social inequities in Iran and beyond. The Circle (2003) savagely exposes the gender inequities in the lives of Iranian women. Crimson Gold (2003), written by fellow Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, concerns an everyday pizza delivery man whose daily humiliations by the ruling class eventually push him over the edge. Offside (2006) also takes on gender roles in modern-day Iran, framing its story against the runup to the World Cup.
The international film community, as evidenced by the Berlinale’s decision to leave a symbolically empty chair for Panahi on its jury panel, has been vocal in its opposition to his sentence, but it remains to be seen if the Iranian government will bow to public pressure to release Panahi or reduce his sentence.
Panahi has been eloquent in his own defense, noting in an interview in August, ““When a filmmaker does not make films it is as if he is jailed. Even when he is freed from the small jail, he finds himself wandering in a larger jail. The main question is: why should it be a crime to make a movie? A finished film, well, it can get banned but not the director.”
David Wojnarowicz, still from "A Fire In My Belly," 1987
Though Panahi’s sentence may seem shockingly excessive, we here in the U.S. shouldn’t forget that culture wars are still being fought in this country as well. In October 2010, conservative Reps. John Boehner, R-Ohio(now Speaker of the House) and Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) targeted the inclusion of the late artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz’s short experimental film A Fire in My Belly in the show Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Citing a brief passage from the film in which ants are seen crawling over a wooden crucifix, Boehner called the exhibit “an outrageous use of taxpayer money and obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season.” Skittish Smithsonian curators quickly pulled the film from the show, to the outrage of much of the art world (the Warhol Foundation threatened to withdraw its funding from the museum). As with early 1990s attacks on NEA-funded artists by Sen. Jesse Helms, another far-right stalwart, the current assault attempts to silence what the right considers a dangerously subversive perspective, that of a gay man who dared to include religious iconography in his work. It’s one more volley in the ongoing attempt by the right to control the cultural discourse of the U.S.
Perhaps more so that the left, the right wing keenly understands the ability of art and culture to sway public opinion. As Jeff Chang and Brian Komar so astutely note in Vision: How We Can Beat Conservatives With Progressive Culture, their excellent essay on alternet.org about what they term “cultural strategy,” “When artists tell new stories, they can shift the culture and make new politics possible.” There’s a reason why conservatives are once again agitating to de-fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and it’s not because they don’t like the tote bag they got with their membership pledge. It’s because the right understands that by controlling arts, culture and media outlets, and by extension controlling the master narrative, it can control the social and political landscape as well. As Mao Zedong famously stated, “[Our purpose is] to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapon for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy.” (Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, May 1942) Change “revolutionary” to “conservative” and “enemy” to “Democrats” and this quote could be straight from the latest installment of Fox News.
Poster, Cultural Revolution, ca. 1971
Mao had a good reason to fear the millions of artists and intellectuals that he exiled to hard labor in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. He understood the power of art to shape popular thought and sway political opinion, as does the Republican brain trust that has been fighting for control of the arts and culture of this country for decades, and as does the ruling party in Iran that has chosen to silence Jafar Panahi.
So while we wring our hands over the fate of Panahi, we should keep in mind that we’ve immersed in a culture war here in our own backyard as well. Rush, Sean, and Bill aren’t just harmless kooks mouthing off on cable tv, but are significant bully pulpits of the right-wing thought-control machine. It’s no accident that in the dire hours of the Egyptian revolution this past month, then-President Mubarak immediately moved to shut down Internet access, repress independent media outlets, and harass journalists. The power to define and shape the cultural narrative, whether through art, media, or information exchange, is the new high ground in the battle for ideological and political power.
UPDATE: Jafar Panahi has just been awarded the Carrosse d’Or (Golden Coach) at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, which is awarded for “innovative qualities, courage and independent-mindedness.” Cannes will screen Offside on May 12 and will keep an symbolically empty chair in the theater for Panahi.
Illuminated curtain, Great Star Theater, A Moment In Time, Ruby Yang, 2010
I’m not sure that the nice Chinese American ladies sitting behind me during the screening of James Hong & Yin-Ju Chen’s Lessons Of The Blood, shown last Tuesday as part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), knew exactly what they had signed up for when the bought their tickets. They had been behind me in line outside of the Sundance Kakuki Cinema, chatting amiably in English and Toi San, and I heard them mention that the film was “about the Nanking massacre” and that it had “won some kind of award in Europe.” As the film progressed and drew the audience deeper into its horrific tale, the ladies began to gasp and groan in dismay since Hong & Jin’s movie is not for the faint of heart and tells its story in chilling detail. Not unlike when I see a particularly brilliant horror flick, I found myself overwhelmed with dread and anxiety by the end of the movie, all the more so since its story is drawn from facts and history.
Germ warfare victim, Lessons Of The Blood, James Hong & Yin-Ju Chen, 2010
The film outlines the infamous series of war crimes commonly known as ‘the rape of Nanking,” but as told by Hong & Chen it’s quite a bit more. Unflinchingly graphic in its description of the various atrocities committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing during World War II, it also included several stomach-turning closeups of festering wounds found on the now-elderly survivors of the germ warfare unleashed by the Japanese Imperial Army in the 1940s. Lessons Of The Blood, however, is more than sensationalized propaganda or simple polemics. It’s also an impressively crafted film, using found footage from propaganda films, newsreels, Hollywood movies, television news, and other filmic detritus, as well as a disturbing and ominous soundtrack, coupled with modern-day interviews with Chinese wartime survivors (who willingly reveal their various scars and disfigurations). The result is a haunting condemnation of both the historical crimes as well as the modern-day complicity that implicates us all. Needless to say, watching this movie was hella intense.
Lessons Of The Blood was one of the strongest films from this year’s action-packed SFIAAFF. Although once again I spent more time at the parties than watching movies (in part because so many shows sold out), I managed to catch A Moment In Time, Ruby Yang & Lambert Yam’s luminous elegy to San Francisco Chinatown movie houses. The film is a comprehensive look at the ways the Great Star, the World, the Bella Union, and the Mandarin theaters were in days of yore the glue that held together the Chinese community, beginning in the 1920s and continuing until their collective demise in the mid-1990s. I myself had the privilege of seeing several classic Hong Kong films with my buddy Patrick at both the World and the Great Star (including a strange and awesome double bill of the violent shoot’em up Big Bullet and the weepy melodrama Comrades: Almost A Love Story) and I can attest to the downscale utilitarianism of both of those movie houses. But there’s nothing like seeing a Chinese-language film with a roomful of Chinese people who are eating cuttlefish, smoking, and chattering incessantly in Cantonese during the show, and Yang and Lam’s movie captures that sensation exactly. One patron interviewed described his entire family including young children attending 9.30p Saturday night shows for 25 cents total, the kids running up and down the aisles and the parents gossiping and eating chicken wings and melon seeds until all hours.
Cell phone a-go-go, Tehran Without Permission, Sepedeh Farsi, 2008
I also caught a screening of Tehran Without Permission, shot surreptitiously on a cell phone in the months running up to the 2009 presidential election in Iran. Although I was dog-tired from attending my own world premiere and reception for The Oak Park Story earlier that day, Sepedeh Farsi’s verite documentary held my attention throughout its 80-minute run time. Through subtle and succinct vignettes the film captures the mood and attitude of citizens of Tehran, with small details and comments presaging the upheavals that would occur in a few months hence.
Deepika Padukone & Saif Ali Khan, just another impossibly gorgeous Bollywood couple, Love Aaj Kal, 2009
I also made time to see the festival’s annual Bollywood at the Castro movie, Love Aaj Kal, although it was the fourth film of a long day of movie-going. I have a soft spot for this program since it was at last year’s festival that I caught my very first Shah Rukh Khan movie, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, which spurred my obsessive love for SRK in particular and for Bollywood movies in general. Love Aaj Kal, alas, does not star Shah Rukh Khan but the hot and charming Saif Ali Khan makes an acceptable substitute. Paired with the doe-eyed and astoundingly pretty Deepika Padukone, Saif plays dual roles as a modern-day commitment-phobic NRI in Britain and a noble and lovestruck suitor in the 1960s Punjab. The film deftly shuttles back in forth in time between these two stories, drawing parallels and distinctions between the romances from each period. A well-made and satisfying love story with some excellent dance sequences, the film is a great example of high-quality Hindi-language commercial moviemaking—in other words, a fun and rewarding bit of Bollywood entertainment.
I also passed by a rush line full of excited teens waiting for the special appearance of youtube darlings kevjumba, wong fu, nigahiga and timothy delaghetto. The youth were madly texting and tweeting as they waited to see their favorite internet stars in the flesh, but tickets were, alas, impossible to come by since the show had sold out as soon as it was announced. It was nice to see the next generation of SFIAAFF fans out in force, which hopefully augers well for the continued health and well-being of Asian American filmmaking.
Filmmakers Felicia Lowe & the late, great Loni Ding, 2009. photo: Jay Jao
NOTE: This year’s fest was dedicated to the memory of the force of nature known as Loni Ding, the legendary Asian American filmmaker and educator who a few weeks ago died at age 78 from complications from a serious of strokes. Loni was one of the fiercest and most amazing people on the planet and her energy, dedication, and sheer determination guided her filmmaking, which included seminal documentaries like Ancestors In America and The Color of Honor. She always had a kind word and a smile for younger filmmakers like myself and made us feel like we were doing something significant in our work. She was the moral center of the Asian American film community and she will be sorely missed.
After several months of bubbling under, turmoil has once again exploded in Iran this weekend, with at least fifteen people killed, including the nephew of Green Movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, in demonstrations in support of governmental reform there. I’ll leave it to more diligent and erudite observers to compile and analyze the events as they happen but I did want to note again that the web is the place to be for the most up-to-the minute information about this weekend’s happenings. Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic has been liveblogging since Saturday night; fletcher christiansen at dailykos.com has a great roundup of news and links: the Daily Nite Owl has also been liveblogging here. And if you’re twittering, #iranelection is the hashmark to follow, with oxfordgirl also livetweeting.
youtube also has much video shot on the streets: I’ve included just one that seems particularly telling.
At 3.49 it apparently shows a member of the Basij, Iran’s paramilitary police force, removing his helmet and holding it aloft, to the cheers and cries of the crowd.
Defecting Basiji carried by the crowd, Tehran, December 27, 2009
Another photo shows a Basiji in a green scarf being carried above a crowd, arms outstretched.
Several observers including Sullivan suggest that the basiji are defecting, taking the side of the demonstrators and renouncing their support for the government. To me this seems like a very significant development. If the regime is beginning to lose the support of the military and no longer has the muscle to back up its repression, it can’t last very long. Or at least that’s what I’d like to believe—no one can tell if the tide has turned in Iran, but at this moment it’s still possible to wish for the Iranian people to free themselves and to gain some measure of self-determination. Here’s hoping the new decade brings them positive and momentous change.
UPDATE: Further discussion here on Sullivan’s blog re: possible Basiji defections. Readers seem to think that nothing conclusive is proven by the images. Great discussion all around.
I’m tearing myself away from twitter right now to note that, since the aftermath of the disputed election in Iran last week, the much-maligned social networking site has all of a sudden become the most significant media outlet for information about the protests in that country. Search #iranelection and you get dozens of tweets and retweets every minute from Iranians on the ground reporting live in first person about the civil unrest there. Although Iranian security forces are trying to track and shut down tweeters, news is still pouring out of the country via the social media site much faster than it can be traced and eliminated. “it was a nightmare, I can barely breath & my face is burning, Masood got shot in the arm & Shayan’s brother is missing,” reads one tweet. “we ran as fast as we could in the opposite direction, at the same time basiji bastards started to hit fleeing people,” states another.
Mainstream media sources like msnbc.com and the BBC are suddenly the followers, not the leaders, of online, first-person news sources—the U.K. Telegraph, cnn.com and time.com are reporting on the latest twitter updates
Underscoring the influence of new media on what’s going on in Iran, embattled opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi released his most recent statement to his supporters not through a traditional news source but as a status update to his facebook page. The message reads simply, “Today you are the media, it is your duty to report and keep the hope alive,” suggesting that Mousavi is cognizant of the power of Iranians using the Internet to keep the outside world informed.
It’s impossible to predict how events will play out in Iran but it’s interesting that this is all taking place close on the heels on the 20th anniversary of the suppression of protestors in Tiananmen Square. With the world’s new ability to watch in real time and with more ready access to eyewitness accounts, will things turn out differently than they did two decades ago? Thus informed, will we be able to take action when we need to, or will we be paralyzed by our fascination with the spectacle? Will the arc of the universe bend towards justice this time?
Thanks to al rodgers at dailykos.com for the photos: many more here.
UPDATE: Go here for a list of tweeters to follow, plus much more.
UPDATE 2: New York Times article about Iran/twitter here.
UPDATE 3: Since first publishing this post three days ago some of the people I’ve been following on twitter, notably change_for_iran, have stopped updating. I suspect this is due to increasing limitations on internet traffic from Iran; I hope it’s not a sign of something more ominous. However, there are still several good sources to be found from the list in the first update, plus a great nightly English translation of significant Farsi tweets here.
Meanwhile, #iranelection has become somewhat useless as it’s jammed with spammers and other irrelevant tweets. But it’s probably still more current than, say, cnn or the New York Times right now.
UPDATE 4: June 24–possible bad news about another twitterer I’ve been following, persiankiwi. The last few tweets have been quite frightening & as of four hours ago have ended altogether. One of the last tweets: “we must go – dont know when we can get internet – they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names – now we must move fast.”
UPDATE 5: July 17–change_for-iran is back online. still no word from persiankiwi. Go here for good updates in English.
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