Revolutionary Cinema: Iranian Filmmakers Continue to Test Boundaries and
Upset Expectations
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"What I say tonight will be a banality in the future. The greatest films of
the world today are being made in Iran." — director Werner Herzog, at the 1995
Telluride Film Festival
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After victories over the Taliban in Afghanistan, President Bush put other "dangerous regimes" on notice, including that of Iran — in terms reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire" condemnation of the Soviet Union. Little did we in the West realize in 1982 how close that empire was to crumbling under its own dead weight, a process hastened by Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms spun out of control, leading to both the end of the empire and the Cold War. Yet film buffs should not have been surprised: liberalized in the first wave of "glasnost," the Soviet film industry's exposés of that nation's problems and history soon made such Western condemnation sound tame.
Meanwhile, Iran's regime, last time most Americans checked, was exhibiting dangerous behavior: burning the flag of "the Great Satan" in its streets, and calling the Muslim world to "Jihad", or "Holy War," i.e., exporting the violent historical forces that some would say led straight to September 11th.
But talk to any art house patron of recent Iranian films: you'll find their picture of that nation goes beyond the stock footage. Indeed, you might be surprised to learn that while the Ayatollah's regime is still in place, the Islamic Republic has, since its founder's 1989 death, been experiencing its own brand of glasnost. Once again, the film industry has been leading the way, with surprising freedom of expression. From discussing internal problems of Iran's culture, to simple celebrations of our common humanity, the diversity and vibrant creativity of Iranian films of the past decade or more reveals a people much more sophisticated than Western stereotypes.
Critics suggest that the desperate need to believe there is more to Iran than Jihad has something to do with the acclaim for this "banner year" for Iranian film. Certainly, Iranian films continued to wow the international festival crowds. Imagine a movie called Kandahar, with a story set among the Taliban, released the same year Westerners learn where that city is, and witness that strange culture vanquished. Other new releases, such as Baran feature Afghan refugees, in many ways now America's problem, but for so long a burden carried primarily alone by Iran. Many of the new Iranian films, including The Circle or The Day I Became a Woman, spotlight the plight of women under the Islamic Republic, suggesting that external "Satans" occupy Iranian cosmology nowadays less than home grown ones. But these sorts of films were being made in Iran well before their subject matter became so compelling in the West. Indeed, the rise of Iranian cinema over the past decade has been described as one of those brief, shining moments of national cinema remembered ever after as a Golden Age, taking its place alongside German Expressionism, French New Wave, and Italian Neo-Realism (a movement with much influence among Iranian filmmakers).
If this indeed is Iran's moment in the cinematic sun — and if our only considerations were those of the greedy film buff — prudence might dictate we enjoy it while it lasts. Of course, reasons for consideration of Iran extend beyond its film output: and an even more prudent prudence would suggest we seize the opportunity offered by such films to get past stereotypes employed so often and so cynically to simplify geopolitics in a confusing world. For getting past stereotypes is the only way to appreciate a particular film as film, or a unique people as people. And very little digging reveals a rich background, ancient and otherwise, for Iranian films, proving this surprising renaissance did not appear from out of nowhere.
Iran was known to Europeans for
centuries as "Persia" (from Pars or Fars, a province in Southern Iran: the word
for the Iranian language is "Farsi"). Among the most anciently-peopled places
on earth, Iran is both a cradle to human civilization and empire, and a crossroads
upon which was developed its own unique and rich culture under wave upon wave
of invasions. After the Greeks, Arabs, Mongols, and Turks came the Europeans
and Islamic radicals — the last being sometimes seen as merely the
latest in a long series of occupiers. In the early Modern era, the peoples
who were to become the Iranians threw off external rule and unified under a
powerful Shah — "King of Kings, Light of the Aryans" — only to
become the pawn of larger and higher-stakes struggles. Iran stood in the
Russian path to the sea, and on the British trade routes to the East,
ultimately becoming a token on the global chess board of the Cold War.
Of course, two threads of the Iranian tapestry foremost in the minds of most Westerners remain the country's vast reserves of petroleum and Fundamentalist Islam. With the growing dependence of the industrialized nations upon fossil fuels, Iran's rulers learned to play the great powers off one another to line their pockets and consolidate their power — to the perpetual impoverishment of their people and the instability of their nation. The no longer "secret history" of the 1953 CIA-engineered coup, published in the New York Times, describes how The Company thwarted a popular prime minister's attempt to wrest control of his nation's destiny from foreign powers, thereby ensuring another quarter century of rule by the Shah, who took advantage of the moment to transform himself from a constitutional monarch into an absolute dictator.
In this way America took over from longtime Iranian puppet-master Britain the role of "Great Satan". The pressures of foreign domination, authoritarian regimes and oil-financed crash modernizations exploded in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Shah was exiled and religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini channeled various revolutionary impulses into a fundamentalist theocracy. The seizure of the U.S. embassy with dozens of hostages held more than a year made the Islamic Republic an inspiration to militant Muslims worldwide and a pariah everywhere else. During the 1980s, Iran defended its revolution against invasion by ancient rival Iraq, a war which soon degenerated into a bloody stalemate that cost over a million lives on both sides. When Khomeini died in 1989, the government passed into the hands of successor clerics who maintain the theocracy, though with not quite so firm a grip.
True, the Ayatollah's portrait still looms down on daily Iranian life, a
presence as ubiquitous and threatening as have always been such icons of Big
Brother. Signs remind citizens to obey the Islamic codes, including the
dress codes, which special police are quick to enforce. Women must cover
their hair and curves. And while Iranians point out that harshest penalties
of Islamic Law are not regularly carried out, such as the notorious
amputation of the thief's hand,
Amnesty International reports Soviet-style
repression: arbitrary arrests, secret trials, dissenters tortured and
executed — sometimes by stoning, the punishment of choice for adultery, at
least for the women.
Indeed, women and girls suffer most under a regime which supposedly takes great pains to protect them: females may safely walk the streets in Iran, but their inferiority is written into the law and institutionalized in the courts, health care, and education. Paradoxically, Iranian women are among the most educated in the Muslim world; a National Geographic reporter suggests that their "patience with the sexually discriminatory laws of the Islamic republic is dwindling."
In fact, resistance to the Islamic regime has been growing steadily and carefully for years. The 1997 election of pro-reform president Mohammed Khatami points to an embattled orthodoxy that some compare to the climactic years of the U.S.S.R. And while Iranian films have not yet become the orgy of self-examination and exposure that was Soviet cinema under glasnost, they do have this advantage: the most influential film buff in Iran, who in 1983 was forced to resign as minister of culture after loosening the regime's grip on the Iranian film industry, is none other than President Khatami.
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"Pay special attention to publicity. Especially for
filmmaking this task should be carried out by those who are faithful Muslims
and familiar with classical Iranian art." — Ayatollah Khomeini |
The revolution of Iranian cinema began even before the election of President Khatami, even before their revolution of Islam. In the first place, movies have always been popular in Iran. Moshen Makhmalbaf's loving remembrance Once Upon a Time, Cinema (1995) is a fast forward review of Persian film history, featuring archival footage from silent melodramas and popular action films that accounted for most of Iranian filmmaking from the 1930s onward. Possibilities for more artistic and socially-conscious films were demonstrated by feminist Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad in her influential The House is Black (1962), a documentary about a leper colony. The combination of stripped-down realism and poetic sensibilities was to become a trademark of the more serious Iranian filmmaking tradition.
Under the Shah, media was tightly controlled. Nevertheless, during the final decade of his rule, a "New Wave" of Iranian cinema began to emerge. Critical of the dominant escapist cinema, a group of filmmakers began to work toward greater realism and depth, using the same sort of political allegory that directors employed under the Soviet regime. Dariush Mehrjui's The Cow (1969) won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival and inspired other Iranian filmmakers with a story of poverty and mental breakdown — one that was banned at home until international acclaim forced a conditional release.
Other important works followed, but this promising New Wave of Iranian cinema soon broke against an oncoming wave of fundamentalist religious revival: the Islamic revolution featured a grass-roots and violent rejection of Western corruption, especially in the form of movies. Theaters were burned (including, most notoriously, one full of people). Directors were arrested. Media came under even stricter state control. Like Lenin, the Ayatollah seized immediately upon the possibilities of film for shaping the consciousness of the populace, and called for a revolutionary new Islamic art.
In 1983, however, Mohammed Khatami, the regime's "Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance," protested the regime's utilitarian approach to film, declaring "cinema is not the mosque." Khatami led a group of intellectuals in creating a plan for the revival of Iranian cinema. Though Khatami lost that job for his efforts, his revival nonetheless took place — despite the strict oversight of the guardians of public morality.
In fact, some say, the Iranian film revival was made possible in part because of the restrictions — a phenomenon with some historical precedence. In the 1930s, Hollywood was prompted by fears of government censorship to (temporarily at least) adopt strict rules treating language, sexuality, violence, and depictions of authority figures. And while the Production Code resulted in plenty of safe and forgettable films, some filmmakers approached the limitations as creative problems whose solutions resulted in what is often looked back upon as Hollywood's Golden Age. Iran's Production Code, of course, is even stricter: Islamic dress regulations are in effect; physical contact between male and female actors who are not related is verboten. Political and religious issues must be handled with such care that they either are ignored, or disguised enough to get past the government censors. Yet within those limitations — and free from the often equally repressive censorship of the market — Iran's best filmmakers have answered the challenge with their own Golden Age.
So what's a typical recent Iranian release like? After you add to the above restrictions the limitations imposed by budget and the Iranian tradition of simple realism, one sees why many films tend toward a naturalistic style, drawing upon European realism. On the other hand, some Iranian directors draw equally upon masters of European surrealism, such as Fellini or Buñuel. And while the difficulties of depicting personal and political issues has led some directors to more universal themes — simple stories in simple settings, often featuring children — others insist Iranian films should address contemporary problems in urban settings, pushing the censors to the limits. One subplot of the story of Iranian cinema is the path of increasing naturalism: shooting in available light, telling stories in real time, using non-professional actors. Other filmmakers are obviously too much in love with the associated arts of cinema — complicated lighting, art direction, performance — and journey the opposite way toward ever more polish. So you see, while Iranian films can arguably be gathered into a recognizable national cinema, the notion of "typical" splinters quickly into a healthy diversity of both form and content (see our survey of Iranian directors and films.)
Meanwhile, the widespread acclaim of Iran's film flowering is not without its detractors. Some Iranians in exile call it propaganda, and call directors who work with the most freedom under the regime collaborators. It should be noted that the Iranian films released in the West do not account for the nation's entire movie industry output— which includes plenty of propaganda. But the harshest critics of films which are otherwise universally-acclaimed tend to sound as ideological as the regime they oppose; more objective observers defend the best Iranian films as genuine works of art, challenging both in their unique ways of seeing and provocative moral vision. The ongoing conversation in recent Iranian films about the inferior position of women under the Islamic regime is as vital and potentially culture-shaking as have been any social problem films in the history of Western cinema. That the innovative aesthetic of directors like Abbas Kiarostami has influenced not just a new generation of filmmakers in Iran but has left its mark in the history of world cinema is acknowledged by critics and audiences alike.
One more thing is certain: this moment in history is unique, and the circumstances which have created this moment are precarious. It remains to be seen how long President Khatami can maintain his Gorbechev-like juggling act between placating the Islamic hardliners and pushing ahead with the reforms the people want. Given the fact that people want reform — and their desire shines brightly between the frames of so many of these films — it would seem the regime is bound to liberalize in time. On the other hand, given the present complexities and tone of world affairs, one can more easily imagine events tending to strengthen the hand of repression, bringing about a cataclysmic change of circumstances in which a crackdown on the Iranian film renaissance is but the least of tragedies.
Even hoping for the best, for the walls to come down, means hoping for circumstances that will spell the end of Cinema Iran's golden moment: a democratic Iran is one less-inclined to maintain a state-supported film industry; a globalized Iran (if one could imagine such a thing) is less likely to fill movie theaters with home-grown films — unless maybe it's the new blockbuster by an Iranian star director who's gone Hollywood. But we must keep our eyes on the prize, as Salmon Rushdie reminds us. The Indian writer who went into hiding after Ayatollah Khomeini put a price on his head (the fatwa was lifted in 1998) argues that McWorld cannot be the real enemy as long as a totalitarian regime kills and oppresses its people.
Nevertheless, this seems an important moment, both for the history of film and the history of Iran: we can enjoy it so long as we keep in mind the larger picture, a sense of historical and ethical context: and paradoxically, much of that context will come from the films themselves, which tell us more than we thought we knew about a place and people often demonized in the West. The conversation now going on in Iranian films takes us to a realm beyond Jihad and McWorld, suggesting the possibility of a more hopeful sort of globalism, that is to say, a common sense of humanity and moral values: which may ultimately prove an opening in the Fundamentalist veil.
But it takes two sides to converse: for those on this side of the veil,
joining the conversation is as simple as leaving behind our preconceptions
and watching the films.
>>>> See also A Survey of Iranian Directors
| "Revolutionary Cinema of Iran" at the Flickerings Film Showcase is a part of the "Between Jihad & McWorld" program at Cornerstone Festival 2002. |