Directory of World Cinema: Iran

by Parviz Jahed (Editor)

Overview

This addition to Intellect's Directory of World Cinema series turns the spotlight on the award-winning cinema of that nation. A wide range of genres are presented, including comedy, Film Farsi, new wave, children's films, art house film and women's cinema. For the film studies scholar, students working on alternative or national cinema or for all those who love Persian cinema and wish to learn more, Directory of World Cinema: Iran will be an essential companion to this prolific and prominent film industry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781841503998
Publisher:	Intellect, Limited
Publication date:	03/15/2012
Series:	Directory of World Cinema , #10
Pages:	293
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Parviz Jahed is a freelance film critic, journalist, filmmaker, and lecturer in film studies, scriptwriting and directing. He is the author of a number of books and essays on Iranian cinema.

Read an Excerpt

Directory of World Cinema Iran Volume 10

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By Parviz Jahed

Intellect, Ltd

Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-399-8

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CHAPTER 1

FILM OF THE YEAR

About Elly

Dar Bareye Elly

Studio/Distributor: Simaye Mehr

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Producers: Mahmoud Razavi

Asghar Farhadi

Screenwriter: Asghar Farhadi

Cinematographer: Hossein Jafarian

Editor: Hayedeh Safiyari

Duration: 119 minutes

Genre: Drama

Cast: Golshifteh Farahani
Taraneh Alidousti
Mani Haghighi
Merila Zarei
Peyman Moadi
Shahab Hosseini

Year: 2009

Synopsis

The film tells the story of a group of young university friends from Teheran who take a three-day break at a Caspian beach resort in the north of Iran. Ahmad is back in Iran after many years living in Germany, where he had recently got divorced, and his best friend Sepideh is attempting to set him up with Elly, her daughter's nursery school teacher. The friends, realizing why Sepideh has invited Elly, pay her particular attention and laud her qualities. On the second day an incident occurs which leads to Elly's disappearance. The joyful atmosphere evaporates as the friends try to understand how and why she disappeared. The friends become judgmental and try to find fault with Elly's character. The group's opinion of Elly veers away from that of the first day, until at last the truth is out.

Critique

Apart from some of Dariush Mehrjui and Tahmineh Milanie's films, Asghar Farhadi's Silver Bear and Tribeca-winning film About Elly, are a rare example of Iranian films that show the modern face of Iran and some aspects of its educated middle-class life to a western audience, making it a relative departure from the normal subjects of an Iranian art film. The young, educated and middle-class travellers in the film are somewhat of an unknown demographic to a western audience, and are more commonly portrayed in popular Iranian films, as art films tend to present the more 'exotic' lifestyles of the lower and working class. On the other hand the film's use of features such as the roving camera, overlapping dialogues, and its thinly veiled plot has a cinema-vérité style that almost echoes that of Robert Altman and John Cassavetes, something that is not commonly seen in Iranian cinema. Another fine example of this style is Rachael Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2009) which opened the '65th Venice International Film Festival'.

The cast of the film, who are mostly professional actors in Iranian cinema, tended to underplay their roles and the camera almost never closes in on their faces, picturing them often in long or medium shot. Even Elly, the main character of the film, is rarely the point of focus of the camera's attention and is often seen in a crowd or in the margins of the frame. This technique is reminiscent of the unique style of John Cassavetes, which Farhadi skilfully employs in this film.

About Elly concerns itself with issues of moral behavior, lies and gender relations, rather than aiming to convey political messages, as in films like No One Knows About Persian Cats (Bahman Ghobadi) and Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat). All three films were screened at the 'London Film Festival' in 2009. It is about the most simplistic yet the most significant attitudes within today's Iranian society, which is presented without frills or exaggeration. Farhadi's directing and the way the cast performs is so subtle that it becomes unnoticeable. He showed this remarkable storytelling and directing technique in his previous film Cha-harshanbe-soori/Fireworks Wednesday (2006). From the very first sequence, the viewer is put alongside the actors and accompanies them on this hellish journey, the kind that starts with laughter and ends in tears.

The first shot of the film, taken from inside a charity contribution box, invites the audience into the dark world that lies therein, and the thin strip of light which seeps into the darkness of the box metaphorically ties in with the rest of the plot and foreshadows the tragedy to come. The film starts with a comedic and buoyant vibe with games, jokes, banter, and vulgar male dancing (the women in the film do not join in the dance, preferring to watch their husbands instead) but suddenly develops a bitter and disturbing tone when one of the boys (Arash) drowns in the sea and Elly vanishes.

Elly's character (played by Taraneh Alidousti) is vastly different to the rest of the group. She is a sweet, shy, and reticent nursery school teacher, and the subject of Sepideh's matchmaking game (she was persuaded onboard by the insistence and excessive pleading of Sepideh). She is often reluctant to join in with the joviality of the group and is close to going home. Her character is not revealed explicitly. Farhadi made her mysterious and ambiguous by avoiding giving information about her background and motives. This ambiguity results in an immense level of suspense which climaxes with Elly's sudden disappearance.

The main approach of the film is the pathology of individual attitudes among the middle-class educated people in Iran. The film thematically concentrates on lies and pre-judgements. Most of the people in the group lie to each other without any specific reason. Even Elly, who is seen as more of a decent and innocent girl, asks her mother over the phone to lie about the happenings of their trip to the north. Sepideh, played beautifully by Golshifteh Farahani (Body of Lies), makes the situation more complicated by lying about Elly's identity from the start, but she develops self-awareness when she realizes how great a negative affect her lying had on Elly's life. About Elly shows how simple lies and pre-judgments about others can have important consequences and can even ruin lives. Lying is bound with the souls of the film's characters to an extent that we do not even believe that Alireza is Elly's fiancé. Therefore when he goes to the morgue to identify the corps of a drowned woman we are in doubt that he is telling the truth when he confirms that the woman is Elly, or he is another liar that tries to get rid of the whole mess.

Despite the similarity of About Elly's plot with L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni), it is more a Hitchcockian film using Elly's disappearance as a McGuffin in order to reach a more dramatic climax in the film. From this point of view, About Elly is a psychological social drama with a crime thriller's suspense, but Farhadi knowingly avoids the excitement of a crime thriller and instead concentrates on the ethical and psychological effects of Elly's disappearance on the members of the group. He did not, for example, show the involvement of the local police in tracking down the reason for Elly's disappearance. Instead Farhadi gives Elly's companions the opportunity to judge Elly's personality, and speculate as to the cause of her disappearance and consequently reveal their own personal traits and moral weaknesses. With its intelligent, precise directing and the commendable acting effort of its cast, About Elly is without a doubt one of the pre-eminent Iranian films made in recent years.

Parviz Jahed

CHAPTER 2

INDEPENDENT CINEMA AND CENSORSHIP IN IRAN

INTERVIEW WITH JAFAR PANAHI

This interview was conducted with Jafar Panahi, before the occurrence of his condemnation by the Iranian government – as a result of which he has been placed under heavy restrictions by the Iranian authorities. Jafar Panahi is one of the most celebrated Iranian film-makers around the world. He has gained recognition from film theorists and critics worldwide and received numerous awards including the 'Golden Lion' at the 'Venice Film Festival' for his film Dayereh/The Circle in 2000 and the 'Silver Bear' at the 'Berlin Film Festival' for his Offside in 2006. In 2011 his film, titled This is Not a Film received the 'Carrosse d'Or' from the 'Cannes Film Festival'.

As well as his body of work, his creative contribution to Iranian cinema is notable and includes pioneering efforts in multilayer narrative and parallel story-telling. With a style heavily focused on the depiction social realism criticism, his approach has never been tolerated by the Iranian censorship and caused problems for his films. On 20 December 2010, Jafar Panahi was handed a six-year jail sentence and a twenty-year ban on making or directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media, as well as leaving the country. All of which led to much media attention and outcries from the public and international film community.

I met with Mr Panahi in his apartment in Tehran on a wintry day in 2008 during the 'Fajr Film Festival', an event in which his films were – more often than not – prevented from being screened due to alleges of inappropriately political or subversive content. In our interview, which has remained unpublished until now, Jafar talks bluntly and makes frank criticisms of the policies imposed by the Iranian government on film-making and the restriction which he and fellow film-makers are now facing in Iran.

You were recently part of the jury at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, can you tell us about the event, where there any films that caught your interest?

The Rotterdam festival is rather more like a 'souk' for films than an event that places importance on the competition aspect in the vein of Berlin or Cannes [film festivals]. But they do have a section for competition between the top films, and I was the head of the jury and we would grant three prizes of equal value, two of which were given to films from East Asia and one or two European films. While I have been to various festivals throughout the world, I can determine that Rotterdam is in the same league as the Toronto festival, for example, it's a market for film people where different fields of the cinema try to get in and watch the films and inevitably choose which films they wished to buy and invest in.

Were there any films from Iran in the line-up?

There were one or two in the more minor categories. But in the category I was judging, there was nothing from Iran.

There seemed to be a time when every festival featured a film from Iran, but recently the presence of Iranian cinema has become somewhat faded, don't you agree?

That's the inevitable case in every country; you could look at the current of national cinema in Japan or Mexico for example and they might have a golden age and then, at another time there might be a downturn. Just this year Majid Majidi's film (Avaze Gonjeshk-ha/Song of Sparrows [2008]) was shown at Berlin and won the 'Silver Bear' for Best Actor and I am sure that we will have a representative from our country at Cannes.

We shouldn't regard this as something alarming, as would those who are opposed to cinema in Iran, and want to celebrate the early death of Iranian cinema. It is currently very clear to everyone that Iranian cinema is facing a downturn, but it's only noticeable more recently, in the past there was little expected from Iranian cinema, it had its modest attraction, whereas recently a lot more is expected from Iranian cinema and these expectations are growing every day, and the cinema must try to do something to overcome these setbacks, and I'm sure it will be able to shake it off and continue to rise. And of course the situation of the film industry and the decline can't stray too far away from internal matters, whether political or economical they have a substantial effect, and Iranian cinema is interlinked with and reliant on such factors.

Recently Iranian film-makers wrote a letter in protest of the Iranian government's policy towards cinema. I believe you are one of those who signed the letter and you were in protest of the words of Mr Jamal Shorjeh (an extremist film-maker) against Iranian independent film-makers.

When I was in Rotterdam, I was informed that such events had occurred in Iran and I looked it up on the Internet and found that a petition had been formed and I added my signature to it, and when I returned [to Iran] I became better informed of the goings on and heard that they had withdrawn Bahman Farmanara's film from participation at the 'Fajr Film Festival', which did not come as a surprise.

This goes back to two years ago when Mr Saffar Harandi, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, in his initial interviews in regards to cinema said something like: we must supervise a film project from beginning to end, from the screenplay to production. And then I remember at that moment I wrote an article and did an interview, which were published in Shargh [newspaper] at the time, pointing out that with this way of thinking about our cinema is going to worsen every day. And I can't comprehend how someone else could keep track of the thoughts, or an idea of a scriptwriter or director, when it is something that may come to you at any moment on the street or in your home or in your bed, how would they be able to monitor what you're thinking and how you're going to develop your ideas? And this way of thinking inevitably leads to, like it has this year, for example the way they are using the Fajr Film Festival to account for how uncooperative film-makers, are and how they can best quench the defiance they will face from independent film-makers and such.

Mr Harandi (the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance) has given his own description of what he expects of Iranian cinema, the 'permissible' cinema (Cinema-ye Mobaah) as he called it, something that could causes no transgression or benefit, no advantage nor disadvantage, and it mustn't have a critical outlook towards anything, and the audience should be left with nothing to think about when leaving the cinema. They would want a cinema that is consistently neutral, that has the static effect of nothingness. This is a template which is suggested by Mr Harandi, and any film which deviates from this, however slightly, will cause offence to them. And we can see their way of thinking through the people who have spoken on their behalf.

But on the other hand we hear slogans about the idea of a 'national cinema', a worthwhile cinema with a national or religious serving and one which is meaningful in this sense.

Well the notion of a national cinema is a different discussion. They would never use the adjective 'national' unless it was for the purpose of mass deception – we would see time and time again, they would label a cinema to be [anti-Iranian]. Their understanding of cinema is not something that I would approve of as the definition of a 'national' cinema. When we look at football we don't have a national team, we have a team that represents the Islamic Republic, the Parliament of the Islamic Republic or Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcaster [Seda va Simaye Jomhuri-ye Eslami], or anything else of the like.

But the only thing they were unable to stick this adjective to, was 'cinema' ... it doesn't even roll off the tongue. So their only understanding of it is something that is aligned to the ideologies of, and one that is in service of, the regime. I have been unable to provide a sufficient description, other than something seen through the prism of ideology in service of the regime and its goals. If you make a film that doesn't correspond to this type of viewpoint, or even their current description of it, then an event like this would occur.

What is in your opinion the most critical problem with the Fajr Film Festival?

The Fajr festival is in actuality, one of the most politically orientated festivals in the world. We don't see any other event which is so utterly governed by the political will and expression in the same way, where the influence exerted is the ultimate factor when it comes to anything. The judgement panel is interlinked with the method that they use to select films, which is through politically driven decisions; everything about the selection is thus motivated. I was only a member of jury once in Iran, and that was seven to eight years ago at the 'Isfahan International Festival of Films for Children and Young Adults'. I only accepted to be juror on the condition that there would be no involvement on [the censors'] part, and in the jury panel there wouldn't be anyone else present, just the jurors. And it was so that I became part of the jury, and on the last day when we were coming to a decision, one of the authorities came in and I told him that 'until you leave the room we won't commence' and so he left the room, after that I was not offered to be a juror again.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Directory of World Cinema Iran Volume 10 by Parviz Jahed. Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect, Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction by the Editor
Film of the Year: About Elly
Independent Cinema and Censorship in Iran: Interview with Jafar Panahi
Directors:
    Abbas Kiarostami
    Ebrahim Golestan
    Jafar Panahi
    Dariush Mehrjui
    Mohsen Makhmalbaf

The Emergence of Cinema in Iran
Film Farsi as the Mainstream Cinema
The Forerunners of the New Wave Cinema in Iran
Iranian New Wave (1969–79)
Melodrama in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema
Post-Revolutionary Art Cinema in Iran
The Image of War in Iranian Cinema
The Image of Children
Cultural Diversity in Iranian Cinema

Recommended Reading
Iranian Cinema Online
Test Your Knowledge
Notes on Contributors
Filmography

Editorial Reviews

Successfully maps the long history of creativity, intellectualism and imagination of Iran. This book makes an important contribution to the area of Iranian cinema and film and is recommended to those who want to know more about Iran and its extraordinary cinema.

Arezou Zalipour

All in all a fresh and intelligently pithy story of Iranian cinema.

Electric Sheep - James B. Evans