Coincidentally following on from my story in The Australian at the weekend on Jafar Panahi's continued detention, there's a short but great piece by Richard Brody in The New Yorker on contemporary Iranian film.Brody zooms in on the question of whether the filmmaking of fellow director Abbas Kiarostami has been selfishly apolitical in the face of a dictatorial regime, as suggested by Bahman Ghobadi in a recent withering exchange between the two directors.
Since the argument Kiarostami has put his neck on the line by penning a strongly worded letter of protest against Panahi's detention.
Anyway, here's a passage from Brody's piece that especially caught my attention: "Kiarostami’s films do not deal directly with such matters of practical politics as elections or censorship....
"...However, Kiarostami’s 'mythic and contemplative' films are philosophical, in the highest sense of the term: he is in search of human nature and its place in nature, in existence as such—and, in film after film, he suggests that the Islamic regime of Iran is in contradiction with what he discovers about human nature.
"His methods may not be 'radical and sensational,' but his political ideas are more decisive and radical than those of his peers in the Iranian film industry. In such films as “The Wind Will Carry Us,” “The Taste of Cherry,” and “Close-Up,” and the 2007 short film “Where Is My Romeo?” he investigates the human condition from the standpoint of someone living in and subject to the laws of Iran." Read more here.
In the meantime, anyone up for helping to organise screenings of Panahi films in Australia - as part of a movement of protest and consciousness-raising that's started happening in cities around the world - might like to contact me via email, facebook, twitter or the comments section below (I'll hold back from printing).
POSTSCRIPT 28.4.10:
The Tehran Times reports that The Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has just forbidden filmmakers to use foreign names for Iranian films, including films now in production.
2 comments:
It was a very good piece, I agree. I confess to not being familiar with Abbas Kiarostami films but there is such a sound argument that anyone within a regimes who is truly expressing their own sense of self and art and not making propogranda are being counter-revolutionary. Just the way films are conceived, filmed and produced is enough to put those involved in danger in ways that people outside a regime could never understand.
Thanks for keeping this important issue on the boil, Lynden, and good luck for getting some Australian screenings.
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