All language subtitles for 2007 Lost Cinema - Iranian films

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this is a scene from the Iranian film

tall Shadows of the Wind made only one

year before the Iranian Revolution the

scene shows the people of a village

revolting against the tyrannical

scarecrows that had been ruling their

lives and controlling their Destinies

the scene however is not a typical one

in a country in which dictatorship is a

political tradition a provocative scene

like this would not be tolerated by the

sensors so it comes as no surprise that

the next scene appears to serve as a

disclaimer we realize that what we saw

was only a dream scene the last dream of

a dying man who made a one-man attempt

to fight the despotic scarecrows and

failed the dream however is still alive

at his deathbed the dying man a driver

hands a piece of rock to the Village

teacher something he has carried with

him while battling the scarecrows in a

symbolic way he is leaving the task of

fighting to the school teacher

ah

a

in spite of it's being a dream the

uprising scene is a symbolically

significant one since it accurately

reflects the long-standing dream of a

Nation for a liberating Revolution a

dream that has always been betrayed

there are more Vivid if less defiant

variations on the theme of betrayal of

the dreams and other socially committed

Iranian films in dead end the

protagonist is a young woman living in a

cul-de-sac in the capital city of Tehran

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her life begins to change one rainy

morning when she finds out she is being

watched and followed by a man

this is a traditional custom sometimes

practiced by a man who's seriously

considering a woman for marriage

for a typical Iranian girl in her

situation marriage could open a door out

of a dead-end alley and out of many

social dead ends here she is a young

adolescent young girl

living alone with her mother

the brother is is away comes back

sometime

um she's of a marrying age

and she thinks she's found someone who's

interested in her and that marriage will

come

back

yet

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why did you choose to have two empty

seats at the dining table

where those two seats belongs to

two absent men

the father has died and the brother is

gone

we don't know where

but it's uh

is presented these two uh

women need support

um

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Muhammad

what I said

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it's terribly downbeat in American terms

he hasn't been

her admirer yes I spoke in the sense he

has but

um nevertheless he's been following her

to capture her brother

and the film ends with with her with him

the pursuer taking the brother away in

handcuffed

leaving the girl in in tears in

Desolation

it's not until the end I suppose partly

the the slightly slightly menacing

appearance of the of the Civic agent

that you realize that actually although

she wasn't living in fear because she

was very naive she should have been and

her greatest mistake was not to have

been living in fear and that's what

ended up with her brother being taken

away to torture and possibly there

parvis the director of dead end like

many other Iranian filmmakers has been

living in Exile since the 1979

Revolution a revolution that brought him

his own bitter share of betrayed hopes

and Shattered Dreams what do you think

happens to the girl after the shadowing

experience she goes through in the film

uh

she gets a little bit experienced

she would receive a kind of

not a mortal blow but a blow to her

her self-esteem and and her confidence

in herself

which it would take him many years to

recover from because she had the double

Hollow of of being partly responsible

for her brother being taken away and

also of having somebody that she thought

might be uh a fascinating husband about

whom she built up this tremendous sort

of imaginative investment

um turned out not to be interested in

her at all

and therefore in personality terms

a terrible wound a terrible double wound

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thinning is a beautiful film

beautiful in in every sense that I can

that I can think of

it's very subtle colors

um almost

um into black and white because I'm

certain that syad wanted that that film

to to have a a gloomy

repressive

overall effect in his use of a of a

street

out of which the young girl the heroin

constantly looks is at a dead end and at

that dead end there's the message you

know flat out dead end no place to go

from here and beautifully done

these films are making a very heavy

allusion to the incredibly destructive

effects of having such a system of

surveillance

widespread from the country even

stretching into tiny villages in the

middle of nowhere

the setting for tall Shadows of the wind

seems to be one of those tiny villages

in the middle of nowhere in the

beginning of the film we see the

inhabitants of the village in a mass

ritual praying that their gods send them

a liberator someone to bring them

prosperity and justice

this is

hoping for Liberation the villagers

start erecting a scarecrow for their

protection but ironically the Scarecrow

soon multiplies itself into a tyrannical

Army of scarecrows and begins to

terrorize the villagers

yes we make our own dictators

because we can tear them apart if you

like

and and this is why the title tall

Shadows of the wind really comes I have

from

a sentence that if you know

the origin of the Wind You are never

afraid of the tall Shadows of the Wind

and that's what we really are proposing

in this particular firm that we make

these deities ourselves and they start

ruling our lives and this is why in the

film that they make a scarecrow for a

very very simple economical reasons not

religious reasons because they want

better crop and so on and that

scarecrow eventually

it starts ruling the village

now the fact that

it actually happened

because

we made Khomeini we made the Shah

and if we always have been having

dictators all through our history there

is something inherently wrong

with us as people

and this is why I was proposing that we

should turn down start a little bit

the

early pervasive sense of fear by a

regime of systematic Terror

to the point where

the system of informers under which with

which every television operates

Nobody ends up by trusting anybody else

people become incredibly individualized

isolated they won't talk to their

neighbors or their friends or their or

even their their closest their husbands

or their mothers

um about the experiences they've had we

started the beginning of the film with a

lot of color in the clothing in the uh

decorations in the rooms and everything

you see very vibrant colors everywhere

and as the fear of this character

gradually grows we have faded out the

colors I mean you potentially see the

same address worn by the same woman but

we had three shades of it and in the

last 45 minutes of the film you're

practically seeing black and white in

color before the Revolution sequence and

that's why it shocks I mean the red

sharks so much and then immediately

after that we go more or less to Total

black and white in the funeral

procession

and uh one of the objects was as the

fear grows the color out of our Lives

goes out and I just wanted to do this so

gradually that it's not a shocking

aspect but eventually it's there

I think like in many

Nations there are of course two levels

of Iranian film there's a popular level

in a more artistic level

but one of the things that's most

interesting about both levels is that on

the popular level and on the artistic

level there's an extraordinarily moral

quality to Iranian film foreign

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even when we have films that are rather

political in nature the basic ideals and

and morality of Iranian life are being

pointed up and being emphasized

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there are a great number of themes which

deal with the defeat or destruction of

the main character

but I think if we examine the Iranian

moral Universe more carefully we find

that there are many many examples where

what seems to be defeat can actually be

a victory as long as it's a moral

victory

the main character achieves this moral

Victory by refusing to sell out or

refusing to yield to a superior power

which is corrupt and illegitimate and

this is a this is the theme that we find

again and again in in uh in many Iranian

films even in a a situation where the

where the character seems to be utterly

devastated

the real

Redemption the real hero in the film May

in fact in this case be The Spectator

because the spectator becomes made aware

of the disparity between a a corrupt

Superior power and a person who's been

victimized by that power so the the

feeling of moral enhancement or moral

Enlightenment is is achieved in in this

kind of uh of this kind of plot

construction Dr William Beeman a

professor of anthropology at Brown

University

specializes in cross-cultural

communication he spent more than 11

years in Iran prior to the 1979

Revolution studying the Iranian arts and

culture one of the

most important aspects of Iranian

political film is that it's cast in an

Iranian symbolic universe that means

that in order to be able to understand

Iranian political film we also have to

understand Iranian literature and poetry

and to a certain extent other artistic

Traditions like like music and painting

I think that there's no form of artistic

expression in Iran which is especially

direct and easily accessible

all forms of artistic expressions in

Iran have many many layers to them and

this is no less true about the cinema so

that the political Cinema in Iran has a

a great deal of symbolism and the

symbolic layering in its construction

but this also gives it an artistic

Dimension which can be appreciated over

and above the political dimensions of

the film and this is one of the reasons

why I feel it's one of the more

interesting cinematic traditions in the

world today

the cow is the film that started an

Iranian film Renaissance in the early

70s it was smuggled out to the Venice

Film Festival where it won tremendous

critical Acclaim and for the first time

placed Iran on the International Film

map

Central

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this highly original film depicts the

Hopeless extent of poverty in an Iranian

Village the only cow in the village

suddenly dies and its death deeply

affects the collective life of the

village

yeah

one day we were walking with uh the

famous writer and he suggested that I

should read again the story of the cow

in his book Azad bayal the bayels

mourners anyway

I read that and I found a lot of

possibilities Potentials in the story

but of course the story was a short

story so we had to develop it and that's

where I started utilizing the other

stories in that book and somehow uh

coordinating them together and making a

total story as we see it in the film and

then we work together you know on the

screenplay for I remember for 10 or 12.

days

and then then when the screen play was

ready it was the problem was to find a

producer

and of course none of the existing

producers would there to invest in in a

film like that so we submitted it to the

mystery of culture as a kind of a

documentary film and they had the

tradition of making you know

documentaries and things like that so

hopefully we we could arrange the budget

and also utilizing all the

um

actors of the ministry of culture who

were already employed in the theater

section

but this doesn't diminish its its power

it has a film about an individual who

has everything that means anything to

him in the world taken away from it in

in some mysterious fashion his his cow

the the thing that provides him with all

sustenance and every aspect of life dies

and then the The Village society in

which he lives conceals this from him

uh and he eventually is driven mad by

his inability to find out what the the

truth is

the cow dies we don't know how or why

and it I mean this this riddle remains

uh all through the film but the impact

of this death upon the villagers and

particularly on majnasan is is

tremendous so much so that masha-san out

of his love or his attachment to this

animal he gradually

undergoes a severe

change in his psychological Outlook

so much so that he somehow considers

himself

as a cow he just identifies himself so

much with this animal that he believes

that he is the cow himself

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this concept of the lover being

a dissolved or into the object of love

in other words the the synthesis of

lover and the Beloved is one of the main

concepts of uh for instance

Arabi when he talks about the

metaphysical love

that in this Quest

the domestic undergoes he somehow

out of pure love or out of the richness

of his love for for the object he

becomes the other

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there's something so insane about this

character and about his obsession

there's an Aristotelian problem with it

it becomes so pathological that that you

feel that this is an excessive

example of it and you know it it does

indicate that the narrow margin how

close

you know these people are to the

breaking point

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so much

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here's a man whose greatest possession

in life is a cow

when the car was gone

um so to speak his life is gone

the film is actually is the love of a

man for another being which happens now

to be a cow

and she's also pregnant and giving milk

to the

villagers and the village is also very

poor because they have only one cow if

you are familiar with Iranian Islamic

philosophy philosophy of mysticism

especially but some of their ideas are

Incorporated

I showed the cow to my film class along

with another Bolivian film blood of the

Condor because both of them it seemed to

me were Classics of the mid 60s

and therefore Classics of the the

present wave of new filmmaking which is

taking place in the third world both of

them give a very strong sense for

immediate realities in an impoverished

Village in the third world

I should say I also chose the cow

because when I was giving that version

of the film course

I began the course by trying to focus on

images of the third world in the United

States and at that stage particularly

the image of Iran was one of the the

clearest in in people's minds the the

whole barrage of hostile propaganda

which circulated within this country and

uh therefore it struck me as being a

good thing to to say well okay let's

look at how Iranians Define Iran rather

than simply how the American networks do

it

what the film did or would do for any

audience which is alert to issues beyond

the immediate backyard is that it showed

the humanity and sensitivity

of the villagers in trying to deal with

this case of psychiatric breakdown and

that was a very different image which

was important for me to show a very

different image of Iranians uh than the

one presented on the network which

showed them as Perpetual chanting

Fanatics

um and I think it was an illumination to

the students

I also had to point out that this was

oil Niche event that was being portrayed

I think that anybody showing that film

would probably have to emphasize that

point and bring it out

one reason that the film actually was

censored was confiscated for about a

year and a half or two years was

particularly because of that because

at that time if you remember it was the

peak of Shaw's

modern civilization he was talking about

the threshold that that now we are going

now from the third world to the first

world or things like that and right in

the midst of all these talks then comes

this film which shows you know a very

poor Village and the people are

not you know the the desirable types

that the the government wanted to have

so that's how we we came into a lot of

conflict with censorship but I mean the

critics or the historians they

considered that this is the first time

in the Iranian Cinema that the film came

out which could relate to both the

public in general and also to the

critics to the art

historians to the sinas ETC

this element of

simple stories documentary fashion you

know human relationship and uh

particularly talking about the you know

the underprivileged the poor people Etc

this is one of the current issue that

you see now in the Iranian Cinema

and also he had a great success abroad

which was distributed in different

countries and so forth that this had not

happened yet in the Iranian Cinema

the cow

God

was the was a real landmark in Iranian

Cinema it was the first

cinematic representation of Iranian life

which showed in some ways the Dark Side

of Iranian life and yet was a fine

artistic production for Iranian

filmmakers

signal I think to them that that films

of serious content could be made

uh that that didn't necessarily follow

the formulas of the popular Cinema that

had gone on before it occupies a a

position in Iranian Cinema which is

similar to you know Pata panchali in in

Indian Cinema which broke the the mold

of the of the Indian cinematic formula

Gob also broke the mold of the Cinematic

formula in in Iran it was telling people

that uh that that a new form of artistic

expression could be represented on film

the sealed soil is one of the films that

took advantage of the new artistic

possibilities and experimented with a

new visual language in Iranian Cinema

I'm trying to get out of Hollywood style

I think each filmmaker has to bring

their own

country's

cultural background into their

filmmaking and I since I started

painting and

I'm very interested in miniature

painting

I am trying to use that that format as

my uh start and and I've combined that

with uh the with the European Aesthetics

of bread

in Persian miniature you have

um a whole story in a book told in one

one uh

one frame of the miniature and you have

the subject matters are all around the

painting

it's up to the viewer to pick up the the

story and give you the meaning the whole

becomes one and one becomes whole

um I've tried to do that with with my

composition I feel that you don't have

to have

close-ups to

accentuating in what you're trying to

say you could do it in other why other

means like recurrent of motives or in

other words the action recurring again I

think audiences will tend to find that

page to deliberate and the development

of the character

also was brought up by movie conventions

we don't have a quick cut and you get

psychological development every shot you

know and everything that way and uh this

this doesn't operate on the

psychological level at all

I can go with slow and uh when it uh or

apparently slow because slow is

misleading there's no such thing as slow

uh what people mean slow they mean

there's a lot of plot there's a lot of

action or the way you photograph

somebody coming from somewhere

if you understand that that is ritual

and then there's no such thing as slow

uh if you understand the formal

structure of something something is

painfully or ritualistic

and then the slowness you understand

that but if you don't understand what's

going on

you just think this person just wants to

waste time showing somebody walking

having the idea that if you don't get

the meaning that comes out of watching

every step

I'm trying to get into the idea of being

distanced from the character so that

we are looking at them objectively and

we are trying to understand what the

problem is

soil is the story of a young Village

Woman Under Pressure to conform to the

rigid Norms of a communal life

he's just Del solicit

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she's being criticized because she is a

different woman from what her older

generation have been and

that's why she's being questioned and

she's been criticized

um

but she at the same time

she's not that different she's like

she's in a state of

um

uh moving from one uh awareness to

another she cannot follow her older

Generations

way of thinking and behavior she she's

trying to find her grounds and

in that she's lost herself she is lost

but at the same time she is trying to

for in some kind of an awareness and I I

think that's what they're criticizing

and because they don't understand it and

also the fact that she's trying to be an

individual that is I think the most

important thing in the film she The

Village Life is such a communal life I

think what my protagonist is doing is

trying to be an individual and and

that's that's very hard for the villages

her past her

traditional life is is and her what she

has now is not

giving her anything so she hasn't come

to Consciousness yet but she knows that

she's missing something and and I think

what is making her know that she's

missing something what is out there uh

that the the the city life the West the

westernization of Iran that's creeping

into the villages

she's she's been influenced by that

indirectly but she herself is not aware

of it all she knows is that things have

changed and she's changing

and I think that's her dilemma

I don't believe in having the audience

sympathize with the character because

that is going to create a

false sympathy and instead of the

audience really trying to

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uh

find out what is the what is the problem

and what is what is causing that

um they start identifying with the

character and and as the result they

they emotionally become so involved that

they forget about

um being objective and they become very

subjective and my whole uh

criticism about Hollywood stream is that

it makes

it makes the audience so much involved

emotionally with the character that they

totally forget about the cause and

effect

thank you

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this woman just a girl completely

breaking up cracking a

rejecting this world that's the only way

she can do it is through Madness that

she can Rebel

and she does it how

and I think you would you would be drawn

to that you would say look I'm here I

understand what's happening to you I

think this is a natural tendency so I

think there's a kind of logic to this

construction to the people who feel that

they did a tragic Vision because they're

the people who suddenly dimly perceive

betrayal the nature of repression nature

of the

of the evil that's being practiced the

inequity the Injustice I was trying to

show you the repression of women

in Iran and

but underneath that was another

repression which was the

The People's depression the trouble is

that what happens is there's a

conservative tendency in communities and

they have a different View

you know that Community let's say that

story is absolutely true the woman who

goes crazy doesn't want to follow the

traditional practice doesn't want to be

turned over like

a piece of farm equipment

um she um they'll say oh she's crazy or

she's you know which is reflective there

and and but most of the audience is

looking at says oh she's crazy doesn't

understand it's going to be taking a

long time to have

um it's our society change

especially women's condition the movie

is honest in this respect uh and this is

why it's not popular I think the reason

audiences would not go for even

audiences even people who feel you know

women are you know not treated well and

they would want her to fight more to

understand to understand what it is

that's happening to her

but the artist here is too honest to let

this person

give you the big dramatic scene the big

Paul Newman scene now I understand and

this is how we're doing and this is what

audiences want they want the big hero or

heroine to rise up and make a big speech

or make a big gesture or something that

the audience can identify with yes I can

control my destiny the trouble here's

where the pessimism comes in this woman

cannot do that she doesn't she hasn't

been educated he hasn't been trained

it's impossible for her to find the word

to express she can only do it most

inarticulate Primal whatever deep inside

her that's honest but nobody wants to

see that

in other words it's saying you're

trapped there's nothing you can do is

the only way you can express it through

pathology people don't want to hear that

but that's another pressing

a film that shows the misery of a family

or a village is not necessarily A

pessimistic film but it is to make the

audience to see why they are unhappy and

and try to do something about it

a village life

is extremely uh

vocal it's extremely with with a lot of

Expressions I try to to

oppress all that because I was trying to

uh

bring in

something which I'm trying to say that

oppression always

brings in silence and I was trying to

show that through through their silence

and through their

um

um

motionless

like they were totally immobile and and

for me that was what the operation had

done to them

and that was my my way of political way

of dealing with

um

how

a

an oppressive system can change

someone's life I think the repression

indicates that something has to happen

within the people

change them as in addition to before

anything can happen outside that is if

you want to repress your neighbor or

repress your daughter or press your son

or repress your

people who are weaker than you are

then there's going to be somebody above

you who's going to repress you it's

going to be a chain you have to break

the chain somewhere and I said where you

know I differ with the marches and

different with the left I believe the

change has to come from within I think

the change has to people have to change

right from within the circle if we

become more

loving of our families become more

understanding people around us try to

understand people around us

and work out we may achieve some kind of

change but if we just make the channel

we do is what we've been doing for the

past few thousand years been

substituting generally one tyranny for

another

uh I mean you could say this attorney is

better than that tyranny but it's still

tyranny to break it completely you have

to genuinely believe

in understanding the other person's

existence accepting another person's

existence another person's point of view

the other person's

right to express themselves and so on

and uh I think you know if you follow a

very tight patriarchal

uh

rigid community life that's going to

reflect that ultimately Andrew Saras

could very well be talking about our

Salon sasani's band

film also a film about repression the

central character of this featurette is

a small boy who separates a puppy from

its mother and then against his father's

wish desperately tries to keep the puppy

hit

me

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I think the message in in

bamboo fence

hidden

under everything is that

we Iranians

are constantly confined

we can find ourselves

the bamboo fences that one sees so

frequently

I don't think the message is is saying

that somebody else is confronting us

I think it's saying that deep within us

we can find ourselves and the father who

is so strong and appears to westernize

to be so brutal

onto the child slapping the child and

taking a child's dog away

I know that a dog means something

different in Iran from what it does in

the United States but you know to my

eyes he's a very brutal father

I think the message there intended or

not

um says Iran wants strong leaders in

this case a father Iran wants strong

father figures and the wrong Iran has

always had strong father figures

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get away

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thank you

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foreign

Dr Louis forsdale visited Iran twice in

the 70s and was fascinated by the

indigenous Cinema he discovered there

the quality of the film was their beauty

the photography was simply superb

everything about them was something that

that was totally unexpected to me a good

example is um

and use the bamboo French

um the short film The Story of young boy

who's forever within a boundary within

fences that he can't seem to to break

their loose from dominated by him

a father who appears to a western eye to

be extremely uh

harsh you know my heart goes out to the

little kid the man is surrounded

by his own problems his problem is

it's much bigger

that for instance the problem why the

sun doesn't go to the school

you see the man

the time that he punishes the boy

you see the man he just he spread

the net

you know on the surface

of the sea but he doesn't get anything

he doesn't get anything and he's so

fascinated

and meanwhile you know he

he's informed that his son didn't attend

school

no he's not mad because white son didn't

live in school he's mad because he

doesn't have anything to do with

it

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the way of raising a child

in a country

like Iran

or better to say in a third world

country is absolutely different

that's because of poverty

it's because of

the simplest thing that you should have

in your life when you don't have it

I remember my father used to hit me by

Muhammad

Hammer Hammer yeah yeah or just

that was because my father has the same

problem that this man has

the bamboo friends I think is one of the

loveliest short films I've I have ever

seen

with the message was so deeply embedded

in the film that it that it doesn't slap

you in the face

with a story that's so touching and so

moving I compare it with LA Maurice's um

red balloon

and that is very high tribute indeed

because among short films

I think of the red balloon being almost

without flaw

fence represents the best of short

Iranian films religions in Iran by Mano

chair tie up represents the best of

Iranian documentaries

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religions in Iran Compares and at times

contrasts the religious rituals of four

of the state-sanctioned religions in

Iran under the Shah Islam

Christianity

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Judaism

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and so austrianism

I think regardless to the title of the

film

I had really no intention to make a film

about religions in particular

I tried to make films about human beings

and

vis-a-vis their religions something

important to their lives Maybe

True Religions they try to get some

answer to their questions

I really didn't want to make a

documentary about different religious

groups

or sects there were many other sex and

religious groups that I never referred

to them because it as I told the main

goal was human being

and not the religion

that's why I never mentioned which

religion is which

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foreign

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rituals

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exist in all religions

sure at this moment it seems a little

bit violent but

it has nothing to do with a bunch of

violent people that are praying

I never divided the religions

that's why I

make

cuts from one religion to other and I

wanted to make a unity in this film

because I believe if there is a God is

there one and only God and there is no

difference

and

that's why I

simply show people

looking for something trying to get

closer to what they want

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foreign

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to show the violence

but not

violence in a particular religion

it's the expression of human being we

can't control them

I mean we can see the guideline how they

have to pray

that always seems to be trying to reach

out for something in effect the camera

itself turns into a pilgrim in a shrine

my camera

is a part of me

and if I see the scenes I have to

reflect my ideas through my camera

tie up also carefully uses distancing

techniques to keep his audience from

being emotionally involved he

effectively intercuts long moving shots

of empty sacred places with the same

places packed with people in order to

maintain an objective sense of

separation of figure from ground

I didn't want to

get involved with the emotionally

involved with the whole action I kept my

camera sometimes in a distance sometimes

I got closer and sometimes I use the

subjective camera which means

me and my camera was a part of this

crowd

I used all these empty places to give my

audience an opportunity to think and not

getting emotionally involved all the

time because he had to make his own

decisions you know that's why I used

these various slow camera movements in

empty places

like churches and

mosques

that's the point I really wanted to give

in

an opportunity to think

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mama

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the artistic flowering of Iranian Cinema

in the 70s was partly the result of a

symbiotic type of relationship between

the government and the quality

filmmakers

films in their symbolic ways were highly

critical of the establishment yet the

filmmakers had to turn to the same

establishment for financial support

because their projects had little

Commercial Appeal to attract any private

investors on the other hand the

government while basically suspicious of

the filmmakers and their intentions

found itself benefiting from being

associated with them the films were

receiving tremendously favorable

responses in international festivals and

the Shaw's government was actively

campaigning to counterbalance its

debased political image abroad with as

much cultural Prestige as they could

gain the relationship however did not

always work

manager tie up made his film for the

ministry of art and culture one of the

filmmaking branches of the government

but ironically the ministry refused to

issue a screening permit for the film

as far as I know this film has never

been released for a public screening in

Iran because of the controversy between

the religious leaders at that time

they they didn't actually didn't like

the way I made this film government

people and I think they they didn't have

any specific idea

but they referred all the time when they

did when they got such a film on the

subject they refer to the people that

were in charge or were interested you

know and then they made their decision

but uh I think

I mean if they didn't release this film

which means to me that they really

didn't want to to show the film in here

for public

and I asked them why they don't screen

this film I mean publicly they told me

it's it's actually impossible to do it

religions in Iran was not an isolated

case a number of other government-funded

or Independent films were either banned

or had problems receiving a screening

permit

one film in particular

which was kept out of circulation for a

long time and in fact never really

achieved much circulation during the

regime of the Shah was the uh the film

now the story was of that the uh the

Iranian Association of Physicians

objected to this film because it was

directly critical of the medical

profession

well yes the reason I was banned was

because uh but I mean it showed you know

this kind of a poverty and everything it

was like uh the thing that uh for

instance Dr ball told me he said that uh

the way you showed this thing was that

uh you have a very beautiful restaurant

for instance uh on um in appearance very

good but you just don't show the

restaurant you go into the kitchen and

you show the dirty kitchen and all these

you know Cooks who are doing Dirty Works

and so on so your film is like that it

does not show you know this uh this

modern

uh glamorous you know uh industrial

country which they wished to show so

that's why they banned it and it was

banned again the longest band was on

that plane for three and a half years

they paralyzed me because they really

also allow me to to make other films all

my projects would be

uh

uh refused

oh

yeah

very uh strong film

it hit me in the gut because I wasn't

expecting it at all I wasn't expecting

the theme of the trafficking in blood

getting blood from diseased people and

and selling it to to hospitals

foreign

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don't give it to me

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all these Laboratories in which these uh

poor people these addicted people would

donate blood

they were all very secret and hidden

from the public and they they would make

a lot of money out of that

uh the things that I I showed in the

film was it actually came from the

reality and even the locations that I

used where the original locations the

cycle

is very overt um in its protest

it happens to protest

blood exchanges which become

contaminated and patients die and there

are payoffs involved and

and and that sort of thing it's a very

bitter very direct film

it's directed at an entire system

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s

that's it

that's right now

in Amazon

Los Angeles

the point that is is perhaps most

politically important is the that the

film deals with the selling of blood

and the this becomes a an extremely

important uh device uh for the film in

order to make a political protest

without making a political protest

uh we have individuals downtrodden

individuals people from Villages these

drug addicts and other individuals who

are who are selling their blood in order

to just simply survive

and we find a young and very innocent

young man who is

come to the city in order to to try to

get medical care for his father and ends

up being part of the of the the ring

which rounds up individuals and uh and

brings them in in order to to sell their

blood in order to feed a very lucrative

Medical Practice

foreign

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even people who have the best intentions

like this young man eventually get

caught up in the in the entire process

of of corruption and of the bleeding the

public Drive literally in order to be

able to survive themselves

you work twice with Olam Hussein Society

they were respected the Iranian

playwright What attracted you to his

work

uh

first of all I thought that he was the

best dramatic writer the best story

short story writer the best and I his

story is attracted me they had somehow

those Elements which I always cherished

in you know in in works of good

literature that is to say different

layers different dimensions of meaning

of attitude of human relationship and

particularly this this mysterious up

this mysterious

symbolic or or one could say a mystical

element which exists in in some of his

works that he somehow transcends you

know the the given reality and someone

talks about certain Elements which are

so real

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and also the fact that he had a very

critical uh Vivid critical Vision in

regard to the reality which existed

around him and he was tremendously

involved you know with the poor people

with all these conflicts

these issues the political issues

if there was one thing which perhaps

stands out about those Iranian films

that I've seen in terms of a a common

kind of subject matter and theme

it is

curiously the apparent absence of the

government in a way it's probably a wish

knowing of great man in life that the

government would disappear and that the

people would uh

murder would would somehow follow their

own instincts it's a kind of low-key

anarchic spirit

I think there and I think they've moved

into areas where they don't have to deal

with the president I think the absence

of the government

and I filmed from a very repressive

Society indicate a desire possibly to

escape

from that and instead what you have are

people who apparently are sort of living

without any external Authority in their

lives

um which I imagine is kind of omitted

because it'd be almost impossible to

treat

but who on an individual basis

seem to be

um cutting each other up

um where there's a number of other

Cinemas that I've seen kind of focus on

the the struggles of women or the the

clashes between the government and and

peasants or or whatever it is

somehow does an individualization of

conflict which is in the foreground

of of the Iranian films I've seen and

which I presume is left to the uh

positive context by the Iranian Jews who

were obviously live the context

films which try to give attention to

General Social realities could only do

so without specifying what their causes

were so the causes have to be left to be

filled in by the viewers

foreign

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laughs

laughs

oh

I'm reminded in a funny kind of way of

some Eastern European films some of the

Czech films in the early 60s and so on

which again paid attention to a velocity

of things which were going on and even

to do that it was highly unpopular with

the Czech authorities because they had a

vision of Czechoslovakia as being you

know one of the the the the the the best

places in the world to live in where

problems were basically solved as they

weren't solved would be solved next year

um and

there's a certain kind of reminiscence

there for me my impression is that as

long as the as long as criticism of the

government remain on a symbolic level

and not on a direct level

then the uh then a film would probably

be allowed to be shown

not necessarily necessarily

films resorted to symbolic communication

they could still run into problems with

the government witness farmanara's tall

Shadows of the Wind

the objection of the chance regime was

that by scarecrow we meant Shah and his

secret service another group of sensor

in the Romania regime they said by

the Scarecrow you mean how many and his

regime I told him that this film was

made prior to your regime so we couldn't

mean that

in Iran political relationships for

centuries have had a an extraordinarily

unique quality

the ruling authorities have always tried

to legitimize themselves by reference to

some cultural or historical or moral

system which is over and above everyday

life

during the Sean's regime the Shah tried

to associate his regime with the

pre-islamic empires and with the

institution of the monarchy down through

history and staged a number of symbolic

celebrations in order to in order to

emphasize this under the regime of the

Ayatollah Khomeini we have reference to

the legitimacy of Islam as a system the

interesting thing about

pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary

Iran is that the hierarchical structure

of the society has remained unchanged

it's difficult to criticize that

Authority without negating your

acceptance of that basic relationship

and therefore if you have grievances or

are you're unhappy about something or

you want to express a protest you have

only two choices one is to break the

relationship and and end up with

something like a Revolt or a revolution

or you can express your dissatisfaction

in indirect ways and the the cinema

turns out to be an important indirect

way of expressing

dissatisfaction with the current state

of the of the the moral Universe in

which individuals are involved they

start with what they don't want you to

have in your films in at the time of the

Shah you couldn't talk about the royal

family you couldn't talk about

Islam you couldn't talk about armed

forces and you couldn't talk about the

Constitution these were the four things

that you you know they said that you

should not have in your films there are

certain things which were taboo that you

shouldn't touch like for instance the

critique of regime or critique of shao

critique of the ministers or the

critique of whatever critic is it was uh

completely taboo but once they were

settled

and became more powerful they started

telling you in the last couple of years

what should be in your film

they said we don't have a bad doctor all

doctors are good so you should have a

good doctor and that's the end of

creativity for anyone the ideal or the

desire or the Outlook of a one or two or

three particular person determines you

know the the the Destiny or the the

destiny of the film you know I remember

once with a friend of mine we went to

see a prime minister because we set up

that new film group an organization for

young filmmakers

we wanted to get some loan from

government to make it when we decided to

to make films

independently without helping of

the conventional market and commercial

producers and he he directly told us

that if you want money from us you must

make feel for us

and the way we we say

but if you want make things for your

ideas you have to invest yourself spend

your father's money or your

property they controlled everything

even sometimes by

investing money they controlled

filmmaking in Iran to an extent they had

become clever enough to use us as sort

of safety valve let us do a political

film and show it in Tehran and some

festivals and that was it and the moment

I realized that we were being used as a

weapon to keep something safe for

themselves I stopped doing it that way

and I just started doing it becoming

more and more independent but it was

always antagonistic kind of relationship

because there were sensors they were

they were controlling all the valves and

I just as an artist I did not think that

they should be doing that the

relationship between Iranian filmmakers

and the Iranian government was a highly

ambiguous relationship and I think what

it really shows more than anything is

that the Iranian government itself was

not monolithic

on the one hand we had certain areas of

government that were not interested in

having political expression be

especially free or direct

certainly were not interested in in

supporting anything which would turn

back on government and promote criticism

and yet on the other hand we had other

areas of government which were

interested in fostering artistic

expression should they helped I mean um

if you are talking about restrictions if

you are talking about control it doesn't

mean that they um they they had the

whole nation in their hands they had to

they had to do something for for for for

the country and for the culture of the

country and sometimes they use all these

things as a propagandistic well to show

themselves

it is a matter of Pride oftentimes for

uh for governments to support some kind

of indigenous Cinema Iran I think did

that um beautifully um

at least the the period that I know

about where where much of the funding

for films came from government sources

um interestingly

um many of the films that were made are

under Government funding

had within them

um buried covert what I would read as

subversive messages

um but I guess the government sensors

weren't reading um in the same way that

I was reading because they were being

financed by the government and shown by

the government very often you have films

that seem

that seemed to be politically daring

courageous and then you analyze

situation you find either they are what

Carlos Fuentes said is a margin of

descent you know like 10 like government

will tolerate this kind of uh every

regime in the most repressive regime

will tolerate a certain amount of

dissent a certain amount of it in film

anyway certain amount of uh criticism uh

or else their films made an exiled so to

speak or underground uh underground

films are very hard to make it's very

hard to have the Cinematic equivalent of

summit thoughts so so I think political

film nego the filmmaker who wish to say

something although you you can say I I

would say that every film is political

no matter how vacuous or anything if it

says nothing that is a political

statement that means that we're not

going to say anything so everything is

critical I would say that uh political

filmmaker has to work with the tightrope

uh and I think we have to analyze the

nature of that type here we come back to

the question of censorship and the the

political regime that only indirect

statements can be made

um anyway and therefore that I suspect

tended to force an additional recourse

to symbolic communication

under a totalitarian regime usually

it happens

because

you haven't the opportunity to talk

directly

and you try to find some way to express

yourself

and this symbolism is the actually the

best way

somehow in Iranian artistic tradition

things don't have much value

aesthetically unless they're said in a

in a highly indirect way

there's something about the artistic

tradition in Iran which which makes it

necessary for the person who is

approaching some artistic form to do

some work himself in order to be able to

discern the meaning what's interesting

is the level of irony which a filmmaker

can operate in the level of allegory one

interesting thing is in Spain the

Spanish filmmakers during the Franco

regime developed including Goodwill of

viridiana developed a very elaborate

allegorical symbolic subtext I guess

like the science fiction writers did in

America during McCarthy era that you

know one thing represented another and

so you you had this very elaborate

subterfuge

and now some of the day that generation

filmmakers cannot

compose it on the other one the worst

thing that could happen under

such circumstances is the auto

censorship

which happens usually in countries and

societies ruled by

totalitarian

governments

it's must I mean

the effect is much greater than to

control I mean to have a system who

controls

in many cases I don't think that

was necessary to make

such a heavy fins

I mean by

having such a heavy language

and the nature of making film ideas it's

making fun for people

if you make a distance between yourself

and people why should you make any fear

most of the films I have seen from Iran

and I'm sure I haven't seen all of them

in foreign countries we tend to see the

the film more of the intelligence here

we tend to see rather than the films

that are more on the commercial

mainstream so we we tend to get some

distorted view of what a cinema is but

it it films that are exported usually

particularly to festivals to Elite

groups to Art House groups universities

academic centers tend to uh

present a problem of the the

intellectual filmmaker trying to

communicate with a larger audience from

which he is somewhat alienated uh

somewhat separated the the number of

people who actually view these films was

was rather small

however

for these individuals the fact that that

political messages and messages of

protests could be expressed even in a

veiled way even in an indirect way was

uh had a very powerful effect on those

individuals what's interesting to me is

obviously the the gap between people who

are making the films and the society

they're describing

it's an enormous Gap it's like centuries

and it's a strange situation if you're

making a movie in a society in a country

first you have to know your people what

kind of people you know in living in

your country

there you have people who are you know

flying in Jets making films with people

who are going in Ox cards uh it's uh

it's a centuries difference almost like

archeology history it's like going so

far back so far down

that the distance is just staggering

that's what I find interesting about

them how do you cope with that and yet

you ready they're your people they're

your roots your your your country your

blood

um

it's such a hard question

the Iranian Revolution in 1978 and 79

was largely engineered by people in the

middle classes

and I I have no doubt in my mind that

the the Iranian Cinema in the 10 years

previous to this contributed to the

political awareness of uh area of people

in the middle classes and educated

classes uh and uh particularly

University students who formed an

important aspect of political life in

Iran in the uh in the late 70s the

Iranian Revolution that replaced the

monarchy of the Shah with the milocracy

of Ayatollah Khomeini brought an end to

a budding National Cinema that had taken

firm route despite the censorship and

repression of the Shah's government

although the revolution had initially

brought them a promise of Freedom most

Iranian filmmakers soon realized that

they were clearly at odds with leaders

of the new regime facing the Dilemma of

either submitting to the regime or

maintaining their Integrity several

talented Iranian filmmakers were forced

to leave the country when the revolution

happened for a very short period of time

which is about four and five months

immediately after the revolution

Iran was Heaven on this Earth because it

was absolute freedom for an artist I

could do anything that I wanted in fact

I had the script which was called the

day that the Shah left and all the

preparation

was there to start the shooting of the

of the film

but all of a sudden I saw that the signs

of another dictation is starting they

started

closing down the newspapers they started

having another group that going over

this uh film the scripts are now much

more hard than it was before and by some

very strange uh I mean it was this very

strange feeling that now that I had

experienced that beautiful five months

the repression again is so stifling as

an artist that I just couldn't could not

understand it why did he leave your

country

well because because I lost my

job I couldn't make any film I couldn't

open my theater

so uh

why should I be there

but anyway if I would be there I had to

do something because

people I was working with them for a

long time they expected me to work

even my silence would have some meaning

that the government wouldn't like it

and me I have never been directly in

Iran I have spent my time of most of my

time in Europe I went to Iran made my

film and went to Europe

I'm still in Exile I haven't seen any

changes

for an Asian artist is the very very

difficult thing to immigrate because

you're transplanting yourself to a

totally new society and the chances of a

38 year old tree to be transplanted to a

new soil and not dying with our

background and culture is very very

remote

so it's not an easy decision

but a decision that I had to make

because I also have three children

and I didn't want them to be brought up

under the same kind of repressive regime

and they didn't want to come to this

world and I owe them at least a better

life

and this is why I left I wanted to go

back I had the intention to go back

but I then I couldn't you know make

myself

to go back to a country

that

it's hard to live for people like us

Our Salon sasani's life in Exile has not

been easy either he has been earning a

living by driving a cab in New York City

what I am doing here maybe it's not only

because of myself you know because I

feel I have kind of responsibility to my

child

that I still believe that he can have a

better life here than if you go back in

Iran

Harvey syed's life in Exile was not very

different from arcelon's sasanis in the

beginning for three years he worked as a

receptionist at a Columbia

university-owned building in Manhattan

then he managed to obtain funds to make

the mission the first Iranian film to be

made outside of Iran After the

revolution

the film turned out to be a critical

success and subsequently Sai had moved

to Los Angeles where he now directs

stage plays for the Iranian community

foreign

foreign

so much

foreign

exile

miserable

yeah sometimes it's painful but

but when you realize the reality

and the way that it is

so you just

you give up

[Music]

Marvin the Billy whose film the sealed

soil was never shown in Iran made the

night songs her first feature film in

this country

too late

just too late you seeing someone dying

your community reaction is to get people

away from away from okay action action

the film that was financed by PBS's

American Playhouse is the story of a

Vietnamese girl who experiences an

identity crisis in New York's Chinatown

maybe eventually the Exile thing

disappears

[Music]

the the artist ceases to be an exile

becomes hyphenated that becomes part of

have begins to operate away from a

subculture moves into the mainstream

culture I don't know

I don't know what I would say I think he

has to use his own instincts

it's very difficult to survive he has my

sympathy

I think you know for me if I were to

finally find myself in another country

forced to be in another country with a

different language with people who don't

have mine I don't know how I'd function

I don't know what I would do

I mean I think it's uh it's a nightmare

situation

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la

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foreign

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