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I posted earlier to the "Sorry to get...your ass" thread, recommending an award-winning Iranian film called "The Circle" for those who've expressed an interest in the lives of women in an Islamic state.
Searching reviews of the film, which won at Cannes in 2001, I found this radio interview with the director that was broadcast a year later, following the arrest of another Iranian filmmaker for treason. Her film had previously been cleared by censors; she was arrested in a crackdown on the industry that's credited here to the Iranian gov't's reaction to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
The risks and repercussions of free expression in Iran offer a chilling picture of life in a "faith-based" society. The religion & sex thread has had some thoughtful and provocative comments about the politics of religion. Rather than confine this to the "Sorry...ass" thread, I thought I'd take the issue of religion vs. free expression to the broader AH audience, and ask, "How many would be willing to walk the political tightrope that these filmmakers face in their determination to be heard?"
(I hope you all say you'd risk anything, because I'm going to need my dirty stories fix more than ever, when Big Brother finally brings us to heel.)
At the end of the interview is a review of the film published after it won at Cannes and before the gov't crackdown.
------------------------------
The Circle
Radio National’s film critic, Julie Rigg, spoke to director, Jafar Panahi, about the increasingly difficult conditions for filmmakers in Iran. The current political climate is no exception - one socially critical filmmaker, Tahmineh Milani, has recently been charged with treason. Panahi’s film,'The Circle', is critical of the treatment of women under this regime and has never been screened in Iran.
The following is an edited transcript from Radio National’s Sunday Morning program, broadcast on 24/02/2002.
Background:
Jafar Panahi’s film The Circle won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2001. The latest in a stream of gifted filmmakers to emerge in Iran in the last decade or so, Jafar Panahi has been feted by critics round the globe for this astonishing yet grim portrait of the situation of women in Iran.
Panahi grew up in a poor quarter of Teheran, got his tertiary education in the army, and then decided to become a filmmaker. He apprenticed himself to the Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami and then had a modest international success with his film The White Balloon.
But 'The Circle' is a much tougher film and, since America invaded Afghanistan, things have become very difficult in Iran for Panahi and other filmmakers whose films raise some difficult questions.
Julie Rigg:
Jafar Panahi welcome. Last time we talked you’d just got the Fipresci Award for ‘The Circle’ at the San Sebastian film festival, and it still hadn’t been released in Iran. Has it screened at all in Iran since then?
Jafar Panahi:
No unfortunately it has not yet launched to be screened. [It has] the same problems and it is more difficult even. The man responsible for the movies in Iran has said that this movie is never to be screened, and even that it should be burnt.
Julie Rigg:
‘The Circle’ is a devastating picture of the situation of women in Iran, even down to the smallest things – they cannot travel unescorted, in their public lives they are harassed and bullied and watched under surveillance by men, even a little thing like smoking a cigarette, in a society where most of the men smoke, women can only do so in secret, not in public. I imagine, if anything, things have changed for the worse since you made that film in your country?
Jafar Panahi:
It changes all the time. Sometimes it gets better, sometimes more difficult, but unfortunately [during the making of] this film we felt that it is becoming worse. Smoking in this movie could be added to that. To interpret [smoking] in a broader way [would be to] say that we have limitations, so it could be a metaphor to explain other limitations that exist.
Julie Rigg:
I understood it as a metaphor. The women in this film have some very tough solutions to choose. I mean we see a woman giving birth to a daughter and immediately there is alarm in the family, it’s not good to bring a daughter into the world instead of a son. We see women out of jail that we don’t know what they were charged with. We see a woman trying to have her daughter adopted by some visiting westerners, by abandoning her outside a hotel. It’s like a circle of imprisonment and small situations. All these stories, are these things you’ve seen around you?
Jafar Panahi:
This could exist at any time. She thinks they have been in a small prison but when they go out of that small prison they are in a bigger prison as if they were going to the same place that they were before.
Julie Rigg:
You give us a very revealing picture of life in Teheran, the texture of life in the streets, the formal and informal structures of power and people’s attitudes. I’m wondering about life in Teheran now since the American invasion of Afghanistan. Now the Americans are talking about taking the so-called ‘war against terror’ against other countries, maybe even your own. What’s been the effect of this?
Jafar Panahi:
I just show a part of that, one part of the street, in my movies. When you are watching [life in] Teheran maybe you won’t see all these things happening. For example, if you see an American movie, and you see a bank robbery or a shooting, it doesn’t mean that when you go to the United States these things will happen all the time.
What is happening around us I couldn’t say. I don’t find any excuse for the United States and what happened in Afghanistan. I don’t know what will happen but I’m sure a lot of innocent people have been killed, people who have a lot of [other] problems perhaps. But this is not the solution, this is not the best solution, you have to look deeper into the problem. Why do people like Bin Laden exist in the world? You have to see where the problem lies. The US always needs a marionette [in order to] defend what they are doing. For example, we have Saddam but they never killed him, he is still there. And they entered Afghanistan, they killed people - but not Bin Laden; so they always need someone.
Julie Rigg:
We know that, as a reaction possibly to the United States threats, the political climate in Iran has become tighter; it has been said about your own film that it should be burned. I’ve also read about the arrest for the first time of a woman filmmaker, Tahmineh Milani, who released a film which had actually been approved by government censors, and now she’s charged with treason, crimes against the state. How can people go on making films in this difficult climate?
Jafar Panahi:
For many films, in other countries also, you always have the same problems because the social filmmakers are speaking about problems in these countries. For example what happened to Imail Nawaz was the same thing. In a closed system, when you make movies, you know that it will be banned but you are hoping that you [will be able to] screen it and that, one day, it will be seen by everyone. This is a characteristic of these kinds of movies. In Iran we have 60 to 70 films a year; we have every kind, you have family movies, industrial, commercial and bar movies, and then four or five movies like mine.
Julie Rigg:
So are you personally frightened that if you make another critical film you might be arrested as Tahmineh Milani has been?
Jafar Panahi:
I was abroad when it happened to Tahmineh Milani and when I came back I defended her and I even gave my award to her. You know that these things happen but you continue to make movies. We have had three stages in history of filmmaking in Iran - special conditions.
One of them was right after the revolution and a lot of filmmakers had difficulties because they had made their film before the revolution, and after that the films had been banned.
The second one was six or seven years ago and we can compare it to McCarthy and the blacklist. At that time every filmmaker was thinking that maybe he’s on the blacklist.
The third stage started two weeks ago, and it has been started, I think, by Tahmineh Milani. [Only because of the protests] by other filmmakers, has she been released from prison. Two movie magazines have been banned. At the moment in Iran we have a festival [that goes] for 15 days, after which they have said that they will decide on the fate of these magazines. But the conditions are becoming difficult and dangerous.
Julie Rigg:
I understand Jafar Panahi our thoughts are with you there. Thankyou so much.
---------------------------
MOVIE REVIEW
By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Friday, April 27, 2001
THE CIRCLE
DIRECTOR: Jafar Panahi
CAST: Fereshteh Sadr Orafi, Maryiam Parvin Almani, Nargess Mamizadeh
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
LANGUAGE: In Farsi with English subtitles
RATING: No rating, contains discussions of abortion and prostitution
'Circle' illustrates the snare of powerlessness for women in Iran
"It's a girl."
The first words spoken in Jafar Panahi's "The Circle" should be a celebration. They're so troubling to the anxious grandmother pacing in the hospital waiting room that she needs to confirm them with another nurse.
Communicating through an tiny opening in a thick door like a prisoner, she insists: "The ultrasound said it would be a boy," as if willing it to be so. "The relatives will be furious."
From this ominous prelude emerges a portrait of Iranian society that resembles a police state (not a surprise the film was banned in Iran). Women scramble through streets, dodging cops like fugitives. Some of them are (their crimes are left ominously vague), but another is a pregnant woman tossed out of the family home and searching for a doctor who will risk giving her an abortion.
Panahi, whose previous films "The White Balloon" and "The Mirror"are deft, delicate little tales about the innocence of childhood, brings a passion and an anger to "The Circle."
A mix of the poetic and the polemic, the film is oddly abstract and untethered, with men little more than anonymous authority figures and women rarely more than roughly sketched martyrs. It's Panahi's sensitivity to moment-by-moment sensations and the more subtle realities of the status of Iranian women that brings the film to life.
Constructed as a roundelay, the film drifts from one plight to another with an easy grace. The women search for a place to smoke in public (prohibited by law) and are constantly reminded to wrap themselves under their concealing chadors (which they continually remove when in private). One young woman has to fast-talk a ticket salesman into securing a seat on a bus out of town because he is not allowed to sell tickets to single, unaccompanied women.
The prisonlike imagery of the opening scene becomes literal by the last scene. The tiny opening is shut tight with a clang that reverberates through the credits and beyond.
Searching reviews of the film, which won at Cannes in 2001, I found this radio interview with the director that was broadcast a year later, following the arrest of another Iranian filmmaker for treason. Her film had previously been cleared by censors; she was arrested in a crackdown on the industry that's credited here to the Iranian gov't's reaction to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
The risks and repercussions of free expression in Iran offer a chilling picture of life in a "faith-based" society. The religion & sex thread has had some thoughtful and provocative comments about the politics of religion. Rather than confine this to the "Sorry...ass" thread, I thought I'd take the issue of religion vs. free expression to the broader AH audience, and ask, "How many would be willing to walk the political tightrope that these filmmakers face in their determination to be heard?"
(I hope you all say you'd risk anything, because I'm going to need my dirty stories fix more than ever, when Big Brother finally brings us to heel.)
At the end of the interview is a review of the film published after it won at Cannes and before the gov't crackdown.
------------------------------
The Circle
Radio National’s film critic, Julie Rigg, spoke to director, Jafar Panahi, about the increasingly difficult conditions for filmmakers in Iran. The current political climate is no exception - one socially critical filmmaker, Tahmineh Milani, has recently been charged with treason. Panahi’s film,'The Circle', is critical of the treatment of women under this regime and has never been screened in Iran.
The following is an edited transcript from Radio National’s Sunday Morning program, broadcast on 24/02/2002.
Background:
Jafar Panahi’s film The Circle won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2001. The latest in a stream of gifted filmmakers to emerge in Iran in the last decade or so, Jafar Panahi has been feted by critics round the globe for this astonishing yet grim portrait of the situation of women in Iran.
Panahi grew up in a poor quarter of Teheran, got his tertiary education in the army, and then decided to become a filmmaker. He apprenticed himself to the Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami and then had a modest international success with his film The White Balloon.
But 'The Circle' is a much tougher film and, since America invaded Afghanistan, things have become very difficult in Iran for Panahi and other filmmakers whose films raise some difficult questions.
Julie Rigg:
Jafar Panahi welcome. Last time we talked you’d just got the Fipresci Award for ‘The Circle’ at the San Sebastian film festival, and it still hadn’t been released in Iran. Has it screened at all in Iran since then?
Jafar Panahi:
No unfortunately it has not yet launched to be screened. [It has] the same problems and it is more difficult even. The man responsible for the movies in Iran has said that this movie is never to be screened, and even that it should be burnt.
Julie Rigg:
‘The Circle’ is a devastating picture of the situation of women in Iran, even down to the smallest things – they cannot travel unescorted, in their public lives they are harassed and bullied and watched under surveillance by men, even a little thing like smoking a cigarette, in a society where most of the men smoke, women can only do so in secret, not in public. I imagine, if anything, things have changed for the worse since you made that film in your country?
Jafar Panahi:
It changes all the time. Sometimes it gets better, sometimes more difficult, but unfortunately [during the making of] this film we felt that it is becoming worse. Smoking in this movie could be added to that. To interpret [smoking] in a broader way [would be to] say that we have limitations, so it could be a metaphor to explain other limitations that exist.
Julie Rigg:
I understood it as a metaphor. The women in this film have some very tough solutions to choose. I mean we see a woman giving birth to a daughter and immediately there is alarm in the family, it’s not good to bring a daughter into the world instead of a son. We see women out of jail that we don’t know what they were charged with. We see a woman trying to have her daughter adopted by some visiting westerners, by abandoning her outside a hotel. It’s like a circle of imprisonment and small situations. All these stories, are these things you’ve seen around you?
Jafar Panahi:
This could exist at any time. She thinks they have been in a small prison but when they go out of that small prison they are in a bigger prison as if they were going to the same place that they were before.
Julie Rigg:
You give us a very revealing picture of life in Teheran, the texture of life in the streets, the formal and informal structures of power and people’s attitudes. I’m wondering about life in Teheran now since the American invasion of Afghanistan. Now the Americans are talking about taking the so-called ‘war against terror’ against other countries, maybe even your own. What’s been the effect of this?
Jafar Panahi:
I just show a part of that, one part of the street, in my movies. When you are watching [life in] Teheran maybe you won’t see all these things happening. For example, if you see an American movie, and you see a bank robbery or a shooting, it doesn’t mean that when you go to the United States these things will happen all the time.
What is happening around us I couldn’t say. I don’t find any excuse for the United States and what happened in Afghanistan. I don’t know what will happen but I’m sure a lot of innocent people have been killed, people who have a lot of [other] problems perhaps. But this is not the solution, this is not the best solution, you have to look deeper into the problem. Why do people like Bin Laden exist in the world? You have to see where the problem lies. The US always needs a marionette [in order to] defend what they are doing. For example, we have Saddam but they never killed him, he is still there. And they entered Afghanistan, they killed people - but not Bin Laden; so they always need someone.
Julie Rigg:
We know that, as a reaction possibly to the United States threats, the political climate in Iran has become tighter; it has been said about your own film that it should be burned. I’ve also read about the arrest for the first time of a woman filmmaker, Tahmineh Milani, who released a film which had actually been approved by government censors, and now she’s charged with treason, crimes against the state. How can people go on making films in this difficult climate?
Jafar Panahi:
For many films, in other countries also, you always have the same problems because the social filmmakers are speaking about problems in these countries. For example what happened to Imail Nawaz was the same thing. In a closed system, when you make movies, you know that it will be banned but you are hoping that you [will be able to] screen it and that, one day, it will be seen by everyone. This is a characteristic of these kinds of movies. In Iran we have 60 to 70 films a year; we have every kind, you have family movies, industrial, commercial and bar movies, and then four or five movies like mine.
Julie Rigg:
So are you personally frightened that if you make another critical film you might be arrested as Tahmineh Milani has been?
Jafar Panahi:
I was abroad when it happened to Tahmineh Milani and when I came back I defended her and I even gave my award to her. You know that these things happen but you continue to make movies. We have had three stages in history of filmmaking in Iran - special conditions.
One of them was right after the revolution and a lot of filmmakers had difficulties because they had made their film before the revolution, and after that the films had been banned.
The second one was six or seven years ago and we can compare it to McCarthy and the blacklist. At that time every filmmaker was thinking that maybe he’s on the blacklist.
The third stage started two weeks ago, and it has been started, I think, by Tahmineh Milani. [Only because of the protests] by other filmmakers, has she been released from prison. Two movie magazines have been banned. At the moment in Iran we have a festival [that goes] for 15 days, after which they have said that they will decide on the fate of these magazines. But the conditions are becoming difficult and dangerous.
Julie Rigg:
I understand Jafar Panahi our thoughts are with you there. Thankyou so much.
---------------------------
MOVIE REVIEW
By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Friday, April 27, 2001
THE CIRCLE
DIRECTOR: Jafar Panahi
CAST: Fereshteh Sadr Orafi, Maryiam Parvin Almani, Nargess Mamizadeh
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
LANGUAGE: In Farsi with English subtitles
RATING: No rating, contains discussions of abortion and prostitution
'Circle' illustrates the snare of powerlessness for women in Iran
"It's a girl."
The first words spoken in Jafar Panahi's "The Circle" should be a celebration. They're so troubling to the anxious grandmother pacing in the hospital waiting room that she needs to confirm them with another nurse.
Communicating through an tiny opening in a thick door like a prisoner, she insists: "The ultrasound said it would be a boy," as if willing it to be so. "The relatives will be furious."
From this ominous prelude emerges a portrait of Iranian society that resembles a police state (not a surprise the film was banned in Iran). Women scramble through streets, dodging cops like fugitives. Some of them are (their crimes are left ominously vague), but another is a pregnant woman tossed out of the family home and searching for a doctor who will risk giving her an abortion.
Panahi, whose previous films "The White Balloon" and "The Mirror"are deft, delicate little tales about the innocence of childhood, brings a passion and an anger to "The Circle."
A mix of the poetic and the polemic, the film is oddly abstract and untethered, with men little more than anonymous authority figures and women rarely more than roughly sketched martyrs. It's Panahi's sensitivity to moment-by-moment sensations and the more subtle realities of the status of Iranian women that brings the film to life.
Constructed as a roundelay, the film drifts from one plight to another with an easy grace. The women search for a place to smoke in public (prohibited by law) and are constantly reminded to wrap themselves under their concealing chadors (which they continually remove when in private). One young woman has to fast-talk a ticket salesman into securing a seat on a bus out of town because he is not allowed to sell tickets to single, unaccompanied women.
The prisonlike imagery of the opening scene becomes literal by the last scene. The tiny opening is shut tight with a clang that reverberates through the credits and beyond.
