Cinema is one of the great strengths of Iranian culture (wiki; playlist of films with English subtitles). I’ve admired works such as Samira Makhmalbaf’s The apple and Blackboards, as well as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (a graphic novel turned into an animated film), turning the spotlight on the plight of women under a repressive regime (see under Iranian lives).
The current “Women, Life, Freedom” movement is the latest and boldest in the decades-long struggles of Iranian women (and men) to overcome oppression (see e.g. here). The issue has receded from world headlines in recent months, but it mustn’t.
In these struggles, the world of cinema has long played an important role.
What makes this uprising so powerful is that women and cinema are at the heart of it. Both speak to the Iranian people across all social and ethnic divides and both target the heart of the regime’s anti-modern ideology.
By imprisoning the figureheads of Iranian cinema, the regime neither succeeded in silencing them, nor in intimidating the protesters. It even made them more vocal. Filmmakers both in and outside prison have made statements in support of the uprising and have amplified the voice of the protesters. Realising that the detainment of filmmakers had empowered them even more, the regime decided to grant them amnesty. Yet, this amnesty again put the global spotlight back on the filmmakers, who used this as another opportunity to garner worldwide support for the Iranian uprising.
Looking back, the kind of film I’ve been looking for is
- The circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000; reviewed e.g. here, here):
The film was shot in 35 days over a 53-day period. As usual, Panahi used non-professional actors, * with the exceptions of Fatemeh Naghavi and Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy. He saw the lead actress, Nargess Mamizadeh, in a park one day and immediately offered her the role. The film opens with one long, handheld shot that lasts over three minutes and took thirteen attempts to achieve. Panahi adopted a different camera style to depict each of the four main protagonists’ lives. For the first, an idealistic woman he used a handheld camera. For the second woman, the camera is mounted on a constantly moving dolly. The third woman’s story is told at night in darker outside, and the camera is static with pans and tight close-ups. For the last, least optimistic, both the camera and the woman are completely immobile and very little sound is used.
Earlier film of Panahi include The white balloon (1995) and Offside (2006, in six parts starting here, without subtitles). He has been arrested several times, most recently in 2022.
* * *
Tahmineh Milani. Source.
Among woman directors (both in Iran and in exile), note Tahmineh Milani (b.1960). She was briefly imprisoned for her film The hidden half (2001) before pressure from international directors brought her release. Here’s a scene:
and a short feature:
I’m also keen to see her film The fifth reaction (2003), as well as Marzieh Meshkini‘s The day I became a woman—here’s a trailer:
Further leads welcome.
See also New musics in Iran and other posts under West/Central Asia: a roundup. Cf. the secular theocracy of China, where independent directors such as Ai Xiaoming and Wang Bin, Jiang Nengjie and Xu Tong manage to make challenging films.
* Predictably, as a fully paid-up member of the Guardian-reading tofu-eating wokerati, I’m a sucker for foreign-language films with amateur actors. But seriously though folks, much as I admire Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, we just can’t help being aware that they’re Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep—which, you must admit, is a serious flaw. I dream of a global ban on actors ever appearing in more than one film, but I do realise it might not go down so well.
Stephen Jones: a blog 
