 Think of a country, the president of which finds American cinema -the most influential cinema industry- to be “devoid of all culture” and therefore bans, to a great extent, the screening of American and other Western films. But bear in mind that this country has one of the greatest, most unique and critical cinemas on earth. The country is Iran. I have very little knowledge of the cinematic history and culture of Iran, yet I've been moved by two very different works of this mysterious and difficult cinema that I saw recently. I'd like to share my opinions.
During the !f Independent Film Festival, I had the chance to watch No One Cares About Persian Cats, a docu-fiction by Bahman Ghobadi on the underground rock/indie scenes of Tehran. The film was apparently based on the real lives of young indie musicians who strived to deal with numerous obstacles: the difficulty of obtaining passports and visas for going abroad to play their music, finding appropriate places to rehearse and people to play with, having to use illegal methods to fight these obstacles and most of all, dealing with the deep structures of conservatism within their society. Plus, the story works hand in hand with the texture of the city: If you saw and liked Fatih Akżn's Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, you would love this film, too, as it documents the city of Tehran in its many dimensions. Overall, it was a very good film that made it impossible not to sympathize with the young aspiring musicians.
The second film I will mention is by an even more important director, Abbas Kiarostami, whose recent work Shirin was screened in my department during the film overview series. Shirin is, I guarantee you, nothing you have ever seen before. It's ninety minutes of over 100 women watching a film in the dark. A narrator tells the story of Shirin, the Armenian princess who is torn between the two men that are in love with her. The voice-over is arranged in the form of dialogues and sound effects that gives the illusion that the women are really watching a film. Of course, the idea of watching only faces for one and a half hours is simply absurd for many of us, not to mention that the expressions those faces make aren't always so extreme - in fact, in a few occasions the women shed tears or briefly smiled, but were neutral most of the time, like any of us would be while watching a film. Then, what is it that makes this work a feature film and not an installation?
Kiarostami fills difficult and interesting gaps through his film. First of all, he gives the audience to be voyeurs by letting us have the experience of seeing people as they watch a film which would otherwise be impossible to reach. Second of all, he makes this story multi-layered. When Shirin, upon the death of her lover, calls out to the weeping women and asks rhetorically whether they are crying for the deceased or for their own fate, the women in the audience are also crying. One thinks of this as a sad celebration of Persian women, who cry silently and endure their fates.
But the film gets even more complicated when you learn something after the film: the story of Shirin inside the film is actually hypothetical, that is, there was neither a real film that the audience were looking at, nor was there anything, even a narration, during the filming of women. In other words, the actresses that played the roles of the audience were told by Kiarostami to look at a few points towards where there is a hypothetical curtain and think of their own lives and loves, which is what made them cry, smile or simply think.
Even with only these two examples, one cannot help but admire the obvious talent of Iranian filmmakers. Out of very limited means and an ever present danger of being banned, censored, punished, they present the international audiences with extraordinary works.
BY DAMLA OKAY (COMD/V)
dokay@bilkent.edu.tr
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