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Index Kabul / Teheran 19979 ff | Imprint |
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Sandra Schäfer / Madeleine Bernstorff
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WOMEN FILMMAKERS IN IRAN The first feature film, Do zan ("Two Women", 1997), is set in a period shortly after the revolution characterized by the activism of many political groups. Milani juxtaposes Roya, who is from a wealthy middle-class background, with the brighter and more emancipated Fereshteh, who grew up in a traditional family in Isfahan. The two dissimilar women get to know each other at the university and become friends. Fereshteh's emancipated life in Tehran comes to a sudden end when a man goes after her with a knife and attacks her cousin with acid. Claiming that she besmirched the honour of the family, she is forced to return to Isfahan. A marriage arranged by her father leads her to a repressive married life. When Fereshteh and Roya meet again in Tehran many years later, Fereshteh appears broken, while Roya leads an independent and modern life. By means of drastic juxtapositions, Milani clearly conveys how traditions impede women in their development. In her second film, Nimeh-ye penhan ("The Hidden Half", 2001), Milani dismantles middle-class married life. "Not every woman can be as pure as you", the still unknowing husband, a lawyer, says to his second wife when talking about a political prisoner. His wife then confronts him with her diary written in the years of the revolution, with her commitment to the left and her naive love affair with an older writer. By means of this "act of showing solidarity" with the political prisoner she destroys the idealized and reduced image her husband has of her and adds to the image of a caring wife and mother that of the political activist and passionate lover. Milani is one of the few Iranian women filmmakers and directors who show the activism of leftist political groups and their persecution during the time of the revolution. She also addresses their in part hierarchical cadre structures. She was arrested after the first screenings - the revolutionary court accused Milani of threatening national security and collaborating with anti-revolutionary groups abroad - but was not inhibited by this. In 2003, after she was released (16), she shot the third part of the trilogy, Vakonesh-e panjom ("The Fifth Reaction"). The feature film Pandj-e asr ("Art Five in the Afternoon", 2003) by Samira Makhmalbaf and the documentary Arezoo, die Wunschkandidatin (2002) by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad also address the difficult framework conditions of the political commitment of women in gender-segregated societies such as Iran and Afghanistan based on the stories of female presidential candidates. Samira Makhmalbaf directed the secret escape of young Noqreh (Agheleh Rezaie) in Kabul's impressively set landscape of ruins with less metaphoric pathos than in her other films. Noqreh uses the madrasah as camouflage and as a passage to a freer world, a girl's school, where the principle and the schoolgirls set up a game to practice democracy. Three schoolgirls express the wish to become president, including Noqreh. The other girls giggle. A debate by the schoolgirls and young women ensues on the aim and object of political activity and whether a presidency is possible for an Afghan woman. The pupil speaking most vehemently in favour of the self-determination of women - "we shall not wear the burka forever, I have lost my father and brother to a men's regime" - is a young girl with glasses. She talks herself into a rage and starts crying; the script later has her die in a mine explosion. Noqreh follows her ideas and reads a speech by Karzai, learns how to speak, has photographs taken for her campaign and simultaneously tries not to anger her strict, religious father who sees blasphemy at work everywhere. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad's documentary Arezoo, die Wunschkandidatin, the Arte version of her film Ruzegar-e ma ("Our Times"), accompanies Arezoo, one of 48 women who were nominated for the Iranian presidential elections. The most popular female filmmaker of the older generation comments on the political atmosphere in the spring of 2001 as follows: "The atmosphere was characterized by fear and hope, doubt and trust. Some did not want to vote at all, others intended to cast empty ballots. And others were convinced that further reforms were to come. We therefore had to vote. Apart from Khatami, who was up for elections the second time, more than 700 further candidates were registered, including 48 women. I was surprised to only find names I was not familiar with on the lists of female candidates. I was therefore curious to find out about them. Meanwhile, the candidature of all women was rejected by the Council of Guardians, the constitutional council. In the interviews I conducted with the female candidates I found out that women-specific problems had prompted them to this step". In her film, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad shows 25-year-old Arezoo who lives together with her daughter and blind mother. Arezoo races back and forth between two workplaces and desperately seeks an affordable dwelling, which she, as a divorced woman, is repeatedly denied for the most various reasons. A loan given by the film team contributes to her renting a small house, but then she is dismissed from her underpaid job at an insurance agency. At the end of the film one sees her standing stone-faced in front a picture of the Kabah in Mecca. In June 2005, a few days before the presidential elections, these precarious living conditions brought hundreds of women in Tehran to protest against the discrimination against women under the Islamic regime (New York Times, 06/12/2005). This was the first public protest by women since March 8, 1979, when they demonstrated against compulsory veiling decreed by the new regime. These demonstrations were part of a campaign of advocates of women's rights mounted against the attempts of the regime to entice more women to cast their votes. In the past years, women had decisively influenced the election results and for the most part voted for presidential candidates promising to improve their situation. Disappointed by the lacking implementation of these promises and because of the rejection of 86 female presidential candidates they took to the streets. The documentary film Zananeh ("The Ladies") that was produced in 2003 is based on research conducted by the journalist Roya Karimi Majd. She had drawn the attention of the documentary filmmaker and TV actor Mahnaz Afzali to the public ladies' toilets in Tehran's Laleh Park. Here, differences in class and age, homelessness, prostitution, family conflicts, abuse and economic distress in the biographies of the protagonists encounter each other. The journalist and the director received the filming permission from the municipal park authority and were thus able to circumvent the state approval process which is associated with quite a bit of effort. They all find a place in the anteroom of the toilets: the older prostitute Rana who is accepted as the aunt of her clients, the epileptic Maryam who is addicted to drugs, crying Sepideh who fled the confinement of her home, the double standards of her mother and the pressure of her younger brother. The women talk about suicide and life in the streets. Despaired, Sepideh cites the poet and director Forugh Farrokhzad. (17) Ever since she read these "damned poems" she no longer believes in God. PRIVATE SPACE BECOMES PUBLIC Jafar Panahi decided to shoot the film Dayereh ("The Circle", 2000) in the streets of Tehran because he did not want to depict women in private spaces (19). The presence of the gaze of the viewer makes private spaces public in cinema and thus subjects them to the rules of Islamic codes of dress and behaviour. In the film "The Hidden Half" by Tahmineh Milani there is an oppressive gravity weighing on the female protagonists in interior spaces. This is also not relieved by the camera depicting, as a corrective, a self-portrait of Frida Kahlo with loose hair. Kiarostami decided to use the car as a location (20), thus proving to be clever: As an interior and exterior space it allows for intimate conversations, with conduct changing between private and public. In Dayereh, three women rush through the inner-city of Tehran - they are on parole. They try to phone and hide from the police. Long plan-séquences shot with a hand-held camera underline the documentary effect. The camera, which is often pointed to the backs of the protagonists, intensifies their feeling of persecution and pressure. Locations include much used crossroads during rush hour, a large, modern coach station full of people and a multi-storey product warehouse with offices and sewing works. As if illegal, the protagonists fear police controls, because they are not allowed to travel or stay overnight without documents or a male companion. The simple and unattainable desire for a cigarette as a motif of individual freedom runs through the entire film. After being completed in 2000, Dayereh could not be shown at the Fadjr Film-festival (21) as planned, because Panahi refused to comply with the state-imposed condition of cutting the last 18 minutes of the film. This last sequence deals with prostitution. Dayereh cannot be viewed in public cinemas until today. However, society's interest is large, as a screening at the Tehran university revealed, which was attended by hundred of students. The film is meanwhile being distributed on the quiet as DVD and VCD. FAMILY LAW "IRANIAN STYLE" The filming location is a confined hall in a family courthouse in the Imam Khomeini Complex located in the centre of Tehran. Most petitions for divorce are made by women, although only reasons such as impotency, the use of force, drug addiction or insanity of the husband allow them to do so in the first place. (24) The discussions are held vehemently in the small courtroom, supported by the family members. The presence of the female film crew seems to have shifted the gender relations in the courtroom and quite apparently encouraged the women. Maryam is before court because of the custody of her youngest daughter. During the trial pauses she explains to the film team in front of the running camera that she tore apart the "provision" of her husband. Back in the courtroom, Maryam calls the "ladies from the film" as witnesses. Even judge Deldar turns to the camera in a friendly, paternalistic tone: "When the final decision is made, we shall see if she's learnt her lesson". One can read in the end titles that this disciplinary act apparently failed. Maryam has not been dissuaded from fighting for the custody of her four-year-old daughter even after the judicial refusal of her charge. The film may not by screened officially in Iran. However, video copies circulate and a 45-minute television version broadcast on ARTE could be received. The film was an international success, but controversially debated by Iranian women living abroad. (25)
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