Nargess,
by 'elder stateswoman' Rakhshan Bani Etemad
The importance of women in Iran's renascent film
industry surprises many who believe that Islamic
strictures in the country have suppressed female
self-expression.
While film-making in Iran remains a sensitive and
intensely political process, women film-makers have
produced an impressive body of work in recent years and
won a series of international film awards. Samira
Makhmalbaf made The Apple at 17
In the aftermath of the Islamic revolution in 1979
hundreds of cinemas - seen as channels for Western
propaganada - were burnt down. In the early years
of the revolution, huge numbers of films, both Iranian
and foreign, were banned and many others heavily
censored.
Islamic codes
But in its disapproval of most other leisure activities
for the young, the new regime left cinema as the major
attraction for young people and helped give it a central
role in the country's cultural life. It was a
tribute to the perceived power of the medium that
revolutionary guards would attend film shoots to ensure
that actors obeyed Islamic codes on and off the screen -
sometimes even getting involved in the choice of scenes
and camera angles. The government produced detailed
guidelines on how women and relationships could be
portrayed on screen which tested the ingenuity of all
film-makers. The Ministry of Culture's 1996 guidelines
forbid the showing of any part of a women's body except
the face and hands, tight feminine clothes, physical
contact between men and women, and foreign or joyous
music.
Ferment
Since the revolution there has also been a four-stage
film censorship process starting with approval of the
script and ending with the granting of a screening
permit, though since 1997 there has been some relaxation
of the script approval process.
With the rise of a reformist movement in recent years
Iran has seen a cultural and political ferment which
film-makers have found difficult to represent within the
rules.
Rakhshan Bani Etemad 's Nargess
At the same time, these restrictions seem to have acted
as a spur to a style of clever and symbolic
story-telling, which has produced a world-recognised
school of cinema.
And women directors have been at the forefront of the
latest wave.
Blackboards
One of the best-known female film directors in the
country today is Samira Makhmalbaf, who directed her
first film The Apple at 17 years old. The daughter
of the prolific film maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira
Makhmalbaf won the 2000 Cannes Jury Prize for her
following film Blackboards, about the trials of two
travelling teachers in Kurdistan. Mohsen's wife Marzieh
Mashkini also makes films and her The Day I Became A
Woman won a prize at the Toronto Film Festival.
Rakhshan Bani Etemad has established herself as the
elder stateswoman of Iranian cinema with documentaries
and films dealing with poverty, crime, divorce and
polygamy such as Nargess and Lady In May. Jafar
Pahani's The Circle, a hard-hitting film about women
prisoners, is possibly the boldest film to have come out
of Iran since the revolution. It signals a move
away from poetic symbolism and metaphors and towards a
more direct style of story-telling, and won the Golden
Lion award in Venice in 2000.
Women film-makers have already performed the
considerable feat of putting Iranian cinema on the world
map while trying to portray women's relationship with
Iran and its Islamic revolution.
Presidential elections
But, despite these successes, the environment for women
film-makers in Iran remains turbulent, as the political
fortunes of the conservatives and reformers continue to
ebb and flow.
The result of the presidential elections on 8 June will
have a major influence on the climate of the country's
intellectual and artistic life.
For film-makers the stakes, as ever, will be high.
As recently as September 2000, an Iranian cinema in
Ahwaz was damaged by fire for screening Bride Of Fire, a
film about the portrayal of marriage rituals in the Arab
south of the country.
Nargess,
by 'elder stateswoman' Rakhshan Bani Etemad