Circumventing confrontation

Hani Mustafa, in Tehran, speaks to leading Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf about his work
Mohsen Makhmalbaf is, with Abbas Kiarostami, one of the most important film directors to have emerged in Iran: indeed, the duo can be credited with bringing Iranian cinema to international attention. Together they have won countless international prizes, the latest being the Federico Fellini Prize, awarded to Makhmalbaf for Kandahar by UNESCO in 2001.
It is hardly a career path that could have been predicted for a boy born in 1957 in one of the poorest districts of Tehran. "I never watched movies as a child," Makhmalbaf says. "I grew up in a very religious family, and they thought cinema irreligious."
He began working at the age of eight in order to support his mother, and by the time he was 15 had become involved in anti-government protests. Two years later he was arrested for the attempted murder of a member of the Shah's security forces and imprisoned, only to be released four and a half years later when, in 1979, the Shah was overthrown.
This was a decisive moment in the life of Makhmalbaf, and is explored in the film A Moment of Innocence. Yet in spite of his pre-revolution anti-Shah activities, Makhmalbaf did not become a part of the revolution's regime. "When I saw how the new situation was not all that different from the preceding one I decided to turn my attention to culture and began to write. A collection of 12 of my short stories, Shame, was published in 1980."
Although Makhmalbaf's direct involvement in politics had come to an end it was unlikely that such a rebellious spirit could long avoid the confrontational. He decided to take his children out of the state's educational system and teach them at home.
"The government refused to let me found a school with a 100 pupil enrollment so we home-schooled my children, together with some children of friends. And out of this a school did emerge, and, eventually, the Makhmalbaf Film House production company."
Makhmalbaf's most recent film Kandahar, which premiered in the official competition at Cannes last year, was well-received by critics and went on to win both the Grand Prize of the International Society of Churches and the Audience Prize at the Cinema of the South Festival. It evinces Makhmalbaf's continuing interest in social and human issues.
"The director, the artist, cannot turn a blind eye to the social conditions of the region in which he lives, especially when they are so dire, when there is so much poverty. When I went to Kandahar I saw adults and children dying of hunger and associated sickness. And this made such an impact on me that I decided to make a film about the place."
But why make a film set in Afghanistan? The question was posed by many of the members of the press who attended the film's premiere.
"At that time, before the events of September 2001, no one gave a toss about the Afghani people. Three years later, there is no way I could make the same film about the same place -- not just because conditions there are continually changing, but so too are my feelings about the place."
For an artist like Makhmalbaf it is impossible completely to withdraw from the political arena. Indeed it is politics, arguably, that are foregrounded in his 1982 feature Tobeh Nasuh and the 2002 documentary Afghan Alphabet, which tackles the educational problems facing Afghani children living in refugee camps.
In common with other Iranian new wave cineastes Makhmalbaf's films subvert clear-cut distinctions between the documentary and the feature film, combining the quotidian and the fantastic.
"I do not think that there is a difference between dream and reality. Reality is not something out there, but what we imagine it to be. If you look at something from your angle, what you see will be completely different from what I see from my angle. I explain this idea of 'relative reality' in an article I wrote about Kiarostami's Close Up. Art begins with what is called reality and then becomes the dream of the artist or film-maker."
"In Afghanistan there are over 10 million land mines. So many people have lost their legs because of them. They look for pieces of wood to use as prosthetics. They are always looking up at the sky, in case it throws something in their direction: food, limbs, bombs, whatever."
And so one of the opening scenes of Kandahar shows a plane from which wooden legs are thrown, people below catching them. The line between the fantastical, and realism, is not quite as clearcut as some believe.
While the use of documentary narrative techniques is not specific to Iranian new wave films -- "Everyone is trying to come closer to real life, think, for example, of the films of Lars von Trier," says Makhmalbaf -- many critics have argued that the adoption of such techniques within the Iranian context was part of a strategy to negotiate strict censorship restrictions. Makhmalbaf disagrees: "I would not say that this was the main factor. The earliest films, with the beginning of cinema 100 years ago, were close to real life. With developments in techniques, decor, wardrobe artistry and directing, especially in Hollywood, cinema drifted away from real life. Now, with, say, Iranian new wave cinema that trend is being reversed."
But censorship has had an undeniable impact on the development of Iranian cinema. Has any of that impact been positive?
"Yes and no," Makhmalbaf says. "It was post- revolution censorship that prevented Hollywood films from entering Iran. And when Hollywood enters countries with nascent film industries, it destroys them. Look at how well the Egyptian film industry was doing before Hollywood took over the market.
"In Iran the censors interfered not just in the subject matter, but in the choice of actors, the names of characters, and, sometimes, the costumes."
Before Khatemi's coming to office, film makers had to have the approval of the censor even before writing up a scenario, and after, approval regarding shooting locations, the actors and other members of the film-making team. The censors interfered during shooting, and once shooting was over the law prohibited any screening of films abroad before they had been shown at the Fajr International Cinema Festival of Tehran. Approval was needed for selling the film abroad.
"There is less interference nowadays," says Makhmalbaf. "It still exists though. My youngest daughter was not allowed to display a video she made in the video market."
But perhaps the most insidious influence of censorship is the way in which it gives rise to self- censoring artists. "Several years ago, in Rafsanjani's era, I presented 19 scripts, some that I wrote, some by others, to the censors. They were not approved. For two years afterwards I could not bring myself to work on any film. I thought of going abroad."
"In spite of censorship," Makhmalbaf believes, "an artist can say what he wants by manoeuvering around the obstacles. Iranian artists are more intelligent than those who set the criteria of censorship. They can find new, interesting ways of saying what they want to say, complex elusive rhetorical devices."
Filmography
Features: Tobeh Nasuh, 1982; Two Blind Eyes, 1983; Fleeing from Evil to God, 1984; Boycott, 1985; The Pedlar, 1986; The Cyclist, 1987; Marriage of the Blessed, 1988; Time of Love, 1990; The Nights of Zayanadeh-Rood, 1990; Once Upon a Time, Cinema, 1991; The Actor, 1992; Salam Cinema 1994; Gabbeh, 1995; A Moment of Innocence, 1995; Silence, 1997; Kandahar, 2001
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