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TEHRAN MON AMOUR
10/09/2009
Five Iranian films – four shorts and one medium-length film – will screen tonight at the Filmmakers Villa, giving audiences a chance to reflect upon recent events in Tehran.
Below is an introduction to the section by selector Camillo De Marco, published in the Venice Days catalogue.
“When repression grows, so does creativity,” said Juliette Binoche from the Tuscan set of the latest film by Abbas Kiarostami, Copia Conforme. The Iranian director was wrapping up shooting while in Tehran the police went back to attacking opposition supporters and arrested Jafar Panahi, Golden Lion winner at the 2000 Venice Film Festival.
Binoche stars in a film that will never be shown in Iran and will circulate secretly on DVD, like all of Kiarostami’s recent films. Like hundreds of films by dozens of filmmakers, who for some time have relied on unusual channels to show their work.
The elections in Iran were proof of the change in the creative means of communication, which have found in the Internet and digital technology a pulsating space for dissent. A space that is more direct and less easily manipulated. The young people who protested Ahmadinejad’s presidential victory on the streets shared their information and rage without any geographical, cultural or temporal limits, through blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. “One person = one broadcaster.” As journalist Leyla Ferani explained, the globalized web tore down the walls that separated Iran from the rest of the world and “the government can no longer suppress a population which refuses to be silent.”
Iranian cinema does not want to be silent, bridled as it has been for some time by the censorship of the ayatollahs’ theocratic regime, which forces [filmmakers] to resort to a subtext of symbols and metaphors. And inevitably becomes a form of resistance.
The short films with which Venice Days pays homage to this resistance are emotional, moving, foreboding and intuitive. Through various stylistic choices they bear witness to the country’s difficult situation. And they demand freedom of expression – to wear what they want to wear, dance, love, listen to music and watch films.
Programm
As I Was Leaving My City by Amirali Navaee (3’10”)
My Atomic Beloved by Amirali Navaee (15’)
Muli by Marjon Farsad (4’50”)
L’aeroplanino di carta by Arash Irandoust (6’50”)
Shahrzad by Hana Kamkar (40’)
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