Argo received eight Oscar nominations and has grossed over $166.4 million at the box office worldwide and now Iran wants in on the action. But don’t expect the Islamic Republic to toe the line of how events transpired in the version directed and starring Ben Affleck . [ Related: Iran A Possible Oscar No-Show After Boycott Threat AND Ben Affleck Goes For Gracious Post-Oscar Passover ] Iranian director Ataollah Salmanian an Iranian news agency that he is making a counter-feature to Affleck’s film which is based on the true story of a C.I.A. plan to rescue six Americans from Tehran during the outset of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. Titled The General Staff , Salmanian told the news agency his film “should be an appropriate response to the ‘a-historic’ film Argo ,” according to BBC. Not surprisingly, Argo has ruffled feathers in the Iranian hierarchy and Salmanian is hoping to receive funding from the Middle Eastern country’s government. Iran has long had a contentious relationship with its filmmaking community even as its filmmakers won awards around the world. Last year Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language film. Despite praise for the win at the time, the country’s establishment banned its filmmakers from submitting to the Oscars race officially due to the controversy surrounding the anti-Islam video that hit YouTube last year, Innocence of Muslims . Others have faced persecution and silence including celebrated director Jafar Panahi who served house arrest and later prison. The director documented his house-arrest in This Is Not a Film , which was smuggled out of Iran in a Flash-Drive and hidden inside a cake. It later screened at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and other festivals. [ Source: The Guardian ] Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The annals of filmmaking are filled with stories of people who managed to make movies against all odds, without money, without shooting permits, without proper professional equipment. This Is Not a Film, the 75-minute film directed by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb that made its debut at Cannes last spring and is now, thankfully, arriving in theaters Stateside, may be the ultimate achievement in stealth filmmaking, considering that Panahi is currently serving a six-year jail sentence and has been banned by the Iranian government from making films for 20 years. And yet somehow he has made a movie that found its way first to one of the world’s major film festivals, and now to other parts of the world: This Is Not a Film is a small but extremely significant message in a bottle. That metaphor is almost literal: The picture made its way to Cannes via a USB drive — which was smuggled in a cake. The movie covers a day in Panahi’s life as he’s waiting to hear the results of his appeal. It was shot with a digital camera (manned by Mirtahmasb, a documentary filmmaker, who is also heard asking Panahi questions off-camera) and an iPhone (wielded, slyly, by Panahi, because how much harm can a little home movie do?). Mirtahmasb’s camera captures the mundane details of Panahi’s life as he makes and takes calls on his cell phone (including one from his lawyer), answers the door for the food-delivery guy, feeds some greens to his daughter’s large, and surprisingly personable, pet iguana. From these mundane details spring all sorts of provocative, frustrated conversations about the nature of filmmaking under a repressive regime. At one point, Panahi reveals that he’s going to tell the story of a script that he wrote before his arrest, which the authorities had refused to approve. With masking tape, he marks off a corner of his nicely furnished living room to serve as a makeshift set; he describes the actions of his main character, a suicidal young woman. Then he stops abruptly, realizing the futility of the enterprise: “If we could tell a film, then why make a film?” The moment is piercing for the way it cuts to the heart of Panahi’s plight: Here we have a gifted, dedicated filmmaker being kept from doing the thing he lives for. You may as well cut off his right arm – though Panahi himself is too optimistic for that, never resorting to self-pity, at least here. And the fact that Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation managed to win an Oscar this past weekend – something Panahi couldn’t have known, of course, while this Not a Film was being made – does raise the visibility of the restrictions and outright danger Iranian filmmakers face. In that context, seeing This Is Not a Film today is a slightly more hopeful experience than it was last May. Still, Panahi’s house arrest is cause for no one’s joy. (No one outside the Iranian government, that is.) In the course of the day, we hear fireworks outside that sound like gunshots, part of a Persian New Year’s celebration known as “Fireworks Wednesday” that’s supposedly benign and celebratory but which, under current conditions, has the capacity to turn violent. A neighbor rings the doorbell of Panahi’s apartment: She wonders if he’ll watch her small, noisy dog for a few hours while she goes off to the fireworks, and though Panahi at first agrees, he calls her back just seconds later when the dog launches into a barking tirade. Panahi goes online, noting that his access to sites he might like to visit has been seriously curtailed. He turns on the television to catch news of the earthquake in Japan. In the film’s final section, filmed by Panahi himself (now manning the professional camera and not the iPhone), an impromptu encounter with a young man who’s filling in for the building’s superintendent becomes a kind of mini-Panahi film. Earlier Panahi pictures like The Circle and Offside are deeply political movies that derive all their meaning from depictions of people’s everyday lives, rather than from any contrived arrangement of abstract ideas. By the end of This Is Not a Film Panahi, going from floor to floor with this affable, photogenic guy (he’s also a student) as he collects the residents’ garbage, has turned the camera away from himself and out toward the world, even if that world is only an elevator and, later, a courtyard beyond which lies a blazing bonfire that may or may not be celebratory. This Is Not a Film is so technically modest that it almost isn’t a film. Yet in its simplicity it’s as direct as a laser beam, underscoring why Panahi is considered so dangerous by his country’s government: The difference between just looking and really seeing is second nature to him. Editor’s note: Portions of this review appeared earlier, in a slightly different form, in Stephanie Zacharek’s Cannes Film Festival coverage. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Controversial Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani was recently banned from her homeland after the French fashion magazine Madame Le Figaro published topless photos of her, thus prompting a support page on Facebook featuring other Iranian activists posing topless or entirely nude. Oy, guys, you’re doing it wrong. I’m all for freedom and would love to see things like A Separation ‘s dual Oscar nominations and Farahani’s personal choices and just basic human rights of filmmakers like Jafar Panahi respected. Yes to all these things! But let’s be honest: If your goal is to raise global awareness with a Facebook page in Farahani’s name, then you’re probably best off not turning the site into some lo-fi variation on AdultFriendFinder — which was never especially hi-fi to begin with. (Click the image at right for a NSFW look.) I doubt that the conservative-minded leaderships of both Facebook and Iran will be down with this, and then what? We’re right back where we started. Anyway, the page is currently hovering around 3,500 likes. I’d lend it some #ConsiderUggie juice , but he’s nude in his photos, too, so hey. Anyone want to volunteer a more persuasive approach? [via TheWrap ]
Every New Wave must go the way of all flesh eventually, and it does seem as though the Iranian New Wave has faded into history. Don’t tell me you missed it. A prickly, pressurized cataract of neo-realist film wisdom that more or less began for most of us in the early ’90s with the festival appearances of Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up , the Iranian wave may have been the most significant national breakout movement since Godard bounced his day job. A product if anything was of the country’s Islamic revolution, the films (by Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Bahman Ghobadi, Jafar Panahi, etc.) weren’t stylish tubthumpers but patient and elliptical puzzles, humane but challenging, machine-pressed by the Sharia strictures on society and media into a kind of whole-grain eloquence.
Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker — and recent Cannes lightning rod — Jafar Panahi is reportedly leaving jail today on $200,000 bail. The director of The White Balloon was said to have been imprisoned for his support of the country’s opposition party and begun a hunger strike last week. His cause was publicized in part by a petition boasting signatures by Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg, while also noted at a festival press conference by compatriot Abbas Kiarostami. Developing… [ AFP ]
The legendary Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami returned on Tuesday to Cannes, where he won the Palme d’Or in 1997 for his film Taste of Cherry . Judging by the largely favorable critical response, he may have a another shot at an award with his much-loved and debated Juliette Binoche–starring Copie Conforme ( Certified Copy ). But a topic more important than filmmaking was on Kiarostami’s mind — he addressed the plight of jailed fellow Iranian director Jafar Panahi.
