S & D: Iranian film

Pete to thread!

I think the position of non-Western cinema even reaching Western audiences is one bundled up with so many contradictions (Iranian films are now - due to their success getting a fair amnount of co-production money which then feeds the industry). But if you think of the films released in the UK last year, the fifth largest exporter of titles was Iran. This is being concentrated around four or five directors - one cannot help but wonder if their are othe rnational cinemas who could also blossom with this kind of critical interest.

Not to do down the quality of any of the Iranian films I've liked.

I also have a suspicion that his movies are so slow because he may have nothing to say. But Close-Up = total masterpiece.

Mentioned above is the amazing film 'The Apple'. It tells the real story of two sisters who've been locked up by their father for their entire life until rescued by welfare authorities and it stars the family involved.

are kids used as subjects to go under the radar of state censorship? and why always the quest theme - i mean I know it's not unique to Iranian cinema but just seems so prevalent.

the girl wants a goldfish. she haggles her mother for the money and then she loses it down the drain and she needs to get ppl to help her.

OK i saw it a long time ago and my memory isn't as good these days but that's how i remember it.

http://www.mastersofcinema.org/pics/kiarostami_28_08_04.jpg

The conversation with the purse-snatcher in the second scene was pretty funny.

iranian films are HUGE in paris. there were often 10 of them in theaters at once. i had a hard time following all the new releases. inevitably the euphoria of first disocovery has worn off a bit, and i've seen a few that didn't impress me at all.

i don't think the second part of this sentence follows from the first

As does everything involved in film.

the insert to the bfi VHS?

Sadly, my video is connected wrong, so I can't tape the overwhelming feast of films that C4 have lined up.

I get a lot of lines on the screen. I'm sure it's something very simple. Perhaps one of you will know what to do. Innit.

I said I liked Ten way up there. Its now one of my least favourite films on a second viewing. It completely panders to a western liberla view of the problems of Iranian society.

anyway, the staggers rejected the article itself, which i ended up putting on a webzine somewhere, last summer. part of the ns's problem was the idea of iranian film -- like it was too far out.

and this is what bugs me: c4 saying 'the iranians are coming'. last night was the first time an AK film has been shown on ttv here. it's absurd, this timelag in film culture.

roll on the taiwanese cinema season in 2008.

I haven't seen all the Abbas K films, but they all seem to involve non-medieval things like film crews and 4x4s, and I've never felt patronised. Perhaps I should TRY HARDER.

I have Ten on a laser disc. I will watch it one day.

I like the way all these films seem to lead into other films.

I don't see anything po-mo in these films.

I found the film a bit boring though.

You were up very late, Jerry the Nipper.

I tell you what I didn't think was very good, and that's Catterick. After which I went to bed until the 1.30 yodelling practice.

I like the fact that HMV has Tinto Brass in the World Cinema section. 'All Ladies Do It' is a personal favourite of mine.

You are right about festivals, there is an awful lot of dross shown, some of it Iranian. I saw one about landmine removal and burnt-out tanks and tortoises and it was REALLY boring. The director was there to witness the slow trickle of people walking out.

I guess from a festival/distributor nexus you go with the ones you trust the programmers of. Or ones which seem to be grateful just to have enough films (Dublin seemd very good at that). There is nothing more exciting than "discovering" a film, but how much of that excitement is literally down to the discovery.

My middle east = middle ages boils down to Olive Tress etc and mobile phones seen as being out of place and the centre of some pretty lame humour. It appeals to an exoticism in the reviewer, a return to nature (all that Fanon stuff). It is probably why Samira Makhlabaf has picked refugee communities or Afghanistan as topics where these juxtapositions are probably more apparent.

On your problem on "what to see" I solve by trying to restrict myself to theatrical release. Which is as arbritrary as anything. Liking certain distributors though seems to work. I am suspicious about Artificial Eye, but rathe rlike Metrodome/Tartan.

(I think its interesting thinking about City Of God on thsi front, which I thought was great but at no point did I think that its greatness was much to do directly with its director.)

anyway -- yeah. i think it was seeing 'city of god', and then seeing the likes of miranda sawyer repping 'the new brazilian cinema' on basis of same that sort of made me give up on keeping abreast, or doing so too closely. mainly cos i knew that in six months' time 'the new thai cinema' would be the stick with which to beat the formulaic hollywood cinema and the declining cinema of europe. i can enjoy 'city of god' now without feeling that, not knowing anything of pre-'city' cinema, i am missing out on something briliant.

i will programme a sidebar one day consisting of 'the permanent gardener', '21 grams', 'harry potter 3', and 'the ice storm' by way of demonstration of what i'm talking about.

'The Cow' is on tonight. I might stay up late. I will have to have an early evening snooze though.

I have seen a lot of pre CoG Brazilian Cinema (too much Cinema Nuovo than is strictly good for anyone*) and trust me with minor exceptions you ain't missing much.

Surely if Dogme taught us one thing, even when there is a specific artistic movement and manifesto stuff comes out with widely different qualities, so when the only link people have is nationality...

*ie Two films at least

The thing is, I really don't think this selection or Iranian films is represntative of what is generally on offer in Iran. Paris maybe...

-- Pete (pb1...), May 11th, 2005.

according to a completely untrustworthy friend of mine, iranian films are like most films worldwide: violent jingoistic action movies.

this is brilliant... unfortunately i am currently in a debunking mood and am very 'anti-confusion', but it's a brilliant observation anyway.

I haven't seen Melinda and Melinda, but I think Woody Allen is better than Abbas K.

I might not watch The Cow cos I'm bound to be disappointed.

I am, like many I guess, very quick to jump to a critical mindset without really justifying it. I fell asleep in Olive Trees at the cinema and saw a couple more Abbas K pastoral films along with some other Iranian films which I thought were much better. This has more than likely mutated into a seeming loathing of Abbas K, as a critical fallback to make me interesting. There are films where I love the stillness, the seeming boredom (L'Humanite springs to mind) but is that the film getting me at the right time? It is possibly a touch unfair on the film for me to go and see them when I am a bit tired, and then blame it for me falling asleep.

I think there is something remarkbaly deep yet also ridiculously banal about the quote Enrique just pulled. That will also probably depend on the moment.

Some notes on the statements of filmmakers like Kiarostami, M Makhmalbaf and Marjane Satrapi in the current crisis:

http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/outsidetheframe/archive/2009/06/17/iran-losing-direction.aspx

Kiarostami speaks out on the arrests of Jafar Panahi and Mahmoud Rasoulof:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/iranian-filmmaker-speaks-out-on-prisoners/

did anyone see no one knows about persian cats?

Reading the Kiarostami open letter about Panahi was somehow painful: a true tightrope walking exercise.

Close-Up gets a week's revival in NYC today.

"did anyone see no one knows about persian cats?"

I did. It's great.

man holy shit

ugh that's horrible

Yeah that breaks my heart. Let's try to get him out of there!

if anyone needs a helicopter jailbreak it's him

Awful, but I suppose not terribly shocking, news. I've only seen Offside and Crimson Gold but they're both amazing.

absolutely love Offside, The White Balloon was v nice, The Circle was dece. this outcome is predictably sad.

Pretty incredible and sad, especially since so many great Iranian directors have benefited directly from state support (at least to an extent).

sadly not a surprise

yes, not quite sure how this is 'incredible', but it is awful

nader and simin, a separation is pretty masterly, & pretty distressing. it seems on reflection like it was a labyrinthine, finely worked storyline, in which the foundations for the next turn or digression were quietly laid in each scene, but it doesn't seem flashy or over-worked while watching, just complicated and human. w/great performances from kids (& from leila hatami) & the sort of exhilarating peripheral look at urban iran you get in panahi's stuff (which it reminded me of, some, in its humanity and its gaze, but i couldn't work out if that was just because it was iran onscreen).

Best new foreign release I've seen since 4 months, 3 weeks.... What schlump says - finely worked. Also shot in a way that provokes all these ambiguities, plenty of obscuring in the shooting (you don't really get a good look at the distance between the door and the stairs) and plot (what happened to the money?).

Another fine perf was the grandfather - the shots of him looking - introducing this notion that he knew what was going on and what everyone was up to. Whether intentional or not I found it v powerful. Similarly the 11 year old that isn't spared - she learns to lie, and probably to repeat the flaws so evident in the adults.

For a near two hour film of very heated arguments between people it held my attention fairly easily - with a sorta flagging at the end: takes ages to get to a truth as to what happened then rushing off to a conlusion in the last 15 mins. Seemed unbalanced to me.

With the shots of the stairs and the door it didn't give you much for a while. Sorta cleverly delays.

this isn't ~spoilerish~, but fyi don't read if you haven't seen a separation--

oh god yeah, the grandfather. man. this film. yeah some of the performances are radiant, cf the kid. i feel like its success in stirring empathy and feeling towards the characters is exemplified by the whole stairwell thing - i think at distinct points i was specifically identifying with and feeling viscerally defensive of each party, there - well he was pushing her out, she left the old guy!, & then, he pushed her, he's straight up lying. & to resolve it that way - that he guesses he knew, but that in that moment he didn't?, it just feels like such a mature, complicated, real thing to try to represent that could seem like a cop-out.

i think i felt compelled throughout, i forget. have you seen about elly? i think i remember hearing that it was a little maybe unambitious or light, but i probably oughtta check it.

i'm so annoyed i missed this in glasgow. friends were raving about it too.

it was nice to see, b/c intense & absorbing & because of a really beautiful green kitchen, but i don't think it'll all evaporate on a small screen.

i could watch iranian films all day i think (& i oughtta). psyched for the next rasoulof, whenever it surfaces.

Haven't seen About Elly

but that in that moment he didn't?, it just feels like such a mature, complicated, real thing to try to represent that could seem like a cop-out.

otm. A lot of the film was v 'universal'. The iranian system is indicted for not providing support: so much argument as there aren't any intermediaries. And yet his admission that he knew of her pregnancy but not at that moment might have landed him in trouble anywhere.

"because of a really beautiful green kitchen"

i have to see this!

oh well, i- i don't want you to envisage some kinda insane jodorowsky-esque centrepiece in an entirely green kitchen; it's just there are these scenes in a kitchen tiled with these pure-green tiles & it was really arresting to me, sorta - to backtrack to what i said before - the same way that getting a look at any of the houses/streetscenes are compelling just as being a neat visual insight into another country. i think i saw it not long after i saw cassavetes' minnie & moskowitz, which has a great, '70s pink kitchen scene, so i was maybe especially attuned to this sorta thing & it could perhaps pass by unnoticed. just pretty is all, and representative of the film's attractive deep tones.

i wasn't thinking crazy kitchen. i'm looking forward to seeing it ;)

artificial eye, i guess

wanna see the new panahi so bad

tape store (if you are here), were you putting on the new rasoulof film? have you seen it?

Panahi film has been picked up for US distrib

yeah i saw, w/'coming soon'. are you seeing at nyff?

yep

aw. i should hush & watch the couple i haven't seen, but knowing a little about it - even the limits of equipment, n/m movement or censorship - has me excited. everyone everywhere is loving a separation, also, pleasingly, & also the other iranian thing from sundance - coincidences, maybe?

Love Still Life

Saw it years ag on C4, but end up think about it every now and again. iirc The story is too simple to have a plot (a bit Tokyo Story-y at times), or to have much of theme (capitalism destroying the old ways felt tacked on) but the still-ness of the image, the acting/staging just sucks you in. The final shot takes you breath away.

Pleased to see some mention of Bahman Ghobadi on this thread. I have only seen Persian Cats, Turtles Can Fly and A Time For Drunken Horses, but they were all fantastic.

I rewatched The Apple last night and it is such a strange, wonderful movie.

http://hyperallergic.com/47086/censored-iranian-filmmaker-shoots-film-entirely-on-iphones/

Never saw this

I saw that, it is great

hugely sad i couldnt see that at tiff

it's just coming out theatrically?, at least in the us & uk

the apple kills. it would make a good double bill w/poto & cabengo. i watched it w/some friends, once, & the turnaround from its first twenty minutes, which are in all senses of the words hard to watch, & seemed to just subdue and depress the room, to the kinda errant jubilance of the rest, was amazing.

Panahi out in April, can't wait.

As is The Apple, watched that over Xmas - good call on Poto & Cabengo, read a rev of the Gorin DVDs so will be on it at some point.

All of the Gorin films are great (even My Crasy Life, which gets a bad rep). I saw THIS IS NOT A FILM at AFI Fest

Some legal background re A Separation's plot:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/02/a-separation-iran-law.html

Thx for the link Morbs

Yes, interesting article.

thank you for that link.

a separation is really good. i can't think of another film where the feelings and stakes and motivations of so many characters were so complex, at times obscure, and seemingly constantly shifting. totally riveting, even though i don't know that i'll ever be able to sort it out. i can see why it got a surprise nomination for best original screenplay. it's a very clever film. but also an intellectually challenging one, i think.

SPOILER I guess

did anyone else think it was a dodge to keep a certain traffic incident from the audience?

did anyone else think it was a dodge to keep a certain traffic incident from the audience?

I was kinda annoyed by the reveal, but I guessed correctly that something had happened because of the amount of time dwelled in that traffic.

That did cross my mind.
At the time of the traffic scene, when it just cut to the next scene, I thought, "Interesting that they didn't show the end of that situation", and just kind of felt relieved at its apparent resolution, and then later when it was revealed thought, "Oh THAT'S why they didn't show it." It did make it seem less interesting that they cut away from the scene, because the reason for it was now obvious.
I am not sure how I feel about it-how would it have played out if we had seen it and had known all along? I suppose her claim never seemed that plausible to me, but would it have made a difference anyway?

So for me I guess, it did feel like a bit of a cheat, but it would have felt more like a cheat had I felt the movie would not have worked without it. It was just a little disappointing.

i don't know about "cheat," obviously the director wanted to sustain a greater ambivalence about the character of the housemaid and i think that's OK. there is a pattern of suppressed information in the film, but that's obviously the most flagrant example.

what an interesting film. i'm still thinking about it constantly a few days later.

i'm gonna track down this dude's earlier films. i've heard fantastic things re. "About Elly."

Yeah, I'm not really sure. I would like to see it again and see how it comes across to me.

I see the Film Society of Lincoln Center is playing Asghar Farhadi films in April. I wonder if they will now sell out, due to the success of A Separation.
The films being shown are About Elly, Beautiful City, Fireworks Wednesday (3 screenings each) and Dancing in the Dust (2 screenings)

Anyone here see them?

no but about elly is supposed to me super-fantastic. i managed to find it and hope to watch it this week or next. fireworks wednesday has a good rep too.

supposed to BE

I have seen it. It is good, but not as good as A Separation.

sooooo this is not a film is amazing

great -- gonna see it next wk.

yes

yes

i'm probably trampling into "spoilers" below, but

i keep thinking of the excerpt he played from the circle, and his commentary about the beams of the bus station informing our idea of the character's emotional state. like you can view the whole of this is not a film through that lens, in which the claustrophobia, and the implied mental reaction to his limited space - like having to resourcefully map out a rug with tape, having to rely on dvds and pre-shot iphone footage to sense the outside world - map out so much of what he feels, so much of the position he's in. the oscillations between 'truth' and 'artifice' are just fascinating - like his short emotional break as he reads the script, which seems to detract from the thing he's trying to express but actually enhances it. it's just so creative. and so perfectly measured, ie with the garbage collector in the lift.

The final shot ws kinda incredible too - here is a man who just suddenly finds he can't cross that line w/his camera (or otherwise), as if a piece of yellow tape that ws used prev to free up his imagination is being used to now restrict.

drudge siren: http://www.indiewire.com/article/exclusive-banned-from-filmmaking-jafar-panahi-has-made-another-movie-says-kiarostami#

That's great! Wonder how?

About Elly ws great! Good call to give this a cinema run.

50 films essential to understanding Iranian cinema

http://www.fandor.com/blog/the-iranian-film-50

so this is out now, yeah

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/60010/this-is-not-a-film/

via Fandor:

Abbas Kiarostami tells the Hollywood Reporter‘s Clarence Tsui that the students he teaches in Tehran are not only finding it more and more difficult to turn in new work, many of them can’t swing tuition anymore, either. “Without referring to specific political events or figures, Kiarostami said the situation in Iran has ‘never been this dark.’ He added: ‘And we have huge question marks in front of us now—some miracles should happen in Iran to save the nation.’ The director expressed hope that the upcoming presidential elections will bring about the miracle he is hoping for. ‘If I say [it won’t help], it would show I’m a pessimist,’ he said.”

http://m.hollywoodreporter.com/news/iranian-director-abbas-kiarostami-situation-559514

so Makhmalbaf's latest The Gardener, a doc about the Baha'i faith made with his son, is winding up a week's run here in NYC, and there was a kerfuffle last month.

Iran's expatriate filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf is facing withering condemnation in his homeland for attending a film festival in Israel, the Islamic Republi's archfoe.

The acclaimed director, considered a pioneer of moviemaking in Iran, traveled to the Jerusalem Film Festival this month to screen his latest work, "The Gardener," which explores the conflict between two generations about the role of religion in society.

Javad Shamgdari, the head of Iran's official cinema organization, penned a letter to the leadership of the Iranian cinema museum demanding the removal of all of the director's awards and trophies.

“Makhmalbaf made his first 10 films in Iran using the money of the state-run organizations to learn cinema,” Shamgdari was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Mehr news agency. “Now he has fallen into the arms of the occupier, the murderous Zionist regime.”

Members of Iran's artistic community have expressed mixed feelings about Makhmalbaf's visit to Israel.

Some 150 Iranian intellectuals, academics and artists signed a public letter assailing Makhmalbaf's action. However, 80 others lauded him in an open letter sent to the Times of Israel.

The letter to the Israeli newspaper applauded the filmmaker's “bravery for breaking the taboo of visiting the state of Israel and conveying the message of friendship between Iranian people and people of Israel.”

In intellectual circles in the Iranian capital, only those who criticized the filmmaker's visit agreed to speak on the record....

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-iran-filmmaker-mohsen-makhmalbaf-israel-visit-20130723,0,2686091.story

have you seen it? as a baha'i i'm of course very interested

probably will go tonight if I'm not beat

It's quite a piece of work, why did I doubt? Not at all a primer on Baha'i -- I know a little more than I did when I went in, so almost nothing -- but a means of getting at Big Themes, and of presenting cinema as the Makhmalbafs' religion. Here's the Manohla Dargis review:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/08/09/movies/the-gardener-mohsen-makhmalbafs-inquiry-into-religion.html?_r=0

Also, more of this was in English than I expected (60-70%). And along those lines...

http://www.screendaily.com/news/production/makhmalbaf-to-shoot-first-english-language-feature/5059286.article

closed curtain so good. he is as good a director as anyone, i think. so rich.

yup. best film of the year, in my opinion, though obviously i haven't seen everything.

seeing it kinda just reminded me of how energising iranian film is - how much more than story it can be, & how close to life it gets. i loved to see him adjust the pressure of its metaphors - letting them either breathe & flex to our interpretation, or narrowing them to specifically address his own condition. & it's such a heavy film in light of that. it weaves in & out of this structure that really directly addresses, literally personifies a lot of issues, but it's also an extension of what he was doing in the last movie, i think, which is just transferring that weight onto himself, & then as well as that dropping crumbs that suggest those pressures elsewhere - the medicine delivered, &c. the directness of it as a piece of filmmaking is really catching, too; i really think he's like bresson or dreyer in how quietly measured everything is, the geography of the house, the confidence of the camera, the economy of the shots. there are so many moments of this that just totally spun me in my seat.

upcoming series at Asia Society in NYC:

http://asiasociety.org/new-york/iranian-new-wave-1960s-1970s-film-series

Just finished The White Balloon, and Panahi is just really underrated. The Mirror, The Circle and Crimson Gold are fantastic as well. I love how Closed Curtain answers things from This Is Not a Film, how this time it's so extremely filmic. Those two films combined is really some of the most important stuff that has been made this decade.

Saw panahi's Closed Curtain on Saturday night; well worth seeing. I felt the last third is kind of stopped in place -- it didn't bring me anyplace new -- and it's not as sui generis as This Is Not a Film, but perhaps that's not possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQyU7dpuLl4

ends July 22 - New York City, NY - Film Forum

opens
July 18 - Los Angeles, CA - Laemmle Music Hall
July 18 - San Diego, CA - Digital Gym Cinema
July 18 - San Francisco, CA - 4 Star Theatre

July 25 - Washington DC - West End Cinema
July 25 - Chicago, IL - Gene Siskel Film Center
July 25 - Santa Fe, NM - CCA Cinematheque
July 25 - New Orleans, LA - Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center

August 1 - Omaha, NE - Film Streams

August 21 and 23 - Bloomington, IN - Indiana University Cinema

August 24, 25, and 26 - Taos, NM - Taos Center for the Arts

I saw Children of Heaven recently and quite enjoyed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-gfNZqKULw

Yeah, Closed Curtain was the best film of 2013. People should go check it out.

SSSSPPPPPOOILLLEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRSSS

i do feel slightly constrained, with un film nist acting as an obvious comparison to this; it's obviously so much tighter, & more complete a metaphor. but i loved this & found it so affecting. frustrating reading the various blurbs by brody et al & knowing that the arrival of the third character is announced in advance; it was a real moment, for me, much as what happens in the mirror felt like a fresh, unexpected way of making films. has been awhile since i saw this, but i could still draw a blueprint of the layout of his house. so much to like about it, the smaller roles, the woman bringing food, & obviously the dog.

Hopefully this will be in London soon.

wow. i love that trailer. looks great.

felt a wee bit of old-fashioned dog awwwwws going in this, at least if Asta in The Thin Man was watching TV footage of slaughtered dogs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/iranian-film-festival-at-freer-gallery/2014/12/31/b526295e-8f72-11e4-a900-9960214d4cd7_story.html

Mokri said that at first it was difficult to get “Fish & Cat” screened in Iran, in part because authorities had interpreted the mention of the year 1998, the movie’s reference to the restaurant scandal, as an allusion to a period of political killings in Iran. But after Hassan Rouhani (who has been described as a relative moderate) became president in 2013, “we had no problems, and we screened the film,” Mokri said.

Censorship was and is “very strong in Iran, both in terms of what you can make and what you can see,” Vick said. But more recently, he added, “because everybody can sneak around the rules and see things online or on satellite dishes,” Iranian directors have been able to enter more fully into dialogue with world cinema.

the iranian festival that's happening somewhere soon - at the mfa, maybe? - looks really great. still dying to see fish & cat.

The Washington D.C. showings at the Freer Gallery: Mokri is scheduled to appear at the Jan. 16 screening of “Fish & Cat,” which also airs Jan. 18.) Another festival highlight: “Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” by director Mohammad Rasoulof, who shot the thriller in 2013 despite being banned by Iranian authorities from filmmaking for 20 years.

http://www.asia.si.edu/events/films.asp

http://www.mfa.org/programs/series/boston-festival-films-iran-0

Boston fest and DC one are showing some of the same films

Surprise: Taxi is yet another masterpiece from Jafar Panahi, who at this point doesn't really make anything less than that. A bit bewildering since there is a multitude of characters and voices, and a lot of them are reflections of characters in Panahi's earlier films, and I'm still not entirely sure of what some of it means. But it's so inventive, funny and humanistic.

so hyped

yup!

Hey, trailer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM2tblIkL4g

I love this film. Especially the warmth between Panahi and his niece. Who was also the one who received the Bear in february:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/02/14/25AEAC4300000578-0-image-a-57_1423946700438.jpg

I don't know where to post this - perhaps we need a 'best scenes at the moment'-thread - so I'm posting this here. Found this clip from A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, so far and away the best scene in the film, and one of the best scenes of the year imo (It's a 2015 release in Denmark).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuN4wcDGlIc

(and I don't even like thinking of it as strictly an 'Iranian' film. It IS Iranian, of course, in it's own way, but also American, and also exile-Iranian)

im a fan of panahi's earlier work, but didnt quite see the worth in taxi (or this is not a film either), beyond their very creation, and the lengths he had to go through to make them, which of course makes them an achievement of some merit, but im not sure the actual content measures up to their surreptitious conception. it took me a while to get past the fact he is basically just remaking ten, and really as memorably. all the old tropes of panahi's and his peers' old films are there (cutesey kids, bluring of docu realism and fiction, a drawing attention to the nature of film making itself), which i suppose is forgiveable, he is allowed to revisit himself, but it was all done without much in the way of surprise. there was also something weirdly smug and self regarding about the whole feel of the film as well, which got trying after a while. it touches on lots of interesting topics/themes, probably most memorably the idea of unscreenable films, which again is not a new theme for anyone familiar with iranian movies/directors, but this at least was explored more than the other characters, whose stories didnt really seem to add up to much, and were just minor glimpses that we are expected to read into more than they actually allow us to. in terms of that generation of iranian directors, makhmalbaf's the president was more impressive (though oddly got worse reviews). and if you want a real sequel/reprisal of ten, mania akbari's 10+4 was also better.

*really not as memorably

I really don't want to do this but..

Panahi's niece had a very meaty part. She wasn't cute but by turns manipulative and argumentative. Funny but no more than the adults. Panahi used their interactions to make points about making film as a practice. It was the opposite of 'cutesy' when he trotted out two nattering old ladies for The White Baloon re-creation.

You talk about the idea of unscreenable films as some abstract notion that he must 'make new' and refresh and innovate. But the reason these are rough-ish is precisely because these idiotic set of rules have been used to stop Panahi from making films the way he wants to. The stories didn't 'add up to much' because maybe they would need a wider scenario that couldn't be shot? But actually I found most of it quite coherent. Was it 'smug and self-regarding' to have the lawyer come in and talk about how her practice and work are being stopped by the Iranian government? The rose to the camera was applying a sentiment of solidarity in a similar way to Makhmalbaf's A Moment of Innocence".

This was better than The President (although the ending almost made-up for the slluggish story) and liked it more than Ten although I need to re-watch that.

i said her part was given the most room for exploration (though argumentative and manipulative kids in iranian films is not a new thing), compared to the others, so we agree there. obviously her section had the most resonance, which im not disputing, but even though it does still hold weight, the fact is that you didnt really learn anything new about it, or anything fresh. i know its prob churlish to criticise it in light of how it was produced, and maybe im being a bit mean spirited, but for a director who comes from a generation of filmmakers who are quite expert in getting mileage out of constraints and working around what they have to deal with, i still think there was room for the film to go somewhere else, or to do more, say a bit more.

I really disagree with pretty much everything you are saying, not least because even most of the audience who have seen more than half a dozen Iranian films wouldn't really know then ins-and-outs of unscreenable films or the rules Panahi is meant to have broken beyond talking about things that he shouldn't have in his films. Your bigger mistake is in the notion of the way films break ground. Because I think these are doing just that at a very micro-level, in tiny steps, and in a way Panahi would never have gotten to if this ban wasn't imposed on him.

Think this trilogy of films as such really covers new ground in terms of constraint - its quite an act to flip these constraints around in the way he has and in the end actually re-boot the old-ish dynamic of totalitarian regime against the lone artist (Panahi has become a really great actor through these, although again its all playing with the notion of what is and isn't acted or planned).

I really can't recall such a grown-up conversation between a main actor and a child in most films so I don't think we agree where you think we agree.

The full story - how Panahi has managed to make two films post This is not a Film hasn't quite been told (or I haven't heard it) but that's for another time.

"I really can't recall such a grown-up conversation between a main actor and a child in most films so I don't think we agree where you think we agree."

you should check out ten again then, and 10+4

That's two films, one of which was made over a decade ago, which Panahi clearly drew on..

to be fair, i think the film is charming, amusing, playful, and all the stuff i expected it to be, which should be enough, but perhaps i just expected more.

"Your bigger mistake is in the notion of the way films break ground. Because I think these are doing just that at a very micro-level, in tiny steps, and in a way Panahi would never have gotten to if this ban wasn't imposed on him."

"Think this trilogy of films as such really covers new ground in terms of constraint - its quite an act to flip these constraints around in the way he has and in the end actually re-boot the old-ish dynamic of totalitarian regime against the lone artist"

id be interested to hear more on this.

not sure i would go so far as to call him a great actor, though he does do a good line in strained smiling

With the first quote you pulled out - its in the way you come across as wanting a film to break ground as almost a seismic shift in the way things are done. Funny because these are certainly not normal films where you can demand that kind of expectation. otoh its arguable that the specific contraints imposed on Panahi pushed him to make choices and film subjects in a way he wouldn't have done.

(There is an aside for thinking around other directors and the ways in which they dodged the censor (Tarkovsky in the Soviet Union) but it needs more thinking/fleshing out.)

Did you or did you not expect more? So is it an 'amusing, charming' film that is worthless at the same time? I'm confused. Can you think more about what you are typing before you do? I know you don't have to.

"otoh its arguable that the specific contraints imposed on Panahi pushed him to make choices and film subjects in a way he wouldn't have done." this is obvious but I think the results have given some highs and very different colours and moods: Closed Curtain, which has this darkness to it, where Panahi is dabbling in a form of destruction.

Quite shocking to go from that to the comic in Taxi

A bit late to the party, but some thoughts:

The switch from Closed Curtain to Taxi is indeed quite big, but it's also quite logical. In Closed Curtain Panahi not only depicts his suicidal thoughts, he also wins over them, and leave them in the seaside villa, while he himself drives off. So the next film opens with him more cheerful, in another car!

The lawyer at the end says that the regime is jailing people, not to punish those specific people, but to make all of Iran feel like a prison. Well, Panahi responds, not just by turning his Taxi into a place of free discussion, but also by turning all of Teheran into a playground through cinematography. At times the spiritual equivalent of this film is more something like Playtime. As in the scene where the niece is trying to film the wedding couple, while the beggar walks around as well, that's just marvelous choreography.

I don't think there's anything particularly seismic about these three films, Panahi is working in a typical Iranian form that he himself helped define. He talks in This Is Not a Film about The Mirror, about the moment of 'throwing off the cast'. Well, the new thing about these films is that Panahi is also, through circumstances, forced to throw down the gauntlet. Not so much in This is Not a Film, that's still an attempt to create art within the limitations. These other two films are fighting films, though. And while they're techniques are wellknown, from Panahi and Makhmalbaf and others, Panahi now uses them differently, and creates new things with them.

I consider this trilogy to be the most important thing in world cinema this decade. I quite simply love it. It's not a complete statement, it's a discussion, with himself, his filmmaking and now the rest of his country. There are things that might not be true, that Panahi later discards. But this discussion is so so important, in a world where questions of free speech, censorship and art continue to be important. And Taxi Teheran responds with the most triumphant and warm voice to all the inhibitions put in his way.

And while they're techniques are wellknown, from Panahi and Makhmalbaf and others, Panahi now uses them differently, and creates new things with them.

That's it - definitely a shift. Again all through a partic set of circumstances that meant he had to use techniques there are well-known in different ways.

Is this a trilogy? Just get a sense of Panahi carrying on in whatever way he can. Closed Curtain felt like it was filmed a particularly depressing time.

Wishful thinking... I so want the ban to be lifted so he'll only make three films this way.

http://www.asia.si.edu/events/films.asp

20th anniversary Iranian film fest in W. DC and Maryland started last weekend and goes through spring. Old and newer films include: The Cow; The President; Taxi; Avalanche; Wolkaan; Monir; Melbourne; 316; Atomic Heart

http://www.asia.si.edu/events/films.asp

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/general/2016/01/14/exile-censorship-and-pink-floyd-a-qa-with-curator-tom-vick-on-the-iranian-film-festival/

TV: I would say that this year's batch is quite varied. Films like Avalanche and Melbourne are typical of the style many people associate with Iranian cinema, but Taxi, 316, and Atomic Heart, for instance, take more experimental approaches. The first two comment in different ways on censorship in Iran. Atomic Heart (whose title comes from an obscure Pink Floyd album) shows a side of Iranian life most Americans wouldn't be familiar with. The two films made by Iranians living abroad (Bahar Noorizadeh and Mohsen Makhmalbaf) both reflect on their makers' exile.

Saw Makhmalbaf's "The President" at a packed National Gallery of Art in W. DC showing Sunday (people sitting in the aisles; many DC area living Iranian families). Big 500 seat theatre too.

I thought it was very impressive. Good blend of satire and seriousness in this tale of a dictator.

You can see "The President" in Boston tonight, as part of the MFA's end of January Iranian Film Fest

http://www.mfa.org/programs/series/the-boston-festival-of-films-from-iran

It's showing in Copenhagen as well this week. Think I'll go tomorrow.

The President sneaking into one New York theater today for a week

its brilliant i think. underrated, actually.

hafta say i thought it was a misfire, kinda hated the moppet (American child actors really are the best)

some good scenes of course, mostly in the last third

I liked it. Thought the kid was kinda universal in some ways

ICA in London are doing a makhmalbaf season. 35mm prints of salaam cinema and moment of innocence (only ever seen them on dvd so hoping to make it), and digital screenings of some of his more recent stuff - i dont know much about the gardener or daddys school but they sound interesting (though as they are only about an hour long, would have been nice to have had them as a double bill).

https://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/season/mohsen-makhmalbaf-focus

http://www.asia.si.edu/events/films.asp

Iranian Film Fest has been going on in DC area (continues to March 1). Lots of Kiarostami. Plus I saw this:

Reza Dormishian’s latest, Lantouri, is a harrowing, suspenseful effort about the relationship between a criminal rehabilitation activist and a troubled member of a cold-blooded gang of thieves who falls in love with her. Some scenes that graphically invoke the legal concept of “an eye for an eye” are gruesome, while others, employing a range of speakers, will test the viewer’s ability to read subtitles quickly. Reportedly influenced by Jean-Luc Godard and Iranian documentaries, Dormishian’s confrontational work addresses women’s and human rights and questions how far the notion of forgiveness should go

and this:

For longtime followers of Iranian cinema, brilliant actress Leila Hatami needs no introduction. Feted with awards around the world for her performances in such films as Leila and A Separation, she is one of Iran’s most recognizable and compelling performers. In Soheil Beiraghi’s debut, she plays the force-of-nature queen of Tehran’s underground, a ruthless and enigmatic fixer, staying one step ahead of the law as she forges passports, moves illicit booze, and effortlessly emasculates a musical protégé. Me (aka I) is an eye-opening depiction of Tehran’s surprisingly robust underworld. (Soheil Beiraghi, 2016, Persian and English with subtitles, 84 minutes

Wonder if I should see "Taste of Cherry" Saturday? It seems to be a hate or love it effort.

Only one way to find out! :) I loved it, personally, and think it's one of his best.

Great bill, this festival.

Taste of Cherry is awesome

The Saless retro looks like a must

Don't know him at all, and neither does anyone in my Letterboxd feed except Jonathan Rosenbaum. So retro here should follow.

Still Life was incredible, given a one-off broadcast on TV here many years ago.

Don't know anything else so it'll be a discovery.

https://www.freersackler.si.edu/events/films/#/?i=2

Annual Iranian Film Festival going on in DC for free. I saw Oscar nominated Film “Breath.” A sad touching effort about a young girl and her family in late 1970s end of Shah era Iran.

Kiarostami's final film "24 Frames" , made in the last 3 years before his death in 2016, is, uh, something. He took a photo of a Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1565 painting The Hunters in the Snow and 23 of his own photos (many of them of snow-covered fields, or waves crashing on the shore) and imagined what happened before and after. He via computer tools added 4 minutes or so of action to each of the 24 shots. Some are wearying and repetitious with little happening, but others are special.

I keep missing Fest films... Maybe I can make it this weekend

Two years later the 25th anniversary DC Film Festival of Iranian Films is virtual and free, but you have to live in the DC area to see the movies through February 7th.

I liked Bandar Band and Dance with Me.

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/507554/city-lights-the-25th-dc-festival-of-films-from-iran-goes-on-virtually/

Come back other ilxor fans of Iranian film

I tried, but can't watch the films outside DC/Maryland/Virginia.

Is the entire thread about Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi

Well, ok. I took my mom to see Closed Curtain at IFC years ago and she complained the entire time that it was insufferably boring and repeatedly urged me to walk out with her.

Oh well. I think the DC Film Fest offerings may also be available for viewers in Houston, Texas and Boston, Mass via museums there. Bandar Band , although flawed, is worth seeing as is Dance w/ Me.

I still have lots of old Iranian new wave films to see.

Just watched Crimson Gold as it was expiring from Criterion and really glad I did. Here is some discussion, including a great Morbius take:
Briefly talk about what you've seen recently

Is the entire thread about Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi
So it would seem. Apologies for continuing the trend.

Really enjoyed this, and impressed by implicit political implications, although also, there are a lot of times and places in which you really, really wouldn't want to call the cops, no matter what:
The Salesman (Persian: فروشنده, romanized: Forušande, released in France as Le Client) is a 2016 drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi and starring Taraneh Alidoosti and Shahab Hosseini. It is about a married couple who perform Arthur Miller's 1949 play Death of a Salesman on stage. When the wife is assaulted, her husband attempts to determine the identity of the attacker, while she struggles to cope with post-trauma stress. Farhadi chose Miller's play as his story within a story based on shared themes. A co-production between Iran and France, the film was shot in Tehran, beginning in 2015.

The film premiered in competition in the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where it won two awards—Best Screenplay for Farhadi and Best Actor for Hosseini. The Salesman was very well-received by film critics, who mainly praised Farhadi's direction and writing, and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. However, Farhadi did not attend the 89th Academy Awards ceremony in protest of the U.S. Executive Order 13769.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salesman_(2016_film)

implicit implications OK!

Been meaning to watch that one. Recently watched this Israeli Apple TV+ production called Tehran, in which the Iranian characters are pretty sympathetic so now have been inspired to (re)watch some actual Iranian movies.

Tbh I kind of got used to Athens doubling as Tehran so interesting to see how the real place looks. Which is not totally different.

Is the entire thread about Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi

Lots about Farhadi upthread already.

Anyway, HIT THE ROAD lived up to its trailer and poster.

Watched About Elly and The Salesman over the weekend. I suppose either The Hero or Fireworks Wednesday is next.

I have lots of catching up to do

The Hero another nail-biter.

And there’s a story behind the story: https://www.indiewire.com/2022/04/asghar-farhadi-found-guilty-plagiarism-a-hero-1234714331/

https://www.vulture.com/2022/04/asghar-farhadi-sued-plagiarism-a-hero.html

Masihzadeh claimed Farhadi made her sign a document in 2019, before he began production on A Hero, stating that he owned the idea for All Winners, All Losers, which she did “under great pressure.” Farhadi’s lawyer does not dispute the document, saying it clarified that “he was the one who proposed the idea and the plot of the documentary.” His lawyer said he researched the story on his own, based on media coverage; Masihzadeh claims there was little coverage of the incident that inspired her documentary. Relatedly, Farhadi claimed the main character of A Hero, Rahim, is dissimilar to the real-life subject of All Winners, All Losers. One former student from 2011 additionally told The Hollywood Reporter he believed Farhadi made a film based off one of his projects, but did not plan to sue because he “is a genius filmmaker.”

An interview with Farhadi also on Vulture links to this interesting article: https://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-tarof-20150706-story.html

It seems that the star of About Elly, Golshifteh Farahani, is mostly making films in exile in France these days, including a really terrible love triangle thing I recently tried to watch called Two Friends directed by Alfred's crush Louis Garrel.

Not the same film, but
Never Coming to a Theater Near You - Arthouse Cinema 2016

Louis Garrel's directorial debut may be the worst feature i've endured in the last several years

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Monday, March 7, 2016 2:18 PM (six years ago)

Think my take on Farhadi is close to Bilge Ebiri’s.

really liked About Elly

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/07/did-the-oscar-winning-director-asghar-farhadi-steal-ideas

Also this: https://www.indiewire.com/2022/10/jafar-panahi-and-mohammad-rasoulof-tear-gassed-in-iran-prison-fire-1234772987/

Search: The Runner!

I hadn't heard about the plagiarism case prior to reading that article, but it seemed quite damning. Although this quote from an erstwhile collaborator makes sense:

"If you ask me—as a person who hasn’t seen either ‘A Hero’ or the documentary but just knows the guy extremely well—this is not plagiarism. Asghar is far too intelligent and interesting as an artist, as a writer, to do something like that. This is him wanting control over authorship. It’s a character flaw.”

Everyone in the article is just like "Look, I don't care that you took my idea, just acknowledge that you did it." And he won't.

Found that article totally fascinating for the same reason, the fact that other figures in the industry were so willing to go on the record to basically say, "Haha, yeah, of course he passed off her work as 100% his creation, that's just how he is."

Didn’t really read that article until just now and it was indeed fascinating and kind of painful to read. To me it is as if the hero with the “broken smile” of The Hero is kind of an obvious DO U SEE? shadow self for Farhadi.

Bahram Beyzaeie's Downpour, on the third World Cinema Project box, is a really excellent comedy.

Are you saying that because you know he edited The Runner?

New Jafar Panahi is good, believe the hype!

Panahi on hunger strike. This is sickening!

it's pretty horrible.

Apparently he's just been released from jail?

Great news!

Now what about Mohammad Rasoulof?

Rasoulof has apparently been out for a month: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/feb/03/iranian-film-maker-jafar-panahi-released-on-bail-after-hunger-strike

About to watch Samira Makhmalbaf’s THE APPLE and came across this about her dad’s little film school which she attended:
https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/filmmaker-profiles/makhmalbaf/

Not an Iranian film, but Golshifteh Farahani is really good in the film known in English as ARAB BLUES.

Movie is kind of broad and she plays a French-Tunisian rather thn a French-Irani but her perfomance is still good.

Just finally watched Rasoulof’s There Is No Evil before it leaves MUBI. It is indeed very long but the first and last sections both make it worth your time.