Samira Makhmalbaf : At Five in the Afternoon

Kiarostami in particular aims his product much more for a festival/overseas market and gets most of his funding from there as well. Iran itself is quite happy with this, giving in a cultural profile without being particularly challenging since Kiarostami isn't seen much. I think Samira Makhmalbaf is pretty talented, as mentioned above The Apple and Blackboards were both pretty good, but there is a degree of cultural imperialist priviliging going on with some reviews of Iranian cinema. Censorship in Iran is not that bad, there has been a large push for art post the split of church and state (and democratically Iran is pretty forward look). I saw a more popular Iranian film a couple of months ago (Beneath The Skin Of The City) which was a lot more gritty, populist and to my mind more enjoyable that Kiarostami.

kandahar was trash. it almost seemed like a cheap michael moore kinda crap thing. i didn't even realize it was a makhmalbaf until just now, actually.

but i guess the only other of his i've seen was a moment of innocence, which i found quietly whimsical, with a nod to godard or something.

blablablblabla why am i even posting on this thread?

oh yeah, i remember...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/740000/images/_742295_samira_makhmalbaf150.jpg http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/745000/images/_745372_makhmalbaf300.jpg

rrrowr.

god, i'm sorry...

please continue.

Haha. There were a few mentions of S.M. being "glamorous" in the various reports from Cannes. I see what they mean. It's certainly in contrast to her films.

I suppose this is the kind of thing that Kiarostami is trying to deal with when he includes himself (or a surrogate) in his films--the odd relationship between Westernized, well-off artistic elites from Teheran making films about uneducated, impoverished people in remote areas of Iran.