S & D: Iranian film

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 ;)