“Wherever We Gather is The House of Cinema”

Arseh Sevom — “What grace? We would be better off if we forgot about the country and opened an orphanage. People don’t have bread, yet wine is imported from France. There is famine and sickness everywhere. People are forced to pay even for their breathing. The rain of blessings is bestowed upon us for the sake of His Majesty but flood and earthquake descend for the wrongdoings of the people. We have more executioners than barbers. Beheading is easier than circumcision. People don’t look like humans anymore, their foreheads are stigmatized with the seal of smallpox. Their eyes are languid from trachoma and their faces are skinny from opium…”

This was a monologue from a classic Iranian movie, ‘Haji Washington’, by the late Ali Hatami, the renowned Iranian director whose signature nostalgic view of the old Iran is celebrated by many Iranians –a style that won him the title of ‘the most Iranian film maker’. Haji Washington was produced in 1982, three years after the victory of the Islamic revolution, and it was immediately banned.

For the past 32 years there has been a complex relationship between the Iranian cinema industry and the Islamic republic. The ideologues of the Islamic revolution of 1979 sought justice and independence, dismissing the Shah as the figurehead of the status quo and opposing the West. The dawn of 1979 revolution started out with the mass persecution of actors, actresses, singers, musicians, dancers and other Iranian media figures. They were accused of having acted as accomplices of the former regime in propagating Western values – hence ‘westoxification’. Many were forced to sign repentance letters in revolutionary courts from the ‘mischief’ they had committed, for tainting youths’ minds and spreading ‘Western corrupt values’ in the society. The new leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, justified their approach by famously arguing that they were “not against the cinema but against prostitution.” Iranian superstars of pre-revolution Iran were boycotted, their images banned from public appearances still in effect today. Actors and actresses like Behrooz Vosoughi, Googoosh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Naser Malek Motiei, Parviz Sayyad, Mohamad Ali Fardin, Foroozan and Poori Banaei were among hundreds blacklisted by the new authorities. Despite the oppression of the industry, the result was innovation and the birth of a new wave in the Iranian cinema. Mohsen Makhmalbaf – who became an outspoken proponent of the the Green Movement – is a product of this period.

Symbolism was at its highest during the post-revolutionary period. Bahman Farmanara, an award winning Iranian director explains in a 2001 interview posted on his website that after desperately submitting ten scripts that ended up rejected by the government censors he “figured they’d allow me a place in an insane asylum”. The report adds that out of destitution, the U.S. educated director “ruefully wrote a synopsis for a film about a director who has not been allowed to work for 20 years, has a heart condition and thinks death is coming.” Bahman Farmanara’s 11th script on death was approved and he recalls saying to government officials: “Tell me…this rapidity of approval — is this because [the movie] is about my own death?”

The outspoken film maker, now 70, recently returned all of his three ‘Simorgh’ awards in protest at the closing down of the ‘Iranian alliance of motion picture guilds’ known as ‘The House of Cinema’ [in Persian: khane-ye-cinema].

Bahman Farmanara’s ordeal captures the enervating game of hide and seek that Iranian cinema family has been playing with all sorts of governmental bylaws and decrees that regulate every aspect of their work.

There is a silver lining in all this, however. Iranian cinema actors and activists alike, are now more unified than ever. Their unanimous criticism of the dissolution of their independent civil alliance, the House of Cinema, has raised sympathy and gained momentum among other fractions in the colorful Iranian mosaic of civil society activists and even political figures. Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’ has been met with universal acclaim and nominated for at least three Academy Awards. Gary Goldstein wrote in The Los Angeles Times in late December 2011:

“A Separation, has already gathered such a head of award season steam that it appears a virtual shoo-in for a foreign-language film nomination. The hoopla — which includes a recent win for its screenplay from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. in addition to top foreign film nods from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle — has also helped put the movie’s writer-producer-director, Asghar Farhadi, on the radar to compete for such top Academy Awards as director and original screenplay.”

Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’ features Leila Hatami in the leading female role. Leila is the daughter of the late Ali Hatami who was remembered in the opening of this article. In a Euronews interview broadcast earlier this month Leila Hatami was asked if she had “Any recommendation to your country [Iran] about the artistic freedom of expression?” Euronews’s close-up of Leila Hatami showed her in a headscarf with tears in her eyes and rolling down on her cheeks, clearly struggling to keep her composure. “I’m from the same country, I’m from the same people, and I am confident that they are intelligent people and they can express their artistic thoughts very well.” The interview was followed by hundreds and thousands of messages on social media from Iranians around the globe, most saying: “Point taken Leila!”

Ali Hatami produced ‘Haji Washington’ during years in Iran when revolutionary zeal was still fresh and a new war had just broken out with the neighboring Iraq. He did not live long enough to witness the film’s public premiere. His daughter, however, will be there at the Academy Awards this year. This highlights the growth of Iranian cinema over the span of a generation, growth that should impress and inspire other aspects of Iranian civil society – including the House of Cinema, dissolved. Against all odds, creativity and artistic expression has found a way to flourish since the Iranian revolution. Haji Washington may have been banned, the award-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi arrested and forbidden from making new films, and countless others stifled and intimidated, but Iranian artists continue to find ways to make their voices heard.

Written for Arseh Sevom by Hooman Askary

Click here for the complete timeline of events surrounding the closure of Iran’s House of Cinema.