Iran - Andrew Burke [53]
However, life for the Makhmalbaf’s has a darker side. Mohsen Makhmalbaf survived two assassination attempts while filming Kandahar in Iran, and in 2007 the whole family was attacked while on location in Afghanistan for Samira’s latest film, The Two-legged Horse. A man posing as an extra threw a bomb onto the set, wounding six actors and several extras and killing the horse in the film’s title. Filming was eventually finished in June 2007. For more on the Makhmalbafs, see www.makhmalbaf.com.
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The first ‘new wave’ of Iranian cinema is marked by the work of those who first captured the attention of arthouse movie fans around the world: Kiarostami, Dariush Mehrjui and Bahram Beiza’i, Khosrow Haritash and Bahram Farmanara. The post-revolutionary directors, such as Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani Etemad and Jafar Panahi, have helped develop a reputation for Iranian cinema as arthouse, neorealist and poetic – the second ‘new wave’. Arguably, film-makers such as Kiarostami are continuing the great tradition of Persian poetry, albeit in a visual medium. The strict censorship of the post-revolutionary state has encouraged use of children, nonprofessional actors and stories that are fixated on the nitty-gritty of life, and which have proved popular overseas.
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Friendly Persuasion: Iranian Cinema After the Revolution, by Jamsheed Akrami, is a feature-length documentary that examines the phenomenon of Iranian post-revolutionary cinema. Those interviewed represent three generations of Iranian filmmakers.
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Iranians have finally learned to love their own cinema and flock to it in droves. But many internationally acclaimed ‘arthouse’ films never get released at home, and instead get distributed on the bootleg market. Some Iranians feel the masters are making movies specifically for foreign markets and film festivals.
Dozens of films are churned out every year for the domestic market, many of them action flicks. There are, however, signs of improvement here, too, with social issues increasingly taking centre stage, as in Rakhshan Bani Etemad’s films. Female director Tahmineh Milani’s most recent film, Atash Bas (Cease Fire; 2006), is a screwball comedy that deals with the difficulties of a newly-wed couple and features two of Iran’s biggest film stars. It was that year’s biggest hit, breaking box office records.
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Taste of Cherry, directed by Abbas Kiarostami, was co-winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, despite being very controversial inside Iran because it deals with suicide, a taboo subject in Islam.
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Other worthy Iranian films include Crimson Gold Click here, Mainline Click here and Alone in Tehran Click here. Children of Heaven, Majid Majidi’s film, was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1998. It is a delicate tale focussing on two poor children losing a pair of shoes. Humorous and tender. The White Balloon, written by Abbas Kiarostami and directed by Jafar Panahi, tells the story of a young girl who loses her money while on the way to buy a goldfish. The film won several international awards. Also see Must-Movies, which lists our top 10.
Several books take a detailed look at Iranian cinema, including Iranian Cinema: A Political History by Hamid Reza Sadr (2006); The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity by Richard Tapper (2002); and Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and Future by Hamid Dabashi.
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THEATRE
The most important and prevalent form of Iranian theatre is the ta’ziyeh (passion play), which means ‘mourning for the dead’, and actually predates the introduction of Islam into Iran. These plays are staged in every Iranian city, town and village during Ashura (Click here), the anniversary of the battle in AD 680 in which