Iran's treasured film industry struggles under censorship

TEHRAN: It s a busy evening in Tehran and dozens of film fans are queuing outside a new glass-fronted multiplex cinema to see the latest productions from one of Iran s most treasured industries.The Azadi movie house has everything to be expected in a flagship cinema – quality sound, plush seats and trendy bars. All that is missing are the films from many of the directors who have made Iranian cinema famous.The most recent films by the award-winning Iranian directors best known abroad – such as the lyrical Abbas Kiarostami and the gritty Jafar Panahi – have failed to win permission from the ministry of culture to be shown.A gripping new social drama about drug addiction from Darioush Mehrjoui, whose 1969 film Gav (Cow) is often cited as the greatest Iranian movie, has still not been shown more than a year after it was ready for release. I think one cannot find a rationale or logic for the existing censorship in our cinema, said director Behrouz Afkhami, one of Iran s leading post-revolution filmmakers, quoted by the Etemad newspaper.Instead, the excited young filmgoers queuing at the Azadi cinema are offered less daring fare.Huge posters have been on display in Tehran for months promoting the box-office hit Second Wife, which tells the story of a man whose first wife comes back from abroad, forcing him to leave his beloved new spouse.The film pushes the right buttons with the censors by including scenes of religious piety, praying and a character who is a disabled, but morally strong, veteran of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.But the absence of the more daring and taboo-breaking films that started to emerge under the former presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami has caused concern in the industry.The latest film by Kiarostami, Certified Copy, is being shot outside of Iran in Italy and stars France s Juliette Binoche, the first time he has used non-Iranian actors in a feature film. The lack of attention to the cultural cinema, which is considered a national asset, is worrying, said an open letter signed by almost 50 Iranian filmmakers published earlier this year. The decision makers in cinema, instead of coming up with ways to reach more elevated national and international horizons, have isolated and even deleted this kind of cinema from public audiences. Iran s Culture Minister Mohammad Hossein Safar Harrandi, a former member of the elite Revolutionary Guards, complained that there was a wave of boy meets girl films under Khatami that were distant from family and ethical values. Part of it was negative and should have been stopped. Mehrjoui s banned film Santouri – about a master of the Iranian santour stringed musical instrument whose addiction to heroin destroys his marriage and sends him to a mental asylum – was a red rag for the censors.The hero s sensual wife sings to herself frequently in the film, the pair attend illicit mixed-sex parties with dancing and drinking, and as their marriage breaks down their dialogue is marked by considerable swearing.All taboos for an Iranian film. I was right, you dirty smackhead, the wife yells at her addicted husband. You stupid bitch, he replies.Mehrjoui, one of the few filmmakers in Iran whose career goes back to well before the 1979 Islamic revolution, has said he no longer has any motivation to make new films.”‘Santouri’ is the victim of (the censors’) taste. I have been sitting idle at home and doing nothing since I do not see the atmosphere suitable for filmmaking, he told Etemad.Iranian filmmaking is among the country s proudest traditions.The first talking feature, “The Lor Girl, was made in 1932 by Abdolhossein Sepanta and realistic films like Mehrjoui s “Gav and Masoud Kimiaie’s “Kaiser aroused international attention before the revolution.Filmmaking flourished after the revolution when leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gave his blessing to cinema and directors invented a unique genre of films inspired by the sacred defense of the war with Iraq.Nowhere is this tradition more clear than in one of Tehran s least known museums, the film museum, where pictures of pre-revolution tie-wearing stars of the 1960s like the action hero Nasser Malek Motiee recall a bygone age.The most prized exhibits are the Cannes Palme d Or won by Kiarostami for the Taste of Cherry and the Venice Leone d’Oro by Panahi for The Circle – making it all more ironic that Iranians cannot watch their latest works legally. We are waiting for the golden age of Iranian cinema, it has still not arrived, museum director Mohammad Hassan Pezeshk told AFP.The woes of Santouri and other films have been compounded by the problem of piracy in Iran.Although it has never been shown on general release in Iran, thousands of pirated DVD copies have been sold for next to nothing with no proceeds going to its producers.Many Western films are banned in Iran and those that are shown are heavily censored. However cheap DVD copies of such films are readily available in the street from sellers known as filmi. But this underground industry has also been harming domestic film producers who make nothing from the pirated sales and whose films are shunned in the cinema from viewers have already seen them at home on DVD. I usually sell between 50 to 80 DVDs per day for 20,000 rials each (more than two dollars). The business is good, said Arash, who flogs pirated American DVDs. I get them from different places. I will have my long list of customers as long as these films are not shown in cinemas, he added. -AFP