The Iranian Moral Police scan the crowds for inappropriate glimpses of skin or too much hair showing under a woman’s corruptingly colorful scarf. To elude their gaze, people wait until 2 or 3 a.m. to practice another form of rebellion: taking their dogs for a walk. Since 2009, dogs as pets have been illegal in the Islamic Republic. The list of arbitrary restrictions imposed on Iranian citizens seems endless.
Speaking to The Guardian about legal strictures, 30-year-old Tehrani musician Amir said Iran felt more like “a country without laws. Everybody just does whatever they want and sees if they can get away with it.”
The Iranian government aims for complete control and order, forming instead a surreal, disjointed society where art has become the primary means of self-expression. Ever since A Separation won last year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Iranian cinema has been getting a sliver of the attention it deserves for its success in the face of restriction, which begs the question: what does a repressed society portray in a censored cinema?
The last five films of the 18th Iranian Film Festival, sponsored by the Ilex Foundation, non-governmental organization promoting academia around Mediterranean and near Eastern civilizations, answer this question in distinct ways.
At the Meyer Auditorium at the Freer and Stackler Gallery, the film festival shows films every Friday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. for one week each. The festival runs through the end of February and entry is free.
This coming weekend, The Patience Stone, directed by Atiq Rahimi, is playing. It is a seamlessly crafted film about a woman, played by Golshifteh Farahani, caring for her comatose husband during wartime. He is unresponsive, so the wife can freely express herself while tending to him. The film is set in an unnamed land and shows a marriage failing as the world falls apart around them. Like most Iranian cinema, it exposes the cracks in a foundation of personal relationships and society, and examines the missteps of life.
On Jan. 31 and Feb. 2, Fat Shaker, directed by Mohammed Shirvani, is showing. The opening scene is grotesque, showing the protagonist, portrayed by Levon Haftvan, with cups suctioned to his fat back, like leeches. Fat Shaker develops, intense and volatile with clamorous colors and smooth cinematography. The imagery is later less disturbing, but the subject matter is just as perversely engrossing. Fat Shaker is billed as an attack on the patriarchal system in Iran—both political and social. More enthralling is the topsy-turvy cinematography that shows the dream- and nightmare-like state of daily life. It makes sense that inspiration for the plot came to Shirvani during sleep.
The following weekend features Parviz, directed by Majid Barzegar, also starring Levon Haftvan in a disturbing rollick through present-day Iran. “Parviz is a bitter film,” Barzegar said in a press release. “I wanted to bring to the screen this feeling of bitterness, especially in our present-day situation.” The title character becomes redundant and disintegrates. He breaks with acceptable social conventions, while, ironically, often staying within bounds of the Iranian law. But eventually, he devolves into utter sociopathy. The bitterness is obvious thanks to gloomy aesthetics and slow-moving camera work. This is a film that only select palates will appreciate.
On Valentine’s Day, find some much-needed relief thanks to Director Kamran Heydari’s documentary titled My Name is Negahdar Jamali and I Make Westerns. It follows an amateur filmmaker who, for 35 years, used home video equipment and friends as actors to recreate American Westerns, despite friction with those around him who bore the burden of funding his obsession. It may not be complete comic relief, but it promises bittersweet laughs and a charming story. The scenery—colorful cowboys and Native Americans against the backdrop of the ancient city of Shiraz—is the perfect getaway from snowy, dreary D.C.
The festival closes on Saturday, Feb. 22 at 2 p.m. with A Cinema of Discontent and a talk by Director Jamsheed Akrami. This documentary delves into the suppression and censorship of Iranian cinema through interviews with 12 acclaimed filmmakers, including Asghar Farhadi, director of Oscar-winning A Separation. If it does nothing else, this series speaks to the fact that, weighed down by discontent as they are, Iranian directors have still been able to make beauty out of an unjust reality. The craze for Iranian cinema speaks more to a cinema of creativity, of passion, of reaching the universal in a different way—and being braver and more creative in its pursuit.
Freer Gallery
Meyer Auditorium
Now until Feb. 22
asia.si.edu
