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September 14, 2009
I need to see what is not good for me
Projections of Truth in Iranian Films

by INTERFILM member Heike Kühn

During the 19th century the European vision of the so called Orient was idealized. German poet Goethe praised the Orient for its delicate and romantic poetry; German philosopher Schlegel believed that a combination of the oriental soul, Greek-Roman awareness of measure and form, not to forget, German morality, would supply universe with the utmost expression of perfection. History recalls how great the fall can be.

After 9/11 we tend to demonize anything Islamic or Arabian. We look rather for the projections of our fear, our anger, our revolt against terrorism, the oppression of freedom and violence against women. To understand what is going on, we could profit from their cinema projections, especially in the many folded ways of Iranian cinema to undermine  Iranian censorship.

In 1996, filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf had an irresistible idea: The story of his film >Gabbeh< is told by a yearning young woman weaving a carpet, a traditional Gabbeh. The pattern of  the Gabbeh is the pattern of her unsatisfied love life: rich in colours, the carpet can be read as a love letter and sigh for the beloved who in the end robs the young woman to marry her against the will of her father. Happy ending with a fond kiss? No way. When finally we see the  former lovers together, they are 80 years old, nagging on each other without teeth, weaving a carpet to glorify the time of youth and forbidden desire. A folkloristic tradition, meeting Becket's absurd theatre.

The comic relief of irony meanwhile should not colour up the dark side of dictatorship. Yet out of this murkiness we witness filmmakers fighting back against fundamentalism by claiming Islam for themselves: not the Islam of terror, but of civil rights, spiritual wisdom as in Sufi tradition or beauty as immortalized in 1001 nights.

One of these strategies to overcome censorship was called docufiction.

The most striking example is Kiarostami’s trilogy about an earthquake that took place in 1987. The disaster was almost kept secret by Iranian mass media to neglect the consequences of a corrupt bureaucracy busy denying the catastrophe. Kiarostami asked people who had rescued nothing but their lives, to play themselves. He changed names and habits and created a subtle imitation of life. The schizophrenic situation of playing oneself but not being allowed to be oneself, was understood at once by his Iranian audience.

The split personality thus guaranteed a certain freedom of speech. It was supported by another common strategy of Iranian filmmakers during the eighties and nineties. Often their  protagonists were children, living seismographs of a society that is facing a lot more convulsions than those coming from earthquakes.

A highly praised film that allows a child to speak the truth and grown-ups to understand the message, was made by Jafar Panahi and released in 1996. In >The White Balloon< we follow a little girl exploring Teheran with innocent eyes. The girl’s attention is captured by a magician conjuring a snake. Of course it’s a guilty pleasure. The girl is taken away by her mother and patronized: “This is not good for you”, the mother preaches. For the rest of the film the smart girl is repeating one sentence: “I need to see what is not good for me.”

I learned that this line gained fame in Teheran. Yet Jafar Panahi, born in 1960, was not convinced by the melancholic and metaphorical film language Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf created.

Although we in the West were enchanted: we adored these metaphors as part of Persian poetry, so rich, so clandestine - a festival for imagery decoders. A turtle, creeping over gravestones in Kiarostamis film >The Wind Will Carry Us<, was not a contribution to Iranian wild life but a powerful symbol of eternity and ever lasting change that can’t be fooled by the hopefully shorter era of Islamic fundamentalism. How we loved this emblematic cinema language!  

In 2000 Jafar Panahi won the golden Lion of Venice by screening a film he had smuggled out of Iran, certainly without asking permission. It was a scandal in Iran and a revelation in the west. Banned in Iran till today >The Circle< describes a vicious circle of female oppression. Sophisticated in terms of aesthetics and straightforward in its political message the film starts with the birth of a girl, accused as end of all hope.

The sad and bitter round dance of humiliation leads from one woman to the other, every one of them embodying a certain aspect of female suffering. Arezou, Pari and Nargess get to know each other in prison, accused of prostitution or disobedience. From a western point of view, they are as innocent as Christmas snow. Jafar Panahi was inspired by a newspaper article reporting that a woman committed suicide after killing her two little daughters. The article never illuminated the background. >The Circle< provides a lot of reasons to die by despair in Iran but also strikes back by presenting the self-conscious whore Mojgane. She is the only woman daring to look into men’s eyes. She is far too disillusioned not to see through the game of wretched and double-faced male morality. All the heroines end up again in prison. Panahi’s grown-up protagonists don’t need to watch snake incantations any longer or demand to see what is not good for them. They know by heart what is not good for them. The translation of Arezou, by the way, is hope. Pari means angel and Solmaz, the name of the woman giving birth to an unwanted girl means: the one who is living eternally.

>The Circle< established an enlightenment in the tradition of Western neo-realism. Thus, the film resembles the 2002 produced film >I am Taraneh, 15<. Filmmaker Rassul Sadr-Ameli said that his film deliberately refrains from delicate symbols. The story of the 15 years old girl Taraneh who is impregnated by an imposturous pseudo-husband is told in a very plain and simple way. But simplicity can be a also a miracle: It is not simple at all how the girl fights back and claims the name of the unfaithful father for her child.

Showing abandoned women, hateful men, spoiled little boy-princes, in short a lack of communication and compassion, became the new Iranian film art; and no one did this more radical than the master of parables, Abbas Kiarostami. About his film >Ten< he even said that it was rather realized than made. In >Ten< we learned something about the daily life in Teheran, the traffic jam, people who fight for a parking space, families falling apart. The imagery is minimalist, existential and mirrored the urge of reforming both: society and the visions of society.
 
But as we see in the work of Shirin Neshat, both ways, the metaphoric language and the neo-realistic style coexist – demanding more crucial than ever to regain dignity by discovering the loss of civil rights and civil courage.

This text was presented by the author at the occasion of the ecumenical panel at the 66th Mostra del cinema in Venice 2009 on "Stories of Human Dignity in Film: Focus on Iranian Cinema". 

 




December 30, 2008
SEE Women Film Directors at Belgrade FEST 2009
by Ron Holloway, Berlin

When I was asked by Serb filmmaker and colleague Slobodan Sijan if I would be interested in moderating a panel discussion at FEST 2009, I accepted without hesitation. After all, Belgrade is one of Europe’s great film cities, and I’m not the only journalist who likes to hang out here.

Then, when he said that the topic would be “SEE Women Film Directors” – namely, Women Filmmakers from South East Europe – it interested me all the more. For even though there may not yet be an authentic film wave in this corner of Europe to write about, something like a loosely connected movement is clearly visible on the horizon.

When I asked Slobodan how he had hit upon the idea, he cited the enthusiastic response given at FEST 2008 for Macedonian woman film director Teona Strugar Mitevska’s Jas sum od Titov Veles (I Am from Titov Veles) (Macedonia/Slovenia/Belgium/France, 2007), the tragic story of three sisters stranded in a run-down, once prosperous Macedonian factory town named for Marshall Tito.

Previously awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sarajevo Film Festival, I Am from Titov Veles went on from there to win an armful of international citations, including the Best Actress Award to Labina Mitevska at the Lecce Festival of European Cinema. All the more significant, for in the role of the mute Afrodita she has to carry the film with nary a word of spoken dialogue.

Labina Mitevska, Teona’s sister, was already a household European name before she produced and acted in I Am from Titov Veles. As 18, she played the young Albanian Zamira in Milcho Manchevski’s Pred dozdot (Before the Rain) (Macedonia/France/UK, 1994), a war chronicle set in Macedonia that drew the world’s attention to the Balkan conflicts when it was awarded the Golden Lion at Venice.

Later, Michael Winterbottom cast Labina Mitevska for a supportive role in Welcome to Sarajevo (UK, 2000). And she received a Czech Lion Nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role of a loony Macedonian barkeeper in David Ondricek’s Samotari (Loners) (Czech Republic, 2000). But of her 17 film roles to date, she was particularly a standout in the independent Macedonian production Kako ubiv svetec (How I Killed a Saint) (Macedonia/Slovenia/France, 2004), a Sisters and Brother Mitevski Production directed by Teona Struga Mitevska.

Nominated for a Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival and recipient of the Crossing Europe Award at Linz, How I Killed a Saint confirmed Teona Struga Mitevska as one of the leading women filmmakers in South East Europe. The writer-director studied painting and graphic design in Skopje before enrolling in film courses at the Tisch School of Arts at New York University.

To some degree, How I Killed a Saint is autobiographical. “I originally had the idea for the film when I returned home after living several years in the United States,” she said in an interview. “I remember arriving at the Skopje airport and being surrounded by young military personnel with expressions just as scared and bewildered as mine. Then came the ride to a grey, gloomy Skopje surrounded by beautiful mountains. This is what I tried to capture at the beginning of How I Killed a Saint.”

And she added: “There is nothing more devastating than returning home, to the place you grew up, and finding war and destruction. What does it mean to find the places of your childhood in shambles, and what does it mean to feel like a foreigner in a place where you were born?”

When How I Killed a Saint was screened at the Manaki Brothers Cinematographers festival in Bitola, where the Mitevska sisters shared compliments with Belgian cinematographer Alain Marcoen (famed for his work with the Dardenne Brothers), I was approached by a Macedonian TV reporter as to why foreign journalists – meaning myself – liked the film.

She was particularly distraught because it presented a rather negative portrait of Macedonia in 1971: NATO troops on the streets, mounting religious conflicts, flourishing blackmarket, drug gangs and mafia, to say nothing of the guns massed along the borders.

Further, the heroine of the film is returning home to reclaim her child, which can only be done by revealing the secret of who the powerful father was. In the end, she is forced to kidnap the child.

Put on the spot, I replied that I understood the concerns of cultural and religious officials in the government only too well, particularly since I was a frequent visitor to Macedonia. Fumbling for an answer, I tried to soften the negative criticism by shifting from a clear-cut answer to a reflective question.

I lamely responded: Why were the best “anti-American” films made by American directors? It’s a sure sign of the strength of a democracy. In other words, Macedonian officials need not worry about negative feelings generated by the film’s release at home when How I Killed a Saint was receiving so much positive praise abroad.

The same sort of pro-and-contra discussion happened at the Berlinale press conference for Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic’s Grbavica (Bosnia & Herzegovina/Croatia/Austria/Germany, 2006). Known abroad as Esma’s Secret – again, another film about a heart-rending secret of the past – it was later awarded the Golden Bear, the Peace Prize, and the Ecumenical Prize at the 2006 Berlinale. Not bad for a debut feature by a young Sarajevo filmmaker.

European viewpoints, pro and contra, in regard to the ongoing conflicts in South East Europe are as plentiful as the conflicts themselves. Nevertheless, only a dunce would question the authenticity of the moving performance given by Belgrade actress Mirjana Karanovic in Grbavica. She plays a mother coming to grips with her past fate as a rape victim during the height of the Bosnian War, and this just as her teenaged daughter is beginning to ask frank questions about the real identity of her father.

A hidden secret is also at the core of Yesim Ustaoglu’s Bulutlari Beklerken (Waiting for the Clouds) (Turkey/Germany/France, 2003).

Based loosely on a novella by Greek writer Georgios Andreadis, “Tamama – The Missing Girl of Pontos” (published in 1993), Waiting for the Clouds is the third film in Yesim Ustaoglu’s trilogy on ethnic repression in modern-day Turkey – after Iz (The Trace) (1994), the story of a policeman tracing the past of an interrogator who didn’t shy from torture, and Günese yolculuk (Journey to the Sun) (Turkey/Netherlands/Germany, 1999), the story of a friendship between a Turk and a Kurd from eastern Anatolia in troubled Istanbul.

As seen through the eyes of a Turkish boy, Waiting for the Clouds reviews in fragmented form the painful deportation of Pontos Greeks from Turkey during the 1920s after the Turkish war of independence. In the film an elderly woman has effectively concealed her true Greek identity for a half-century for personal and human reasons. The truth emerges , however, when old family albums are taken from their hiding place.

Historical records confirm that hundreds of deported Greeks died during this forced expulsion. Also, that the exiled Pontos Greeks, upon reaching Greece, suffered more grief and humiliation as poverty-stricken “aliens” in a politically divided country during the interregnum period. Although detailed in Andreadis’s novel, these facts are mostly hinted at in Waiting for the Clouds.

Mitevska’s I Am from Titov Veles, Zbanic’s Grbavica, Ustaoglu’s Waiting for the Clouds – three films by women directors, each dealing with women hiding secrets for painful personal reasons, the key roles deftly interpreted by talented actresses. Taken altogether, it prompts an obvious question: Did these films benefit from a distinct woman’s perspective on the part of the director? In my opinion, yes.

This is not to say that women film directors in South East Europe may not be equally proficient when handling other social dilemmas and even intricate political themes. The opposite is just the case.

Mirjana Vukomanovic’s Tri letni dni (Three Summer Days) (Yugoslavia/Serbia, 1997), is a hardhitting portrait about despairing conditions in Belgrade of the late 1990s: mafia, corruption, prostitution, drunkenness, violence, death, and, in the background, an ever-present war. Winner of the 1997 Yugoslav National Film Prize, Three Summer Days, scripted by the prolific writer-dramatist-screenwriter Gordan Mihic, was Yugoslavia’s entry for the foreign-language Oscar.

Three Summer Days reproaches intolerance in a trio of stories about young people seeking a way out of this abyss of despair. A youth from Bosnia looks for his mother and sister in refugee camps. A part-time jobber from Croatia sinks deeper into drugs. And a young girl with a drunken father supports her family by prostituting herself.

When I asked Mirjana Vukomanovic at the Manaki Brothers Cinematographers Festival in Bitola whether things were really as bad as the film depicted, she responded: “I’ve only shown the truth – with the truth comes a measure of hope.”

Hanna A.W. Slak’s Slepa pega (Blind Spot) (Slovenia, 2002) is a powerful story about a girl’s attempt to help a friend withdraw from his addiction to heroin. Along the way, she has to confront the dealer who hates to lose a customer.

Awarded Best Director at the 2003 Sofia film festival, Blind Spot also focuses on the flood of young refugees from across Slovenia to Ljubjana, in hopes of benefiting from better economic opportunities.

"My intention was to show the struggle of a girl determined to save someone she loves.,” Hanna Slak said in an interview. “But what was to be a noble quest turns out in the film to be a painful journey, as the main character rejects any help from outside.”

Lendita Zeqiraj and Blerta Zeqiri’s Rrugedalje (Exit) (Kosovo, 2004) sparkles as a black comedy about three young men cornered in an apartment during the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo. Without food and cigarettes, but most of all without information of what is going on outside, they try to find a way out.

Shot in grainy black-and-white, Exit succinctly delineates the claustrophobic circumstances of stranded citizens during the bombing. An award-winning short fiction film at the 2004 Tirana film festival, followed by the award for Best Cinematography at the 2005 New York Independent Film and Video Festival, Exit was then developed into an hour-long feature film with the same title, this time shot in color.

Lendita Zeqiraj studied painting and graduated from the Faculty of Figurative Arts at the University of Pristina. Currently, she is studying cinema at University of Paris. Her sister, Blerta Zeqiri, known as a lead-singer and songwriter for a rap-band, is also currently studying cinema at the Paris University.

Some filmlands in South East Europe have a long and distinguished tradition of supporting women filmmakers.

Hungary, straddling the divide between Central East and South East Europe, can boast of Marta Meszaros (Naplo apamnak, anyamnak / Diary for My Parents, 1990), Ildiko Enyedi (Az en XX. századom / My 20th Century, 1989), Judit Elek (Ebredes / Awakening, 1995), and Livia Gyamathy (Szökés / Escape, 1997).

Just as Marta Meszaros broke new ground for feminist aesthetics in socialist cinema during the Cold War period with Orokbefogadas (Adoption) (1975, Golden Bear, Berlinale), so did Ilboya Fekete pave the way for refreshing brand of “mockumentaries” (fake documentaries) set in post-socialist Hungary with Bolshe Vita (1996) and Chico (2001).

Bulgaria, too, can be proud of the cinematic achievements of its women filmmakers. Binka Zhelyazkova’s political comedy Privarzaniyat balon (The Tied-Up Balloon) (1967), scripted by Yordan Radichkov from his novel, was banned for two decades. The fascinating story of The Tied-Up Balloon and Zhelyazkova’s troubles with the Bulgarian censors is covered with insight in Elka Nikolova’s Binka (Bulgaria, 2006), her documentary on the person and career of Binka Zhelyazkova.

A score of veteran and young woman filmmakers are heralding the current revival of Bulgarian cinema.

Ivanka Grabcheva‘s Edna kaloria nezhnost (One Calorie of Tenderness) (2003), about the family concerns of an elderly couple in today’s Sofia, marked the successful return of an oft-awarded children’s film director during the socialist era.

Zornitsa Sophia’s Mila ot Mars (Mila from Mars) (2004), awarded the Kodak Prize for Best Bulgarian Film at the 2004 Sofia film festival, introduced a painter and performance artist in her first feature film. The story of a hyper-active teenager, who escapes from a brutal drug dealer to take refuge in a no man’s land at the Greek border, Mila from Mars went on from there to win more citations.

Milena Andanova’s Maimyni prez zumaka (Monkeys in Winter) (Bulgaria/Germany, 2006) (produced by her younger sister, Nevena Andanova), an interwoven tale about the fate of three pregnant women in three different time periods (1960s, 1980s, the present), accurately mirrors the country’s social and political conditions during those times. The Andanovas are the daughters of the late Metodi Andanov, whose Kozijat rog (The Goat Horn) (1972) ranks as the greatest box office hit in the history of Bulgarian cinema.

Iglika Triffonova’s Razsledvane (Investigation) (2006), a dark detective tale about a women investigator prying into family secrets, was awarded Best Balkan Film at the Sofia film festival and the Grand Prize at the Cottbus film festival.

In conclusion, I would like to comment on the theme of “home” in key films by women directors in South East Europe.

Unless I am mistaken, the first to treat this theme in a modern-day context was Serb director Mirjana Vukomanovic in Three Summer Days (1997), the first feature film by a director of children’s films and documentaries for television. Although written by a male screenwriter, Gordan Mihic, Three Summer Days embraces the fate of the homeless in postwar Belgrade mainly from a woman’s perspective.

A young girl turns to prostitution to support her younger brother and sister. A youth from Bosnia despairingly looks for his mother and sister in refugee camps. The vulgarity of the economic crisis is personified in a corrupt “mistress” who brokes no interference in her trade. Moreover, the painful intolerance of Serbs towards Serbs is particularly felt in these women protagonists.

The theme of “home” as an entity to be defined forms the core of Montenegran director Marija Perovic’s Opet pakujemo majmune (Packing the Monkeys, Again!) (Montenegro, 2004), the title referring to the wife’s talisman collection of stuffed monkeys.

Directed by a freelance writer-critic-filmmaker, Packing the Monkeys, Again! depicts the efforts of a young couple, a journalist and his intellectual wife, to settle in at their small apartment. Clashes with the landlord and visitors, however, lead to unexpected aggravation and eventually the need to look for another apartment.

Marija Perovic highlights the absurdity of the situation. On one level, it’s insinuated that Montenegran housewives should adhere to traditional customs, although this limits choice and mobility. On another level, the situation is complicated when three different women lay claim to the same small apartment.

Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska’s I Am from Titov Veles (2007), set in a decaying factory city in Macedonia (founded by Marshall Tito, now known as Veles), is the heart-rending story of three sisters who try to survive after the downfall of Tito’s socialist revolution. Although each is ill-equipped to meet the challenges of a new society, they try as individuals and as a family to find their way among lotharios, profiteers, and other intruders upon their privacy.

The theme of “home” in I Am from Titov Veles – narrated by the sister who doesn’t speak in the film (!) – reaches beyond a family tragedy. As the tale unfolds, we learn that the pollution pouring from the lead factory has left deep scars on the populace: cancer, birth deformation, premature deaths, emigration. In short, Teona Strugar Mitevska has sketched a downfall of Yugoslavia in poignant human terms.

Bosnian director Aida Begic’s Snijeg (Snow) (2008), awarded the Grand Prize in the International Week of the Critics at Cannes, deals with the theme of “home” at its most fundamental level. What happens in a village where all the men are missing? Worse, when the men in the family were murdered during the atrocities of ethnic cleansing?

An autobiographical film in many respects, Snow leans on surreal elements – dreams, a storm and snowfall, hair that grows back overnight – to underscore why twelve women and two men (one a boy) are reluctant to leave their village until they find the remains of their loved ones. In the end, not even an offer from a government-sponsored development conman will change their minds.

Perhaps a link can be traced between Bosnian director Aida Begic’s Snow and Turkish director Yesim Ustaoglu’s Waiting for the Clouds, made five years earlier in 2003. In both films family albums support social identity rooted in a culture. Traditions are passed on, not discarded.

Of course, there are other common themes to be discussed in films by women directors of South East Europe. Political, as well as social. However, family ties appear particularly appropriate, even seminal.

For women filmmakers tend to perceive “home” as more than just a haven for comfort and protection.

It’s a way of life.

 

SEE WOMEN FILM DIRECTORS – DECEMBER 2008
Working List – English Titles

Albania
Iris Elezi (Suicide Inc, USA 2001, Disposable Heroes, Kosovo, 2005), short films

Bosnia and Herzegovina
Jasmila Zbanic (Red Rubber Boots, 2000, Grbavica, 2006, Golden Bear Berlinale)
Aida Begic (Snow, 2008), Cannes Week of Critics Award
Vanja Svilicic (See You in Sarajevo, 2008), short feature
Danijela Majstorovic (Counterpoint for Her, 2004, The Dream Job, 2006)
Ivana Milosevic (Never Been Better, 2006)
Sabina Vajraca (Back to Bosnia, 2005, with Alison Hanson)
Vesna Ljubic (Posljednji skretnicar uzanog kolosijeka, 1986)

Bulgaria
Binka Zhelyazkova (The Tied-Up Balloon, 1967)
Elka Nikolova (Binka, 2007), documentary on Binka Zhelyazkova
Ivanka Grubcheva (One Calory of Tenderness, 2003)
Milena Andonova (Monkeys in Winter, 2006)
Iglika Triffonova (Investigation, 2006), Cottbus Grand Prize
Zornitsa Sophia (Mila from Mars, 2004)
Svetla Tsotsorkova (Life with Sophia, 2004)
Adela Peeva (Whose Song Is This?, 2003), documentary
Irina Aktasheva (Monday Morning, 1966) (worked in tandem with Hristo Piskov)
Roumiana Petkova (The Other Possible Life of Ours, 2007)
Nevena Tosheva (Bulgaria: Land, People, Sun, 1966), documentary
Milena Milotinova (The Saved Ones, 1999), documentary
Eldora Traykova (Of People and Bears, 1995), documentary
Svetlina Petrova (She, 2001), animation

Croatia
Snjezana Tribuson (Three Love Stories, 2007)
Ivona Juka (Facing the Day, 2005), documentary
Biljana Cakic-Veselic (The Boy Who Rushed, 2002)
Dana Budisavlejevic (Everything’s Fine, 2003)

Greece
Alinda Dimitriou (Birds in the Mire, 2008), documentary
Tonia Marketaki (The Price of Love, 1984), died in 1994; major figure
Olga Malea (The Cow's Orgasm, 1997)
Antouanetta Angelidi (Thief of Reality, 2001)
Athina Rachel Tsangari (The Slow Business of Going, 2000)
Loukia Rikaki (Symfonia haraktiron, 1999)

Hungary
Marta Meszaros (Adoption, 1975)
Ilboya Fekete (Bolshe Vita, 1996, Chico, 2001)
Ildiko Enyedi (My 20th Century, 1989)
Judit Elek (Awakening, 1995)
Livia Gyarmathy (Escape, 1997)
Agnes Kocsis (Fresh Air, 2006)

Kosovo
Lendita Zeqiraj (Exit, 2004), codirector
Blerta Zeqiri (Exit, 2004), codirector

Macedonia
Teona Strugar Mitevska (I Killed a Saint, 2004, I Am From Titov Veles, 2007)
Dragana Zarevska (Grandma’s Villlage, 2007)

Montenegro
Marija Perovic (Pack the Monkeys Again, 2004)

Romania
Elisabeta Bostan (A Telephone Call, 1991), children’s films
Malvina Ursianu (What a Happy World, 2003)
Corina Radu (Bar de zi and Other Stories, 2006), documentary
Andrada Domin (The Lamenters, 2007), documentary
Tatiana Niculescu Bran (For God’s Sake, 2007), documentary, codirector

Serbia
Mirjana Vukomanovic (Three Summer Days, 1997)
Gordana Boskov (What’s Up, Nina?, 1984, Flashback, 1997)
Suada Kapic (The Trap, 1988)
Eva Balas-Petrovic (Panonski Peak, 1989)
Marija Maric (Heartsick Youth, 1990)
Ratiborka Ceramilac (Virtual Reality, 2001)
Andrijana Stojkovic (An Island, 1996), Home, 1996, The Box, work-in-progress)

Slovenia
Hana A.W. Slak (Blind Spot, 2002)
Maya Weiss (Guardian of the Frontier, 2002)

Turkey
Yesim Ustaoglu (Journey to the Sun, 1999, Waiting for the Clouds, 2003, Pandora’s Box, 2008)
Handan Ipekci (Hidden Faces, 2007)
Pelin Esmer (The Play, 2005), documentary




October 15, 2008
A Cinema of Illumination
Considerations on Chinese Films Today

For the first time INTERFILM was present at the Mostra dell'arte cinematographica, the International Film Festival in Venice (August 27-September 6, 2008). During the festival INTERFILM organised a panel discussion on Chinese cinema of today, in cooperation with the Organisazione protestante del cinema Roberto Sbaffi and the Italian Catholic film organisation Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo. Karsten Visarius, Executive Director of INTERFILM, presented a keynote speech which is published below.

1. My starting point is a very simple statement. Chinese films interest us because China regained an important position in world politics, and because it plays an influential part in the globalization of the economy. Certainly you can discuss films also under these perspectives. But my perspective is different. Chinese films do interest us because of their artistic value and their aesthetic potential, and they do so for a much longer time than political and economic reasons can explain.

2. You can pretty precisely determine since when Chinese films won the attention of an international audience. 1985 Chen Kaige’s “Yellow Earth”, with Zhang Yimou as his cinematographer, won a Silver Leopard in Locarno and a Commendation by the Ecumenical Jury. In 1988 followed a Golden Bear for Zhang Yimous debut as director in Berlin, for “Red Sorghum”, and in the same year Tian Zhuangzhuang received an award for his “The Horse Thief” in Fribourg, once again in Switzerland. These three directors and their films form the centre of what later became famous as the “Fifth Generation” of Chinese cinema.

3. Although we are going to focus on the Chinese cinema of today, we need to recall the achievements of the 5th generation, if only in general, for they still form the basis for the work of younger directors.

The first and decisive achievement consists in reestablishing film as art instead of propaganda. This implies, second, to gain acceptance for the principle of authorship, that is to develop a personal concept or vision in order to organize the different elements and levels of a film. This principle as we know causes not only conflicts with political control and censorship but also with aims as gaining financial profits, pleasing the tastes of the audience and respecting the limits of conventional traditions. Third, the 5th generation has raised a sensibility for the fact that true art relies on knowing its own history. All these principles contrast directly to the Communist party’s ideology of the Cultural Revolution and the catastrophe it turned out to be for the Chinese society. The biographies of the 5th generation’s directors are all deeply affected by this experience.

4. The last principle, to be aware of the position of one’s own work in the course of film history, is especially important for the intercultural approach which we are interested in on this panel. For the directors of the 5th generation have developed their personal style in regard to films from the West, more precisely films from Western Europe. This remains true also for the next generation till today. At the beginning, Italian neorealism plays an important part, then the French Nouvelle Vague, as well as outstanding artists as Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni. Consequently, we don’t need to look for an abstract relation between European and Chinese films. This is not a question of influences and dependencies. Rather, I am talking about exchange, adaptation, and transformation, in short: about an international artistic communication. Using a formula, this means: the forms of expression in modern Chinese cinema rely on an intercultural matrix. We have to conceive Chinese films as a texture, with internal, national and external, international  elements permeating each other.

5. The last statement needs a footnote. The inherent international and intercultural nature of film contrasts to the search for a collective identity which in China refers to an imperial history of ages. The development of many 5th generation directors, first of all Zhang Yimou’s, but also Chen Kaige’s, can be told from protest and personal artistical self-assurance in the beginning to adapting to collective desires and needs later and ending in an imperial myth, although not necessarily excluding critical undertones. By this, they challenge the mythology of Hollywood cinema gaining also financial success.

6. Being a protestant raised film critic, I prefer other choices, and so do INTERFILM and the Ecumenical Juries – which are appointed at numerous international film festivals but not in Venice. It is not myth, not illusion, and not a common sensation of feelings, all of which are considered to be deeply connected with cinema. But there exists another side of cinema. It has to do with compassion, with empathy, with truth, with the dignity of the individual, with taking side for justice and protesting against suppresion and violence. I don’t need to explain why these values are so precious for an international church film organisation. But I am going to argue that these values and convictions are essential for film art as well. For the sake of our discussion I focus on the films of Jia Zhang-ke, for many observers the most important director of Chinese cinema today. His latest film will be screened during the Mostra, as well as his cinematographer, Yu Lik-way, has directed a film which made it into the competition section of this year’s festival.

7. “Xiao Wu”, in English “Pickpocket”, the first film of Jia Zhang-ke, tells the story of a little criminal in the provincial town of Fengyang, where the director himself has been raised. Fengyang is China, the director once said. Xiao Wu’s ex-companions have turned to be successful businessmen, the authorities which let him do in exchange for small services in previous times withdraw their protection. At the end he stands on the street in chains, painfully stared at by the crowd as if Kafka’s bug came into life. The plot itself is marginal. Important is the picture of a small town, the streets and alleys, the backyards and the shabby living rooms; important are the social positions and the net of social relations; important is Xiao Wu’s cigarette lighter which plays Beethoven’s “For Elise” and wins the heart of a prostitute for him.

Jia’s next film, “Platform”, is about a group of travelling theatre players, again from Fengyang, in the years between 1980 and 1989. On their route from one provincial stage to the other they experience the change from a state theatre group to a private enterprise. Personally, they start from a mood of youthful rebellion and end in the struggle for an indifferent audience’s attention. The film is a huge panorama of a decade in provincial China and could easily be entitled “Lost Illusions” like Balzac’s famous novel.


STILL LIVE by Jia Zhang-ke (2006)

I am jumping to “Still Life” which won Jia Zhang-ke the Golden Lion in Venice 2006 as film surprise. The setting is the ghost-like town of Fengjie which is doomed to destruction and sinking in the waters of the Yang-tse by the Three-Gorges-Dam. The film tells the story of a former mine-worker in search of his wife who left him sixteen years ago, and a second story about a woman who lost her husband to a successful career in the construction business. The image on our invitation is drawn from this film. It shows a man walking on a tightrope in the background trying not to fall down – a symbol for the dangerous walk the characters have to cope with between a lost tradition and an uncertain future.

8. Everyday life in a rapidly transforming environment – that is Jia Zhang-ke’s central theme, as well as for many other directors of his generation. They tell us how the struggle to survive consumes the essence of life itself: happiness, satisfaction, hope, trust, solidarity, and self-esteem. Only an admirable pragmatism keeps people going. You can say that Jia Zhang-ke’s characters are threatened and damaged by the worthlessness of values. That is not an accusation, and not an affirmation. It is an observation, and a conclusion. To let us see, feel, and understand this drama is a great achievement of Jia’s film art. It relies on a camera work, a plot construction and a portrayal of characters which confides in reality nearly documentary-like, giving it a shape to grasp at the same time. This is not a cinema of effects but of truthfulness. It is not a cinema of illusion but of illumination. We know, that this kind of cinema in China suffers from a lack of any considerable distribution, of support and promotion, that it is often even forbidden and gets a circulation only by video piracy. Thus, these films get lost of their most important aim: to participate in the public communication about the problems, political decisions and perspectives of the Chinese society. Not only for this reason I plead to praise these artists, and to give them prizes: hoping that some day also Chinese audiences get curious to watch them with their own eyes.

Karsten Visarius


 




December 15, 2007
Peacemaking in the World of Film
by Jolyon Mitchell*

Organized by INTERFILM, SIGNIS, WACC and the University of Edinburgh an International Ecumenical Film Conference on “Peacemaking in the World of Film – From Conflict to Reconciliation" has been held. The conference program was structured around short papers, presentations, showcases, discussions, screenings and informal conversations. The primary objective of the conference was to explore how films contribute to reconciliation after violent conflicts and take part in building peace. Jolyon Mitchell was director of the Peacemaking in the World of Film Conference, held in Edinburgh, July 2007.

Why is peacemaking such an apparent rarity in the world of film? From the first days of cinema, filmmakers have delighted in offering viewers moving images of conflict and violence. The torrential cascade of cinematic violence is hard to avoid: from boxing fights to violent train robberies, from fencing duals to dramatic executions, from shoot-outs to exploding helicopters. Whether creating cinematic comedies or tragedies, fantasies or histories, filmmakers have found violence an irresistible topic for their craft. It is found in almost every film genre and is put to use in many different ways. Its ubiquity partly explains why there is so much research in the area of violence and film, investigating particularly whether watching violent movies make viewers more aggressive. Questions about the effects of violent film often dominate research agendas, debates and discussions. Far rarer is consideration of how films represent, challenge and celebrate peacemaking. Given the number of recent and ongoing actual conflicts, as well as blatant, hidden and structural violence, the topic of cinematic peacemaking merits careful consideration.

In this essay, my aim is to investigate different aspects of peacemaking in the world of film, through a series of case-studies. I have already highlighted one important question: Why is peacemaking so rarely explicitly explored in film? A range of other related questions are also pertinent to this subject. When peacemaking is represented, how is it portrayed? How is the move from conflict to reconciliation depicted in different cultural contexts? To what extent can violence or conflict in films help to promote peace? In other words, can showing violence be used to promote peace, or is the use of violence always counter-productive, celebrating the very phenomenon that filmmakers intend to critique? How and why do some filmmakers express the cry for peace? How do audiences interact with films which portray a move from conflict to reconciliation? How far do cinematic portrayals of peacemaking differ from traditional theological or religious understandings of how reconciliation can be achieved? This cluster of questions represents the tip of a research iceberg, still largely unfathomed. In order to explore some of these questions I analyse three feature films and three documentaries. We turn first to one of the most famous anti-war films of all time.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Based on the best-selling 1929 story by Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front tells the story of a young German schoolboy, called Paul Bäumer, and his friends who are inspired by their schoolmaster to save the Fatherland by joining the Kaiser’s army. The muddy reality of the trenches soon dispels his romantic illusions. In one particularly memorable encounter in no-man’s land, Paul (played by Lewis Ayres) stabs a French soldier to death. Trapped in the same small shell-hole, as Paul watches him die he tries to alleviate his enemy’s suffering by moistening his parched lips with water. Discovering a pocket photograph of the wife and child of the man he has just slain further traumatizes Paul.

Directed by Lewis Milestone, the ‘talkie’ version was a far from ‘quiet’ account of life at the front. Produced only three years after The Jazz Singer (1927), the first movie with synchronous music, dialogue and sound effects, All Quiet on the Western Front’s portrayal of life in the trenches impressed many reviewers: ‘When shells demolish these underground quarters, the shrieks of fear, coupled with the rat-tat-tat of machine guns, the bang-ziz of the trench mortars and the whining of shells, it tells the story of the terrors of fighting better than anything so far has done in animated photography coupled with the microphone.’   As the only survivor from his group, Paul returns home to find the same schoolmaster exhorting a new set of pupils to join up. Unable to convince them of the madness of enlisting, he returns to the Front to train new soldiers. The last moments of the film show Paul putting his head over the trench to catch a butterfly, only to be shot by a sniper. Like many other anti-war films, and the original novel, All Quiet on the Western Front promotes peace through showing the seeming futility and tragic realities of war.

This was a common rhetorical pattern found in other popular anti-war films produced at this time, especially the British Journey's End (1930), the German Westfront 1918 (1930) and the French Wooden Crosses (1931). While All Quiet on the Western Front was initially banned in some countries, it received a powerful endorsement from a Variety critic: ‘The League of Nations could make no better investment than to buy up the master print, reproduce it in every language, to be shown in every nation every year until the word war is taken out of dictionaries’. The belief in the power of film to promote peace rests on a similar assumption as the belief that film has the power to promote violence. The contested conviction that cinema can contribute to changes in behaviour, even encouraging more peaceful forms of action, is not only found in interpretations of anti-war films, but also in biopics and dramas.

Gandhi (1982)

Gandhi (directed by Richard Attenborough) invites the viewer into a cinematic world very different from All Quiet on the Western Front. Through dramatic scenes it offers a sharp contrast between the violence of the police and the non-violence (ahimsa) of Gandhi, both in Durban and later in India. Some even claim that Gandhi, which was frequently shown, had a considerable impact on audiences in Lithuania prior to the peaceful 1991 revolution.  Part of the power of film is its ability to show audiences what happened or might have happened, turning abstract ideas such as Satyagraha (the force of truth to resist tyranny non-violently) into concrete images, and turning words into actions that can be imitated. Even if it lacks immediate human presence, film can show people trying to build lasting peace through non-violent resistance.

In Gandhi this is enacted through both words and actions. First, words, consider the scene set at the Imperial Theatre in Johannesburg, where Gandhi (played by Ben Kingsley) attempts to persuade his listeners, angry at new identity pass legislation, to embrace the way of non-violence:

"I am asking you to fight, to fight against their anger, not to provoke it. We will not strike a blow, but we will receive them. And through our pain we will make them see their injustice, and it will hurt as all fighting hurts. But we cannot lose. We cannot. They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then, they will have my dead body, not my obedience! "

While Gandhi did not make such a stirring speech at this theatre, it does reflect his actual desire to bring a just peace through non-violent resistance. Second, actions, in an even more memorable scene Attenborough depicts Gandhi defying the instructions of the South African police and putting identity pass after pass into a fire. The leader of the police is enraged, battering Gandhi’s arms and head with his baton. Even though Gandhi collapses, crumpled and bloodied on the dusty ground, with one shaking hand he still manages to drop the last pass into the burning grate. In the film, this brutal beating is witnessed by a Western journalist and makes the headlines; though in reality Gandhi was never beaten for burning passes. Irrespective of their historical veracity, these two scenes demonstrate the complexity of portraying a protagonist with a clear aversion to using violence and with a vision for peaceful practices. It is almost impossible to show an individual standing up against the injustices of a segregated South Africa or the carnage of the First World War without depicting some of the violence which they are trying to challenge. The danger here, recognized by many filmmakers, is that in the desire to interrogate such violence filmmakers can unintentionally end up celebrating conflict through showing violent forms of action.

Shooting Dogs (2005)

What happens when peacemaking between opposing groups fails and when those responsible for keeping the peace are powerless? These are some of the questions which recent films about the 1994 Rwandan genocide tackle. The inability of the peace-keepers to actually keep the peace and prevent thousands of people losing their lives is reflected in films such as Shooting Dogs (Michael Caton-Jones, 2005), Sometimes in April (Rauol Peck, 2005), Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004), and 100 Days (Nick Hughes, 2000). Shooting Dogs is based upon the true story of a large group of Tutsis who sought refuge in a Kigali secondary school (Ecole Technique Officièle), which was briefly protected by UN peace-keeping troops (see photograph of the actual chapel of the school, now back in use). Once the Belgian soldiers withdrew, leaving the group defenceless, nearly all of the 2500 men, women and children were massacred by the waiting militia or interahamwe.

In contrast to other films about the Rwandan genocide, Shooting Dogs makes one of the central characters a white priest, played by John Hurt. The result is that many of the theological questions which are latent in other films about the Rwandan genocide are brought into the foreground in Shooting Dogs. So too are questions about whether non-violence is an effective form of peacemaking in the face of unconstrained violence. For instance, in one scene Father Christopher is stopped and confronted at a road-block by a drunk and enraged former pupil. Instead of fighting or running away, he embodies a peaceful response by affirming: ‘When I look into your eyes, the only feeling I have is love.’ Unlike in Hotel Rwanda where the protagonist Paul Rusesabagina (played by Don Cheadle) acts like a Rwandan Oscar Schindler, providing a safe haven for endangered Rwandans, Father Christopher’s actions operate at several different levels. Peacemaking for this priest is partly about being present with those who suffer and performing the liturgies of the church, along with welcoming hundreds of strangers into his school, trying to organize their protection, cajoling the UN peacekeepers to help and then, when all else fails, losing his own life as he attempts to help several children to escape. Such scenes provoke other questions about how peacefulness can be expressed and what kinds of love and peace can be embodied in a place overrun by killing?

Peacemaking in Documentaries

Up to this point I have suggested that several feature films not only act as valuable catalysts for provoking questions about peacemaking, but also depict and even model actions intended to bring peace in a violent world. They can function as witnesses to peacemaking. This can also be seen in documentary films, to which I now turn. My first of three examples is War Photographer (2001), a documentary produced by the Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei. It follows the work of James Nachtwey, a well respected American photo-journalist, in a series of locations famous for their lack of peace, including Kosovo and Palestine. Nachtwey is clear about his own life-time’s mission, for him ‘trauma needs a witness… We must look at it. We are required to do what we can about it. If we don’t who will?’ This belief has taken him to photograph victims, perpetrators and bystanders in some of the most dangerous locations in the world. A shy man of few words, Nachtwey’s philosophy is best reflected through his powerful pictures: a weeping mother in Kosovo, an angry youth on the West-Bank or an impoverished family living by the railway tracks in Indonesia. This neatly edited documentary shows how Nachtwey sees photography as the opposite to war, a process which can contribute to negotiating for peace, even a way to end war. This account of photojournalism appears over-optimistic, but it does raise the important question of whether showing the impact of violence or peacemaking practices, photographs and documentaries can contribute to making peace.

This appears to be the unstated objective of another documentary entitled Long Night’s Journey into Day (Deborah Hoffman and Frances Reid, 1995). Unlike War Photographer there is no single protagonist upon whom the spotlight is focused, instead there are four stories which emerged out of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The first is about the 1993 killing of an American student during a riot in Cape Town. The second story is an account of the disappearance and murder in 1985 of two teachers and their friends by South African security forces. Next is bombing in Durban in which three white women died in 1996. In the fourth and final story viewers are taken to Guguletu township, near Cape Town, for a detailed description of a shootout in 1986 where local police killed seven young men. Part of the power of this documentary is that it does not end with the violence and its immediate consequences; instead, it explores how different people respond to hearing the truth about the killing of their nearest and dearest. Forgiveness, reconciliation and peacemaking are shown to be complex, painful and slow processes.

This is made even clearer in our third example, a more recent British documentary, The Imam and the Pastor (Alan Channer, 2006) which depicts the surprising friendship between a Christian pastor and a Muslim preacher in Nigeria. Through this documentary their story of reconciliation and peacemaking has become increasingly famous. Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye were initially drawn to the fundamentalist wings of their faiths. Both men were passionate advocates of Islam, on the one hand, and of Christianity, on the other. In the 1980s, tension between the Muslim and Christian communities in Nigeria exploded into violent bloodshed, with hundreds killed along with churches and mosques being burnt to the ground in the town of Zangon Kataf in 1992. As leaders of opposing militia groups Ashafa and Wuye suffered personal losses through the fighting, Ashafa losing several close family members and Wuye his right hand. Relying on their personal testimonies the documentary tells their journey towards friendship and reconciliation, which has led them to work together for peace. While not ignoring their religious differences this documentary shows how their respective faiths enrich their desire to act as peacemakers.

Conclusions

In this essay I have used specific examples to highlight how films from all around the world, both fictional and non-fictional, can contribute to processes of peacemaking. The camera and the eye are naturally drawn to violent action, and peacemaking practices are often hard to portray dramatically. It is not surprising, therefore, how relatively rare the depiction of peace or peacemaking is within most films.

Even though it is a comparative rarity, my hope is that through the individual films emerging out of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America it has become clear how many films do in fact celebrate different kinds of peace. Even if they cannot themselves break the cycle of violence they can at least highlight the endless waste resorting to the gun, the machete or the bomb, and they can also demonstrate the difficulties and opportunities that are available to peacemakers on every continent.


*Dr Jolyon Mitchell is a Senior Lecturer at New College, Edinburgh University. A former BBC World Service Producer and Journalist his most recent books are The Religion and Film Reader (co-edited with Brent Plate, Routledge, 2007) and Media Violence and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He was director of the Peacemaking in the World of Film Conference, held in Edinburgh, July 2007