The most successful cinema in the world
What are Iranians like? Is there a national character? Can a foreigner ever see into the Iranian heart? There is no definitive answer to these questions - but there is much to learn about the Iranian character by studying cinema. And there is much to enjoy.....as artistically Iranian films are now rated the best in the world.
Hessam Mortazavi
Towards the end of 1999 sixty directors of the most prominent international film festivals were asked who had been the most influential film-maker in the 1990's. The majority named the Iranian, Abbas Kiarostami. They were also asked to list in order the best hundred films of the decade. Four of the best ten films were Iranian. 'Under the Olive Tree', by Abbas Kiarostami was number two and number four and number six were 'Close Up', and 'A Taste of Cherry'1 also by Kiarostami. Number ten was 'A Moment of Innocence' by Mohsen Makhmalbof2.
Other Iranian directors have also attracted international acclaim in recent years. Jaffar Panahi, director of 'The White Balloon' was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film director in 1995, and Majid Majidi's film 'Children of Heaven' won the international film festival in Canada. Bahram Bayzai has won awards for his film 'Bashu, The Little Stranger', as has Amir Naderi's 'The Runner' and Kianoush Ayaree's 'Beyond Fire'.
The popularity of Iranian films with the public has been unprecedented. In 1990, when Iranian directors won all the awards at the Italian Film festival, for the first time ever 700 people tried to cram into the cinema to see the films. There weren't enough seats and people ended up sitting on the floor. In 1999 in London, the National Film Theatre held a festival of Iranian films and to meet the expected demand the festival lasted for two months.
Rising from the Ashes
In the 1970's nobody could have predicted such success for Iranian cinema as the industry was so influenced by the U.S who had both a commercial interest and also a strong political interest in Iran. Since Iran was both a neighbour of the Soviet Union, and had wide-spread poverty especially in the rural areas, the U.S. saw communism as a real threat to Iran, and so to their own strategic interests in the region. To win the minds of Iranians the US Information Agency sent in film experts in the 1950's to train Iranian film makers and the agency also developed a pro-American newsreel called Akhbar-e-Iran (Iran News). The US was also closely involved in the setting up of Iran's TV network. The first director of Iranian TV was the Harvard graduate Iraj Sabet, whose family was the agent for both RCA and Pepsi-Cola in Iran. RCA technicians trained the station's staff and US advertising agencies made sure their programmes were imported. Though there were a fair number of Asian melodramas and song and dance films, it was often cheaper to import US films than to support Iranian ones. And even if Iranians did invest in their own films, they risked facing the wrath of the censor, as the Shah's security apparatus, aided by the CIA, banned films deemed to be too controversial3.
Despite such an overwhelming bias towards US films, there were influential Iranians in the government who tried to encourage Iranian directors and a few outstanding Iranian films were made whose originality and creativity have had a profound impact on cinema. Two deserve mention. Masoud Kimiai's 'Caesar' (1969) took a traditional good versus bad plot, but then linked the good with Iranian tradition and the bad with anything that threatened it. This got past the censors, and struck a deep chord with audiences. Dariush Mehjui's 'The Cow' (1968) tells the story of a farmer whose cow dies. Distraught at the loss of his livelihood, the farmer begins to act like a cow. For its uncompromising portrayal of the poverty and desolation of life in a remote Iranian village, the film has been called 'the most significant turning point in the history of Iranian Cinema'4 Even though it was sponsored by one government agency, it was still held up by the censors. It was then smuggled out to the Venice film festival where it was so well received that the Shah's government had to allow its release.
These films revealed two constant themes in later Iranian cinema: pride in the traditional Iranian way of life, and a love of the ordinary, however poor. But until the revolution, films like these were lost in a sea of US films. Such were the links between the cinema and the US, that as the anti US Islamic revolution took hold of the country, cinemas throughout the country were attacked. The most tragic incident took place on 19th August, 1978, when the doors of the Rex Cinema in Abadan were locked and the building set on fire. Over 400 died. Given this immediate background it is not surprising that in the first years of the revolution, hardly any films were made. There was a lot of confusion over what was acceptable and what was not, and there was no government money available. It almost seemed that the whole national film industry was in ashes, as were many of the country's actual cinemas.
How is it then that Iranian cinema is now recognised as the best in the world? The resurrection of cinema was essentially due to the restrictions of the revolution bringing out the natural genius in Iranian directors. The Islamic revolution was not against cinema in principle, but rather it was against the way cinema had been exploited during the Shah's time to import Western values and so undermine Islamic ones. The revolution's enemy was not film, but 'Hollywood' type films, and it was these films which were banned outright as the revolutionary government established itself in power.
But the revolutionaries knew the power of film and were unwilling to just let the national cinema die. So in 1982 the cabinet approved a series of regulations which have proved to be crucial to the success of the film industry. These regulations set out clearly what was acceptable to the Islamic authorities and they aimed to encourage quality films about Iran and Islam. They also cut the taxes on importing equipment. As a result of these regulations the Iranian film industry rose from both the ashes of imperialism and revolutionary fervour. The danger that these regulations would produce simplistic nationalistic and religious propaganda was never a threat because though strict about sex and nudity, the guidelines were fairly broad and gave the directors a lot of room to for artistic creativity.5
What the Islamic Revolution did then was to end the suffocating dominance of 'Hollywood' films with their tendency to sentimentality and escapism, and give Iranian directors enough freedom to let their natural artistic genius shine through. This artistic genius is firmly rooted in Persian soil. The revolution forced the film makers to search within their own culture, and found so much originality and creativity that the rest of the world now looks to Iran for inspiration. Alberto Betrini, Italian film critic makes this point very powerfully - 'All through the festival I was searching for the roots of this sort of cinema. Is this root in the realist cinema of Italy? Is it from America? Has it borrowed from India? And at the end I came to this conclusion that the cinema in Iran is a wild flower on its own which like the miniatures and poetry of that land, is rooted in the land of Iran.'
1'A Taste of Cherry' also won the Cannes Film Festival in 1998. 'The Bicycle Run' by Makmalbof won the golden prize for best film at the Italian film festival in 1990.
2‘Nimrooz’, March 2000.
3For example Farrokh Ghaffari's 'South of the City' was banned because it depicted too much poverty. The negatives were also mutilated.
4Jamsheed Akrami, Assistant Professor of Communication, William Paterson University, New Jersey, as quoted in ‘Life and Art, The New Iranian Cinema’, edited by Rose Issa and Sheila Whitaker. This survey of cinema in Iran has drawn a lot from this excellent collection of essays.
5For example one of the guidelines was that films should promote the family as the foundation of society. Within this boundary there are endless possibilities for creative film-makers.