UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
DEPARTMENT OF MEDIA STUDIES
MASTER THESIS
RETHINKING THE ’TYPICAL’ IN NEW IRANIAN CINEMA
A STUDY ON (FEMALE) REPRESENTATION AND LOCATION
IN JAFAR PANAHI’S WORK
Master in Film and Media Studies
Thesis supervisor: Dr. Gerwin van der Pol
2nd reader: Dr. Emiel Martens
Date of Completion: 20th May 2019
ii ABSTRACT
Contemporary Iranian cinema has been acknowledged and praised by film critics, festivals and audiences worldwide. The recent international acclaim that Iranian films have received since the late 1980s, and particularly through the 1990s, show the significance that the films’ exhibition and reception outside Iran has played in the transformation of cinema in Iran, developing certain themes and aesthetics that have become known to be ‘typical’ Iranian and that are the focus of this paper.
This survey explores Iranian film culture through the lens of Jafar Panahi and the poetics of his work. Panahi’ films, in past and present, have won numerous prizes within the international festival circuit and have been interpreted by audiences and critics around the world. Although officially banned from his profession since 2010, the Iranian filmmaker has found its ‘own’ creative ways to circumvent the limitations of censorship and express its nation’s social and political issues on screen. After providing a brief historical framework of the history of Iranian cinema since the 1990s, the survey will look at Panahi’s work within two categories. Panahi’s first three feature films will be explored under the aspects of Iranian children’s films, self-reflexivity and female representation(s). With regards to Panahi’s ‘exilic’ position and his current ban on filmmaking, the survey will analyze one of Panahi’s recent self-portrait works to exemplify the filmmaker use of ‘accented’ characteristics in terms of authorship and the meaning of location (open and closed spaces).
The final component of this paper will be dedicated to the reception of Iranian films, in Iran and abroad. Based on Panahi’s position within the international festival circuit and his award-winning films, the last chapter will also shed light on the role that film festivals have played in providing filmmakers - such as Panahi - with a (political) platform for their films to become seen and promoted worldwide; therefore, encouraging particular film styles and directors while excluding others.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ... ii
CHAPTER I Introduction ... 1
Research Question and Aim of the Survey ... 2
Chapter Breakdown and Methodology ... 3
Literature Review and Limitations of the Survey ... 6
Historical Framework ... 7
CHAPTER II ZOOM-IN: New Iranian Cinema through the Lens of Jafar Panahi ... 10
The Early Phases/ Faces of Panahi`s Cinema: A Trilogy of Female Representation(s) ... 10
THE WHITE BALLOON (Badkonak-e sefid; 1995, Jafar Panahi, Iran, 85 minutes) ... 10
The Image of Children – Iranian Children’s Films ... 11
THE MIRROR (Ayeneh, 1997, Jafar Panahi, Iran, 90 minutes) ... 18
Reflexive Cinema – Breaking through the “Fourth Wall” ... 22
THE CIRCLE (Dayereh, 2000, Jafar Panahi, Iran, 91 minutes) ... 25
Women’s Representation in Iranian Cinema ... 28
The Urban Experience of the Female ‘Flâneuse’ ... 31
Remarks on Panahi’s Trilogy ... 33
CHAPTER III The Evolving Phases of Panahi’s Cinema- The Aesthetics of Censorship .. 38
THIS IS NOT A FILM (In Film Nist, 2011, Jafar Panahi, Iran, 75 minutes) ... 38
Hamid Naficy’s An Accented Cinema and the Meaning of Location ... 42
CHAPTER IV ZOOM-OUT: New Iranian Cinema and the International Festival Circuit . 47
The Rise of the Iranian New Wave – An Overview ... 48
Reception of Iranian Films: The ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’ View ... 51
Politics and Festivals – Censorship sells? ... 54
Concluding Remarks ... 58
1 CHAPTER I
Introduction
At the outset of my thesis, I want to clarify that my approach to Iranian cinema is still that of an outsider: perceived and acknowledged from the foreign perspective of ‘the other’.
Nevertheless, as a scholar in film studies and a passionate festival visitor, in the past years I became particularly interested in the films of the new or to lean on Azadeh Farahmand`s terminology ‘recent’ Iranian cinema, associated with the generation of Iranian filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Jafar Panahi. As a subcategory of the post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, ‘recent’ Iranian cinema refers to films that, reflecting its nation`s social and political concerns, have gained special recognition and visibility first in Europe and particularly on the international (Festival) map since the late 1980`s (Farahmand in Tapper 2002: 87).
My own experience with Iranian cinema, and Jafar Panahi, began in 2011 while I was doing an internship in the section Generation of the International Film Festival in Berlin (Berlinale).
Jafar Panahi, who was invited to take part in the International Jury in 2011, was refused permission to travel to the festival as he was still under house arrest and not permitted to leave his country for alleged propaganda against the Islamic Republic` (61st Berlin Film Festival Catalogue 2011: 382).
As a sign of the festival`s solidarity with Panahi, the different sections of the Berlinale screened five of his films in retrospective: Badkonak-e Sefid (The White Balloon, 1995), which received the Palme d’Or in Cannes, Dayereh (The Circle, 2000), winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 and Talaye sorkh (Crimson Gold, 2003), for which Panahi received the Un Certain Regard Jury Award in Cannes 2003. In 2006 and 2013, the Berlinale rewarded both of Panahi`s films, Offside (Offside, 2006) and Pardé (Closed Curtain, 2013) with the Silver Bear for Best Script. Following his tradition with the Berlinale since then, it came as no surprise to me that in 2015 Panahi`s film Taxi (Taxi Tehran) was scheduled to premiere in competition at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival - winning the Golden Bear for best film that same year.
But when the Berlinale film festival award, the Golden Bear, was handed out for Taxi Tehran (2015), its winner was not there to accept it. Not because he wasn`t invited or didn`t want to come, but simply because he couldn`t.
As punishment for his criticism of the Iranian government, in 2010 Jafar Panahi was given a six-year prison sentence and a twenty-year ban on directing or making films, communicating with media, and leaving his own country. Although officially banned from his profession since then, the Iranian filmmaker has still found his own ‘creative’ ways to circumvent censorship in Iran today, continuing to make films which notably have found their ways into the international film festival circuit.
2 After my festival viewing of Taxi Tehran and following the media`s attention on Panahi shortly afterwards, I became aware of the fact that my first encounter with Iranian cinema was significantly related to the recent international acclaim of “Iranian cinema”1, through which also Panahi`s films
have found their way into film festival programming, and to the Berlinale respectively.
I began to study the history of Iranian cinema from the 1950s to the Iranian Revolution (1978/79), focusing in particular on its development through the Islamic Republic, and the generation of post-revolutionary Iranian filmmakers whose films, circulating within the international festival circuit since the late 1980s, have become visible and praised worldwide. Because of Jafar Panahi`s unique position within the international film festival circuit, and his long tradition with the Berlinale, I decided to focus my thesis on his cinematic work.
As a social - realist filmmaker, living and working in Tehran under house arrest and banned from filmmaking since 2010, Panahi and his works have interested me above all others and will serve my thesis as a case-study.
Research Question and Aim of the Survey
International films festivals, such as the Berlinale, have played an important role in providing contemporary Iranian filmmakers, most of whom have been living and working in exile, or as in Panahi`s case have been living under house arrest and banned from filmmaking, with a (political) platform for their films to become first displayed and promoted outside their country.
By analyzing Panahi`s first three feature films under for the aspects of children’s films, self-reflexivity and female representation(s) and by applying Hamid Naficy’s concept of exilic filmmaking on Panahi’s video-essayistic work This Is Not A Film (2011), a ‘film’ that was made in spite of his ban on filmmaking, the thesis is framed by the following research question:
How do contemporary Iranian filmmakers – in the example of Jafar Panahi – make use of cinematic aesthetics to overcome the limitations of censorship and express its nation`s social and political issues on screen?
Although it would have been of interest to investigate further into the expanding field of festival research and the role that film festivals play in the formation of national New Waves (see Farahmand 2006), the survey`s main focus will be on the cinematic characteristics of New Wave Iranian cinema, exemplified within the works of Jafar Panahi, whose employment of certain themes and aesthetics have become known to be ‘typical’ Iranian, shaping its cinema in past and present.
1Due to the complexity of the term “Iranian cinema” and its different notions throughout its history, the survey circumvents
this problem by replacing “Iranian cinema” with “cinema in Iran” or “Iranian films”, trusting that the reader would gain a general understanding about “Iranian cinema” within the specific context of this survey.
3 Nevertheless, film festivals will be acknowledged in the concluding part of this paper. Here I will open up the discussion on how film festivals may not only have strengthened Iranian film culture abroad but, through favoring and promoting particular filmmakers and their stylistic ‘fingerprints’ (such as Panahi`s), have also been crucial in shaping and selecting what has come to represent “Iranian cinema” today.
Chapter Breakdown and Methodology
The golden age of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema in the 1980s and 1990s has been significantly influenced by the nation`s experiences of the social and political events that marked the Revolution (1978-79), followed by the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. These events not only had a significant impact on the further development of cinema in Iran and the films that were made, with new forms and visions, but also on the ways how Iranian filmmakers became acknowledged abroad for their use of a certain cinematic ‘language’, forced or encouraged by the strict limitations of censorship that have controlled Iranian arts over the past. Influenced by the negative reputation of Iran and its people in the West, filmmakers began to put forward a new set of cinematic strategies and techniques to offer a rather ‘different’ portray of its country on screen: These distinct forms of post-revolutionary Iranian films, unique in their ideological themes and narrative forms, carry within themselves further meanings that this survey will take up on within the works of Jafar Panahi.
After providing a brief historical framework in the end of this introduction, the survey consists of three main sections that will be mapped out in the latter.
Chapter II will look at Iranian film culture through the lens of Jafar Panahi, discussing his position as a social-realist filmmaker within and examining his work within two categories.
In II, I will examine Panahi`s first three feature films, a trilogy of female representation(s) that Panahi made in the beginning of his profession. Within the film analyses’, the survey explores the genre of Iranian children films, examining the character of the child in Panahi`s feature film The
White Balloon (1995), exploring self-reflexive cinema in the The Mirror (1997), and evaluating the
representation of women in The Circle (2000), Panahi’s arguably ‘darkest’ film in his female trilogy, With regards to the representation of the grown-up protagonists in The Circle, the study will explore the fabric of Panahi`s film by working through a Walter Benjaminian analysis of the urban flâneur, attempting to understand the cinematic ‘flânerie’ of Panahi`s camera and the adventures of the female
flâneuse(s) , ‘strolling’ through the urban streets in Tehran (see Benjamin 1968; 1999 [1935]).
To firstly clarify why children came to the forefront of Iranian cinema after the 1979 Revolution and to understand Panahi`s use of female characters, the study will shed light on some of the practical and political barriers that filmmakers where confronted with when developing films that would be
4 acceptable to both film censors and audiences alike (Sadr in Tapper 2002: 228).
In response to Iran`s support for the production of an ‘educating’ national cinema during the Islamic Republic but influenced by its state restrictions on showing a realistic portrayal of private life – regarding issues such as sexual intimacy or the depiction of (unveiled) women in public – Iranian filmmakers began to develop a ‘new’ style of self-reflexive cinema: a cinema which, on the one hand acknowledged the limits of the representational frame, and on the other, embraced the audience`s response “directly into the cinematic frame” (Moruzzi 2015: 114).
In his essential work on the history of Iranian cinema, Hamid Naficy (2012) explores how the violent conditions of the Revolution in 1978-79 not only ushered an Islamist regime and its culture, but how the eventual stringent censorship in Iran inevitably led to the development of a new aesthetic language in cinema- a methodology “where the disruptions of lived realities are translated into the symbolic and thematic structure of their films” (Niazi 2010: 2).
Within the new era of an Iranian national cinema and with regards to its diverse methodological approaches in addressing the nation`s social and political issues on screen, reflexive filmmakers began to re-new their interest in blending nonfictional methods and practices, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, and to question the director`s as well as the viewer`s role in the filmmaking process.2
In this sense, cinema in post-revolutionary Iran became a “parallel project of aesthetic representation and experimentation” (Moruzzi 2015: 115), in which reflexive films became themselves ‘coded’ political statements on the ongoing national struggle over democracy, representation and identity.
The films of Behram Beiza, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen and Samira Makhmalbaf, and Jafar Panahi - to name a few - have been experimenting with reflexive cinema and the ‘crossbreeding’ of cinematic formats, establishing them as an artistic ‘trademark’ of cinema in Iran today.
Notably, many filmmakers such as Panahi have explained the appeal of using these modes of cinematic representation to overcome the limitations of censorship, expressing social reality “by erasing the distance between art and life” (Landesmann 2006: 47).
In 2010, as punishment for his outspoken criticism of the government, Panahi was given a twenty-year ban on writing or directing films. Imprisoned in his own home in Tehran and banned from any filmmaking activities, Panahi’s video essayistic work This Is Not A Film (2011) was filmed secretly on his iPhone with the support of his documentarian friend Mojataba Mirthamasb.
Under house arrest and banned from his profession, the author (Panahi) illustrates the limits of his exilic position as a filmmaker by reading and acting out the script of the film he was banned from making, ‘blurring’ thus the “boundaries between performing in or making a film” (Hamid 2012: 48).
2 These characteristics are common to many Iranian films that have been awarded within the international festival circuit. Most
of these Iranian films employ non-professional actors, are filmed on location, blur the boundary between documentary and fiction, and their narratives are often left open-ended. With little dramatization or fictionalization, these films generally depict the urban or rural poor (Zeydabadi-Nejad 2007: 380).
5 As I believe Hamid Naficy`s work on exilic and diasporic filmmaking, entitled An Accented Cinema3
(Naficy 2001) to be essential for a better understanding of Iranian cinema in general, and Panahi`s ‘exilic’ work in particular, in Chapter III, I will introduce Naficy`s theories at some length, focusing on Panahi`s use of ‘accented’ characteristics in terms of self-reflexivity, authorship and the meaning of location (open and closed spaces) in This Is Not A Film (2011) 4.
Seen that over the past few decades, Iranian cinema has become a major field for political discussions and debates around the world, the film analysis’ purpose is to examine the ways in which contemporary Iranian filmmakers - in the example of Jafar Panahi and his approach to social-realism- use cinematic aesthetics to express and critique social reality in Iran today. Given that not all characteristics of recent Iranian cinema can be evaluated within this study, only those that are relevant with regards to Panahi`s work - female representation(s), self-reflexivity and the filmmaker’s use of location (physical space) -, will be examined in this survey.
Panahi sees himself as a social-realist but not as a political filmmaker. His films, dominantly circulating within the international festival sphere, are widely interpreted both as social critique and as a comment on universal human problems.
The final component of this paper, Chapter IV, will therefore be dedicated to the reception of (recent) Iranian films abroad and Panahi`s position within. Throughout his career, Panahi has played a significant role in defining the aesthetics and formal characteristics of Iranian cinema today and how these films get recognized in and outside Iran. As Panahi`s work requests his audience to think about the limits and possibilities of cinematic representation, the last chapter shall open the critical discussion on how his films may serve as an example that have succeeded despite, or exactly because of the limitations of artistic and political censorship.
Based on Panahi`s unique position within the international festival circuit and his award-winning films, the survey will also shed light on the significant role that film festivals such as the Berlinale have played in providing New Wave Iranian filmmakers with an international platform to become recognized and promoted worldwide; therefore, encouraging particular film styles, subjects and directors while excluding others.
3 Naficy uses the term ‘Accented cinema’ to describe films whose authors are exilic, diasporic or as he defines it, `accented`. Although not all accented films are exilic and diasporic, “all exilic and diasporic films are accented” (Nacify 2001: 23). According to Naficy, the majority of accented films are directed and produced by postcolonial, Third World filmmakers, most of whom live in the West. In respect to Jafar Panahi`s position as an exilic filmmaker, living and working in his own country in the city of Tehran, This Is Not a Film (2011) can still be examined within this (accented) framework.
4Along with This Is Not A Film (2011), which was secretly sent to the Cannes Film Festival on a USB stick hidden in a cake,
Panahi made Closed Curtain (winner of the Silver Bear for Best Script at the Berlinale, 2013) and Taxi Tehran (winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlinale, 2015). Panahi’s most recent film Three Faces was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018. Together they configure a series of outlawed films that Panahi made to bypass governmental prohibition since a 2010 sentence banned him from any filmmaking activities for twenty years. This Is Not A Film will serve here as an example to illustrate the filmmaker’s use of ‘accented’ characteristics in terms of self-reflexivity, authorship and location (open and closed spaces) which become apparent in all of his recent (self-portrait) films.
6 By reflecting the (often contradictory) expectations of foreign audiences and film festivals about what they consider to be ‘typical’ Iranian, the chapter raises the question of how filmmakers and audiences (inside and outside Iran) engage in the meaning of Iranian films, particularly in relation to its censorship politics. The closing chapter poses the following questions: Are Iranian filmmakers influenced by the expectations of their western audiences? How has the international acclaim affected the politics of Iranian cinema and its filmmaking styles? What do foreign audiences and festivals expect to see in Iranian films?
Literature Review and Limitations of the Survey
As my own knowledge of Iranian Cinema has grown while writing this thesis, so has the far-reaching scope of literature on the topic. In his monumental work on A Social History of Iranian Cinema (Vol.1- 2; 2011/ Vol. 3- 4, 2012), Hamid Naficy covers the social history of Iranian cinema from its early beginnings (Vol. 1: The Artisanal Era, 1897 1941; Vol. 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941 -1978) throughout the Islamic republic (Vol. 3: The Islamicate Period, 1978 - 1984) up until its recent past (Vol. 4: The Globalizing Era, 1984 - 2010).
As a work of social history and theory, Naficy’s volumes not only examine the chronological developments in Iranian history but also Iran`s dynamically evolving film industry and its modes of production, narratives and aesthetics that have deeper roots in Iranian performative and visual arts. By stressing the complex interplay of Iranian and Islamic aesthetics in literature, philosophy and art, Naficy discusses their influence on cinema`s representations, particularly that involving women. Situating Iranian cinema at the intersection of modernization and Islamist politics, and reformist movements, his work also sheds light on the Iranian ethnoreligious minorities, both within the country and in the diaspora, and how they gave Iranian cinema its specificity (Naficy 2012; Vol. 4: xxiv).With regards to Jafar Panahi`s exilic position and his use of ‘accented’ characteristics in terms of open and closed spaces, self-reflexivity and authorship, Naficy`s work An Accented Cinema will find greater recognition and evaluation within this survey (Chapter III; This is Not A Film).
Beyond Naficy`s work, a variety of studies have emerged, from those examining mostly the social, cultural and political significance of post-revolutionary cinema in Iran - The New Iranian Cinema by Richard Tapper (2002), for example -, to publications focusing merely on the works of particular filmmakers of the New Wave generation, such as Hamid Dabashi`s Masters and Masterpieces of
Iranian cinema (2007). By examining Panahi`s trilogy of female representations (Chapter II) and the
separation of public and private in Iranian films, the survey will further draw attention to the works of Norma Claire Moruzzi, who has published widely on women’s cinema in Iran such as Women’s
7 A variety of other relevant literature on Iranian cinema and film critics on Panahi`s films have been reviewed for this survey and will find its recognition and reference further along the text. Based on the different notions of the term “Iranian cinema” and its various spatio-temporal contexts, it must be said that what is considered to be “typically” Iranian in films and what the scholar concludes from the film viewings is subjective. The small selection of Iranian films, that will be presented in this survey - all of which carry the ‘fingerprint’ of one particular filmmaker -, may thus only open a small window into the broad field of New Wave Iranian cinema and its characteristics. Yet, by focusing on the key elements in Panahi’s films - (female) representation(s), self-reflexivity and location - and analyzing these thoroughly throughout his films, the study hopes to shed light on the links between Iranian cinema`s international success and the role that the filmmaker`s choice of representation and form play.
This survey attempts by no means to offer a definite study of Iranian cinema or to resolve the question of its broad success on the international film festival map. Far from being comprehensive, the study may only touch the surface of this complex scholarly field - nevertheless, it hopes to waken the reader`s interest for Iranian cinema, one of the important ‘national cinemas’5
that despite of censorship and its country`s ongoing social political issues continues to evolve, crossing its borders in order to become seen at international film festivals that are “vital crossroads at which national characteristics of films are discovered, displayed, interpreted and reinforced- hence genrefied” (Fahramand 2006: xvii).
Historical Framework
Politics in Iran have always been inseparable from culture and arts in its recent history.
Ever since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the supervision of cinema has been in the hands of government authorities and its policies. The 1978-79 Iranian Revolution and its outcomes have had a significant impact on how Iranian cinema has developed and what today is considered `recent` or New Iranian cinema. Following the Iranian Revolution, and as part of its Islamizing policies, the regime sought to control all aspects of culture to ensure that it served the purposes of the Islamic Republic. The politicization of Iranian cinema has always been intertwined with the historical ruptures that the country has experienced in its past: Over a 30-year period Iran has seen a Revolution (1978-79), a war with Iraq (1980-88) and a strong reformist movement (since 1997).
Sometimes nurtured and financially encouraged by the government`s policies, yet at other times censored or banned by it - and despite or exactly because of it - Iranian cinema has yet become
5 With regards to the complexity of the term “Iranian cinema”, ‘national cinema’ will refer here to the body of films whose
country of origin, director(s), spoken language in the film, cultural elements, financial support (etc.) are associated with a specific nation-state that is, in the survey`s context, Iran.
8 one of the most distinctive ‘national cinemas’, praised and acknowledged by film critics, festivals and audiences worldwide.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Iranian film culture and production flourished as ideas of modernism that were imported by the West and promoted by the monarchic dynasty of the Pahlavis. In the early 1970s, a heterogeneous group of young filmmakers, many of them foreign-educated and receiving financial support from the Ministry of Culture, formed a ‘New Iranian Cinema’ whose work started to gain recognizable attention abroad, bringing Iranian cinema on the international festival map (Armes 1987: 191). After the regime change in 1979, however, cinema became the target of the revolutionaries` anger against anything pre-Islamic, tied to western ideas of modernization and reform. The concept of Iranian cinema needed to be re-considered and brought under legitimate control. The government authorities and the new Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG) sought to Islamise cinema and use it for political propaganda, focusing on a strict and systematic system of censorship that supervised every aspect of filmmaking, from script to production to exhibition (Naficy 2012, Vol. 3: 129-131).
Within this process, cinema was embraced for its educational purposes, and strengthened within the new Islamic state as a domestic ‘tool’ to provide safe entertainment for the Iranians and a medium that could export images of the new Iranian society to the outside world (Farahmand 2006: 233-234).
The 1978-79 Iranian Revolution, and the commencement of what many considered to be an oppressively totalitarian Islamic regime, seemed to threaten the end of the young ‘New Iranian Cinema’, also known as the `New Wave`.
When the Revolution broke out in 1979, observers and professionals of the film industry were worried about the future of cinema in Iran. Cinema theatres were burned down in the name of morality and cultural independence, the chain of production was completely disrupted by the exile of numerous directors, actors and producers, creativity was threatened by the uncertainty of what would be allowed or forbidden. But far from dying, by the late 1990’s, cinema in Iran was fully flourishing again, mirroring in its films the significant transformation that has changed Iranian culture and society after the Revolution. The ‘New Iranian Cinema’ became internationally recognized not only as a distinctive ‘national cinema’ but as one of the most creative in the world, showing its acclaim within the international festival sphere. By going through a negotiating process to find its own ‘language’ and place within the international film (festival) sphere, the ‘New Iranian Cinema’ was ‘genrefied’, developing collective narrative patterns and common themes that by today have become known for being ‘typical’ Iranian (Fahrahmad 2006: ibid).
Soon after the Revolution it became clear that religious motives and Islamic messages do not attract foreign audience, hence, Iranian filmmakers eventually learned to adjust the visual styles and
9 themes of their films to the taste of their international festival and art house viewers, who seek to interpret the poetic forms and allegories of Iranian films – so does this survey in the following.
To explore this paradox in Iranian cinema, one may say its ‘resurrection from the ashes`, this survey looks through the ‘lens’ of one particular filmmaker, Jafar Panahi, at Iran’s social and political issues on screen and examines the filmmaker`s use of certain themes and aesthetics that have marked ‘typical’ Iranian cinema abroad. Within the analysis of Panahi`s work, the survey will also shed light on the effects that Iran`s censorship regulations have had on his and Iranian filmmaking in general, reflecting its consequences for the filmmaker but also questioning the ways how censorship has interacted with film festivals to promote particular film styles, subjects and directors, and exclude others.
10 CHAPTER II
ZOOM-IN: New Iranian Cinema through the Lens of Jafar Panahi
The Early Phases/ Faces of Panahi`s Cinema: A Trilogy of Female Representation(s)
Jafar Panahi was born in 1960 in Mianeh, Azerbaijan, in northwestern Iran. By the age of ten Panahi already became familiar with filmmaking, exploring the art of photography and shooting his first films on 8mm. After his high school education and his military service in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1990), Panahi commenced his film studies at the University of Tehran. When he joined Abbas Kiarostami as his assistant director in the production of Through the Olive Trees (1994), Panahi had already made a few short films and a war-documentary which was later screened in Iranian television. It was while working together that Kiarostami wrote the script for Panahi`s first feature film as a director, The White Balloon, which won the Camera d`Or at the Cannes Film Festival (1995) and ‘catapulted’ Panahi to international acclaim (Dabashi 2007: 394).
THE WHITE BALLOON (Badkonak-e sefid; 1995, Jafar Panahi, Iran, 85 minutes)
“Adults are fuzzy, fascinating creatures; they are frightening strangers one moment, tender angels the next”
(Adrian Martin qtd. In Senses of Cinema, Issue 21, July 2002).
The White Balloon tells the story of a seven-year-old girl, Razieh (played by Ayda Mohammad Khani)
and her intent to buy a chubby goldfish for the annual New Year`s Day celebration in Tehran6. Even
though her home`s courtyard has a pond full of goldfish, all Razieh sees are only skinny little fish but she wants to purchase a chubby fish which they sell at the store. Her older brother Ali somehow convinces their mother (Fereshteh Sadr Orfani) to let Razieh take the last 500 toman note out of her wallet and go out by herself to buy a chubby goldfish. Like in a fable, Razieh loses the bill along the way and the rest of the film consists of Razieh`s efforts to get the money back and to buy the fish before the shops close for the New Year’s festivities.
The story is told in ‘real time’, meaning that within the 80 minutes running time leading towards the New Year`s Eve, the audience follows Razieh on her journey to purchase the goldfish and the people she meets along the way.
The film opens with a three-minute ‘survey’ within the small radius of a neighborhood bazaar in Tehran where sellers do their last shopping before the arrival of the New Year. It is already in this
6 The Iranian New Year (Persian: No-Rooz) marks the first day that starts the new year in the Iranian calendar and the beginning
of spring Traditionally, Iranians decorate their home with different food items that begin with the letter ‘S’ and which have the symbolic meaning of renewal and good fortune for the coming year. The table also traditionally includes a goldfish in a bowl, which is a symbol for life (https://iranchamber.com/culture/articles/norooz_iranian_new_year.php; accessed July 10th, 2018).
11 scene that the audience views almost all the characters that Razieh will meet later again during her journey to purchase the gold fish.
The camera passes from two street performers who will blend in and out of the film to a man leaving a barbershop who Razieh will see again later in a tailor shop. Completing its circular structure in camera movement, the camera now focuses on an army jeep that drops off a young soldier. As the soldiers gets out of the jeep and starts walking down an alley, a teenage Afghan boy, selling balloons, walks into the picture and Panahi`s camera follows him while he sells one of his white balloons. Shortly after, a middle-aged woman enters the frame, asking the balloon boy for directions. Before moving on to the next shot, the audience follows her wandering around the bazaar while searching for someone. The viewer soon finds out that this woman, moving through the crowded bazaar to find her lost daughter, is Razieh`s mother7.
In the beginning of the opening scene the audience is also informed by an offscreen radio voice that the New Year will begin in less than two hours on that afternoon. The film then proceeds in real time which means that the film`s duration parallels diegetic time.
The Image of Children – Iranian Children’s Films
To examine Panahi`s first feature film The White Balloon (1995) within the realm of children films, it is important to reflect again on the conditions of Iranian cinema after the 1979 Revolution and the practical and political barriers that filmmakers were confronted with –developing films that would be acceptable to both film censors and audiences alike (Sadr in Tapper 2002: 228).
In the mid- 1980s, a whole genre of Iranian films developed that focused on child protagonists. They were low budget feature films intended for both children and adults, in which children where the main characters, struggling with familiar issues of practical and social responsibility within natural surroundings (Moruzzi 2015: 115).
During that time, the restrictions regarding the representation of women in Iranian cinema were particularly tight: the requirement to always wear a full hejab8 (headscarf and overcoat),
including indoor scenes in private spaces (showing the home of a family for example), no physical contact between adults of the opposite sexes and the objection of close-ups or lasting camera shots on adult women were allowed. These strict censorship regulations made any common realistic representation of private life seemingly impossible: a family scene in which the women were all dressed as if they were living among strangers seemed too artificial to be “real” (i.e. wearing the hejab at home that they would only need to wear outside or in the presence of unrelated male guests (Ibid.
7 Razieh`s mother is played by Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy, who is also one of the main protagonists in The Circle (2000). 8 In Iranian cinema, for all performers, but particularly for women, no space is exclusively private, and their public appearance
is regulated by a strict coda. According to the politics of the hejab, the women`s hair must always be covered by a veil and they must also wear a loose outer layer of clothing (Moruzzi 1999: 52).
12 116).
During a period in which Iranian cinema had not yet found reliable techniques to represent social reality within the strict restrictions of post-revolutionary censorship, the figure of the child, struggling with familiar issues of social responsibility and adulthood, became the nation`s character for audience members of all ages. The character of the child helped the Iranian film industry to establish an international acknowledgement for the development of a new Iranian cinema: a cinema in which films were avoiding the depiction of violence or sexuality, focusing rather on the characters involved than on a complicated plot or grand spectacle (Ibid. 117):
“Films about children have a universal appeal, but with the social restrictions in place since the 1979 Iranian revolution, making movies about children in Iran has a number of practical advantages: Children are always credited with more innocence than adults and can be allowed to display a wide range of emotions without suspicion […] And further, the more limited spatial horizons of a child enable the resource-constricted filmmaker to present a plausible story with children that does not seem artificially reduced in scope”. (http://www.filmsufi.com/2008/05/mirror-jafar-panahi-1997.html; accessed: 25 July 2018).
The seeming universal genre of Iranian children’s films, both in Iran and internationally, lasted for about a decade - from Amir Naderi’s The Runner (1986) to Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven (1997) - and they all share specific stylistic elements which are often compared to ‘Italian neo-realism’9:
Iranian ‘neo-realist’ films follow “a series of small scale ordinary life events, linked by the trajectory of a child`s simple goal, during which children are the central characters”, who are (mostly) played by unknown child performers, interacting with “a variety of social actors in public or semi-public spaces” (streets, alleys, parks, shops, buses, etc.) (Moruzzi 2015: 118).
Thus, the New Iranian Cinema of the 1980s and 1990s was characterized by its authentic visual style and proximity to real life, the ‘realism’. In the genre of Iranian children`s films that were made after the Revolution - such as Bashu, the Little Stranger (1986) by Beyzaie, Kiarostami`s Where
is the Friend`s House? (1987) or Makhmalbaf`s The Apple (1998) - the figure of the child acted as an
instrument through which the nation`s greater social and political issues were centrally addressed. The first Iranian film of the early 1980s to be praised in international festivals was Amir Naderi`s The
Runner (1986), in which a young, lonely, homeless boy runs for his life. Iranian cinema received
further impulsion from Kiarostami`s Where is the Friend`s House? (1987) in which a little boy in a
9As a national film movement, ‘Italian neo-realism’ presented contemporary stories dealing with the difficult economic and
social conditions of the Italian post-world war II period. Treating issues such as poverty, oppression and injustice, and representing the poor and working class using mostly non-professional actors, its filmmakers explored the individual needs and social concerns of humanity and survival in everyday life of post-war Italy. Shot almost entirely on location, either in the impoverished parts of big cities or on the countryside, neorealist films often feature children in major roles, focusing not so much on the spectacular, but on the often unnoticed and unappreciated dramas of everyday life (Weinberger 2007: 7).
13 rural area tries to find his classmate`s house, and the audience sees the adults’ reactions through the young boy’s eyes. In Bashu, the Little Stranger (1986), Beyzaie sends his young, homeless hero from the war-harmed south of Iran to the peaceful north where nobody could understand his language.
From the early 1980s cinema in Iran began to develop a different understanding of realism, in which difficult themes like poverty, class and gender differences were explored mainly through the eyes of a young, new generation confronting the changes in their country. This was a new era in which filmmakers like Kiarostami or Makhmalbaf had to deal with different aspects of the changes in contemporary Iran. Therefore, many directors turned to low-budget productions in real locations such as cities or rural towns. Progressively, portrayals of children in stories of village life, or on their journeys through the urban city landscapes came to the forefront in Iranian cinema, portraying the historical changes in Iran over the previous two decades, particularly as experienced by its people (Sadr in Tapper 2002: 321).
Using children in films ‘helped’ the development of Iranian cinema as the role children played in reflecting, interpreting and above all representing Iranian life. Hence, one of the distinctive features of Iranian films became the use of ‘innocent’ children to transfer symbolically abstract – often political or social – issues in a realistic way. The first Iranian film to be nominated for an Oscar (for Best Foreign Film) was Children of Heaven by Majid Miajidi (1997), a typical Iranian children’s’ film in which a young brother and his sister share a pair of shoes to go to school, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.
Films about children brought many new aspects of Iranian society to the screen, including the separation of the generations, unemployment, violence and disruptive families. The heroic themes of the Iran-Iraq war in the films of the 1980s have been replaced by the ‘small’ problems of everyday life. In this sense, the character of Razieh in The White Balloon (1995), who loses her mother`s money to buy a gold fish and then strives to get it back, could be interpreted as the “quintessence” of the Iranian film child (Sadr in Tapper 2002: 232). At the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, Panahi`s feature won the Camera D’Or for the best first feature film and became one of the most profitable foreign films in the US and Europe.
In the genre of Iranian children`s films the world is mostly seen from a child’s point of view. Leading back to the quote in the beginning of this chapter, The White Balloon shows the audience the world through Razieh`s eyes: Razieh and her brother come to see the adults they encounter as “fuzzy, fascinating creatures; they`re frightening strangers one moment, tender angels the next” ; they either hinder or help the child character to achieve its journey`s goal (Martin qtd. In Price 2002).
As Sadr argues, the children`s discourse realizes itself often in their struggle or confrontation with the adult characters of the story (Sadr in Tapper 2002: 233). In Panahi`s first feature film, Razieh loses her money but on her determined journey to recover it, she encounters various adult characters such as the elderly woman, the tailor Mr. Bakthari and the soldier, who in some way or other help
14 Razieh on her way to buy a chubby goldfish in time for New Year’s Eve celebrations. Nevertheless, in the end, it is the balloon boy`s rod and the creativity of the three children (Razieh, her brother Ali and the balloon boy) who ‘fish’ the money out of the cellar with some simple gum. The adults may have accompanied and partly even interfered Razieh`s journey but it was her strong will and great activity that got her the money back and lastly fulfilled her simple request to buy a new goldfish. Another important characteristic of children`s films, is their focus on the family without really showing much of its individual members and the problems they are involved with. Instead of showing the nuclear family as the main source of love, support and morality, it is portrayed- present or absent- as an entirety of tensions and conflicts.
In the scene in which Ali buys the wrong soap for his father and then gets aggressively screamed at, or when Ali`s face looks bruised but he doesn`t want to tell what has happened (Fig. 1.0), the audience never really sees the father in the film but certainly gets the impression of existing violence in the family. By comparing the tailor Mr. Bakthari with her father, who “is angry before the shower and sleepy afterwards”, Razieh also transmits a feeling of fear towards her father (Fig. 1.1).
Figure 1.0 (The White Balloon; 00:43:19) Figure 1.1 (The White Balloon; 1:06:50)
Panahi`s explorations through the crowded streets in the opening scene of his film open up an infinite number of other paths and stories that Razieh comes to cross on her journey: the interconnected routes of encounter of characters such as the tailor`s customer, the snake charmers or the Afghan balloon boy who the audience views right in the beginning and at the very end of the film may suggest the presence of other important appearances or sounds remaining outside of the frame: There is for example Razieh`s father, who never appears on screen but whose dictatorially yelling the audience hears from the shower in the basement, or objects like the radio that announces the time remaining to the New Year only appear in voice-off.
The symbolic meaning of the film’s ending may emphasize Panahi’s focus on what remains outside his frame: After Razieh and her brother accomplish to ‘fish’ the bank note out of the cellar’s grid- not alone but with the help of the young balloon boy and his balloon stick- they all walk home to enjoy the New Year festivities among family and friends. Only the young balloon-selling Afghan boy remains sitting on the cellar’s grid.
15
Figure 1.2 (The White Balloon; 1:10:29) Figure 1.3 (The White Balloon; 1:19:01)
After he has sold out all the red, green and blue balloons (Fig. 1.2), he is left alone with one remaining white balloon; metaphorically he ‘is’ the white balloon (Fig. 1.3).
Panahi`s ending comes as an abrupt break from what his film has told so far. So, the viewer may ask: How does a film, which has a little girl (Razieh) as the hero and is about her journey to purchase a chubby gold fish for the New Year, suddenly become a story about an Afghan child`s homelessness and loneliness at the end, even taking its title from this theme? (Safarian in Jahed 2012: 247).
Noticeably, Panahi’s focus on the ‘outsider’ characters is already indicated in the opening scene of the film, but it stays unnoticed unless the viewer watches the film for a second or third time.
To recall, The White Balloon opens with a long shot from the neighborhood’s alley where the camera is placed right in the middle of the crowd at the bazaar, displaying ˗ with an almost 360° span ˗ the atmosphere of the market place on the last day of the years. The scene’s main purpose is to introduce the audience to the main characters that Razieh will meet later again on her journey to retrieve the bank note. However, the introduction to important characters such as the soldier and the young balloon-selling Afghan boy happens so quickly and without emphasis of Panahi`s camera that it escapes the viewer`s attention the first time the film is watched (Ibid).
Panahi’s focus on the ‘lonely’ balloon boy in the film’s end may further be explained when looking at the purpose of the representation of adult characters in children’s films: Their presence and actions function as a mirror to reflect the difficulties that the children encounter on their adventures within the film’s narrative- as they would by growing up in the real world ‘outside’ the frame.
Hence, the viewer is invited to contrast the adult characters with the ‘pure acting’ of the children, who are blessed with some sort of romanticism and innocence that adults have lost by becoming adults. As parents cannot understand their children`s language, and often demonstrate an absolute indifference towards them; in children`s films the figure of the mother or the father is mostly looked at from the children`s point of view. The family, as an ideological pillar of Iranian society, represents a wide range of traditional values, such as love of family, respect of mother and father and love for its own country. These concepts are intertwined, and the audience may see the child as a
16 microcosm containing all the issues characteristic of society at large (Sadr in Tapper 2002: 233).
In most of Iranian films, the family`s presence has the main purpose of implanting, the established and ‘holy’ values of competitive, restricted and hierarchical relationships within family and marriage. Before the Revolution, the presence of the family in Iranian films has served the purpose to legitimate and naturalize these controlled values; therefore, showing the suffering of children under these restricted norms reflect the problems in family and society (Ibid.).
The absence of the family or certain members in the film, as exemplified in the role of Razieh`s missing father, can therefore be interpreted as the filmmaker`s comment on these dominant social values, hinting at the ‘dark side’ of family and society.
Due to the earlier introduced restrictions regarding the representation of female characters - including indoor scenes in private spaces, the requirement for women to always wear a hejab and no showing of physical contact between adults of the opposite sexes (Moruzzi 2015: 115) - these restrictions limited the depiction of adult emotions in films and love was hidden from the audience. Children, nevertheless, are freer than adults, they don`t carry the burden of adult responsibilities and they can move around ‘free’ to achieve their goals or things they wish to do.
In the White Ballon, Razieh is tempted various times to do things adults, but especially women in Iran, are not allowed to do. On their way home from the bazaar, Razieh and her mother cross the place where the snake charmers perform their show, but accompanied by her mother, Razieh gets pulled away as this is “no safe place for girls”. When she returns to the bazaar later again alone, this time not accompanied by her mother or any other adult to discipline her, she gives into her temptation and not only observes but even gets involved into the tricks of the ‘idlers’ (Fig. 1.4; Fig. 1.5.).
Figure 1.4 (The White Balloon; 00:20:14) Figure 1.5 (The White Balloon; 00:23:07)
When Razieh passes by the place a third time, accompanied by the elderly women, she is reminded once again that this not a safe place for a single girl or any women to be. That same kind of ‘misbehavior’ by Razieh is repeated when she meets the soldier.
17
Figure 1.6 (The White Balloon; 00:57:08) Figure 1.7 (The White Balloon; 01:05:49)
Taught by her parents that she is not allowed to talk to strangers nor to take anything from them (Fig. 1.6; 1.7), Razieh cannot resist to answer to the soldier`s persistent questionings and starts a conversation with him, telling her brother afterwards that he was not a “stranger” at all.
What is important to note here is the fact that Razieh, simply because she is a child, has certain ‘freedoms’ in her performances. Her freedom as a child is instrumentalized by Panahi to break with the strict limitations regarding the showing of physical and verbal contact between adults of the opposite sexes on screen. As a little girl Razieh can break with these restrictions and move ‘openly’ in her confined surroundings.
While the showing of sex is a taboo in Iranian cinema, children are sexless, completely innocent of sexual knowledge, and therefore appear to be free and to move among adults from the opposite sexes. By showing the audience an “utopian” way of loving, children have played a major role in depicting manifestations of love in the last two decades of Iranian cinema (Sadr in Tapper 2002: 235).
Children are usually seen as real characters who represent ordinary people; they relate to ideas what people are- or what they are supposed to be- like. This idea was emphasized in Iranian cinema by using amateur actors or actresses with their ‘amateurish’ or ‘natural’ way of acting. Unlike film stars, children are ‘authentic’ and the viewer may believe that in their film appearances they are more ‘real’ than other characters. This assured the truth of the values they represented.
‘Poetic realism’10 in Iranian cinema was built around the central image of childhood but in
their social and geographical scope, the films also requested a redefinition of Iran`s national and cultural identity. Criticizing the country`s war with Iraq – as many of Kiarostami’s children’s films do - was necessarily social commentary, nevertheless children`s performances did not offend the audience. Using `children` solved the problem of open critique by converting opinions expressed in the films into expressions of their being (Ibid. 236).
10 In the history of Iranian cinema, a group of few films were made between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, that are
commonly categorized as Iranian ‘poetic realism’. As a descriptive category, the term defines a cluster of post-war films that were made in the time after the Iran-Iraq. In the immediate post-war years, films of poetic realism were mainly produced by Kiarostami, in which his children protagonists criticized the horrors of war or dealt with themes central to friendship (for e.g. in Where Is the Friend`s House?) (Sadr in Tapper 2002: 236).
18 Thus, the most rewarding experience offered by children was in their pure, `non-acting` style: non-professional actors, as Razieh in The White Balloon or Mina in Panahi`s second feature film The
Mirror (1997), were playing themselves, they were authentic as their character`s lives and stories in
the film resembled their real lives. In accordance, Panahi`s use of amateur child actresses enabled the filmmaker to give voice to the ongoing social and national issues in its country without officially crossing any restrictions or offending the audience, the purity and innocence of its leading young actresses were instrumentalized:
“Perhaps the most compelling achievement of poetic realism was that children in Iranian films eased the problem of judgement- which would politicize the medium- by projecting it into the realm of personal experience and feeling. Unlike film stars, who embody and dramatize the flow of information, and hence depoliticize modes of attachment in their audience, children represent the real world” (Sadr in Tapper 2002: 237).
In this sense, children in Iranian films carry their individual sufferings into the broad audience and make their true feeling ‘accessible’ to them; their personal troubles tend not to remain personal but reach the individual viewer and appeal to their feelings. Hence, children influence the audience awareness of itself as a class by “reconstituting social differences to the audience into a new polarity of collective experience” (Ibid.).
THE MIRROR (Ayeneh, 1997, Jafar Panahi, Iran, 90 minutes)
“The mirror may have cracked, but it hasn`t yet broken: the doubled self-image of Iranian cinema and society continues to reflect” (Moruzzi 2015: 135).
The Mirror (1997), Panahi`s second feature film, tells the story of a little girl named Mina and her
efforts to find her way back home from school after her mother does not come to pick her up. The story is set after school on a busy weekday in the city of Tehran. Distressed and apparently frightened, Mina decides to find her way back home by herself, crossing and running through the busy streets of Tehran and eventually getting lost by taking the wrong bus. The main plot appears to be about the girl`s attempt to find her way back home and the audience is on the journey with her for about forty minutes into the film, when an abrupt change occurs. As Mina has finally found a nice bus driver who offers her to take her to the right destination, the film unfolds itself: The actress Mina Mohammad Khani, suddenly pulls off her costume, looking straight into the camera and announces that she does not want to act anymore. From this point onwards the audience is left viewing the forthcoming actions through the lens of another camera, a camera of one of Panahi`s crew members who is now capturing documentary footage of Minas actions. After Mina has decided to quit acting in the film, she wants
19 to find her ‘real’ way back home. Without her approval, but since Mina is still wearing her microphone, Panahi decides to continue filming her journey, capturing her travelling from one part of the city to the other, struggling to keep her in view as she wanders down the street, often out of view and sound and sometimes disappearing into random buses and taxis but eventually completing the film.
With reference to Panahi`s use of female representations in his early phases of filmmaking and the trilogy of children films that are discussed in this Chapter, this survey aims to take a closer look at the specific filmography in The Mirror and – as the film title suggests – at the parallels in plot construction and perspective. On the surface, Jafar Panahi`s The Mirror appears to be a simple children story that opens in a similar mode to his first feature film The White Balloon (1993) 11.
In The Mirror, Mina, again about a seven year old girl, is waiting for her mother to come to pick her up from school. As the audience soon realizes, the mother does not arrive at the appointed time, and the plot appears to be simply about the girl`s attempt to find her way home through the urban streetscape of Tehran. Nevertheless, already the opening scene of Panahi`s second feature film significantly differs from the beginning of his debut film: Panahi opens The Mirror with a spectacular three- and- half minute panning shot that makes a full 360-degree circuit around a traffic circle. The camera then shifts its focus on Mina: an ‘impulsive’ looking young girl who is dressed in a school uniform, wearing a white headscarf and has one arm in cast (Fig.2.0).
Figure 2.0 (The Mirror; 00:06:18) Figure 2.1 (The Mirror; 00:24:58)
After her mother doesn`t arrive to pick her up, Mina leaves the school gate and attempts to cross the busy crossroads around the traffic circle by herself. Failing in doing so alone, an elderly woman accompanies her over the street. Mina then finds a phone booth and makes a call. As no one picks up the phone, she leaves and walks back to the school entrance where meets her school teacher who is involved in a discussion with a man. The man then gives Mina a ride to a nearby bus stop from where Mina can take the right bus back home. After Mina gets off, the man has an accident, but the film
11Ayda Mohammad Khani, the girl who plays the main lead in The White Balloon (1993), is indeed the older sister of Mina
Mohammad Khani, who plays under her real name the seven-year-old girl Mina in Panahi`s second feature film The Mirror (1997).
20 doesn`t reveal what happens to him afterwards. When Mina enters the bus from the front entrance, she is asked by the bus driver to move to the women`s section is in the back.
During her bus ride Mina starts to listen to the conversation of two women: One of the two women is reading the other women`s hand, predicting that her husband will be unfaithful to her. While Mina listens to the palmist and her predictions, the camera shifts between the actual conversation and Mina`s facial expression, observing her surroundings and now listening to the other passengers’ conversations: An elderly woman speaking to a younger woman about her son`s unkindness and that she is going to leave her son`s home. When Mina sits down on the available seat next to the elderly women, she gets harshly advised by her to get up from the seat and make space for a woman with a baby (Fig. 2.1). On the continuing bus journey, the camera focuses on Mina`s facial expression and her curiosity when listening to the ongoing passengers` conversations: two women talking about the failure of an arranged marriage, back to the elderly women who is still complaining about the improper behavior of the youth today and lastly to the discussion of two women talking to a bride-to-be about the disrespectful bride-to-behavior of the groom’s relatives. When Mina spots the groom of the bride in the front (men) section of the bus, she is absorbed by the exchange of looks between the future bride and the young man across the gender specific zones in the bus. When two street musicians enter the bus, a female passenger reaches out to Mina, asking her to pass a money note on to the two (male) musicians in the front. Mina hands over the money note to the small boy playing the tambourine.
Shortly after the bus arrives at its final stop and all passengers get off, Mina suddenly realizes that she has taken the right line but in the wrong direction. After Mina asks the bus driver for help, he tells her to take another bus from the other side of the square. While crossing the square, Mina notices the elderly woman again, sitting on a bench across the street. When Mina enters the (new) bus, the driver keeps asking her questions and tries to examine her hand. For a moment Mina stares at the camera and suddenly a voice (Panahi`s) from behind the camera says, “Don`t look at the camera, Mina”. Mina, thus, looks straight into the camera and responds: “I’m not acting anymore” (Fig.2.2). Then she takes the cast off her arm, pulls off her head scarf and Panahi enters the frame (Fig.2.3).
21 Panahi comes forwards to ask Mina “what`s wrong?” After Mina refuses to answer, she asks the bus driver to stop the bus and gets off. As the camera crew tries to figure out what to do, they realize that Mina`s mike is still on. Hence, Panahi decides to follow her succeeding journey on her way home. When Panahi decides to keep on shooting, there are two cameras capturing footage: On the one hand, there is Panahi`s camera focusing on Mina, who is sitting on the sidewalk across the street to change her shoes, and on the other, a crew member`s camera showing Panahi efforts to keep the film process going (Fig.2.4; 2.5).
Figure 2.4 (The Mirror; 00:40:15) Figure 2.5 (The Mirror; 00:43:50)
After Mina gets up from the sidewalk, she crosses the street and stops a male pedestrian to ask for direction. When he asks her if she might be lost, Mina simply replies: “No, just tell me which way it is!” As Mina wanders down the streets, Panahi`s camera struggles to keep her in focus, often out of view and sound and sometimes disappearing into random buses and taxis. On Mina’s way towards Parliament Square, she encounters various pedestrians who offer to help her, but she can`t really describe to them in which direction she needs to go. Although being on her own, she repeatedly denies being lost.
At Parliament Square Mina meets the elderly woman still sitting on the bench. When she asks Mina what she is doing, Mina explains that she decided to stop acting in the film, also admitting to her that she hated to wear her “scarf” (referring here to the hejab). Mina believes that the elderly woman was also forced to say and do things in the film that she did not like; hence, she is surprised to find out that the woman didn`t have to study any lines as she was talking about her real-life (problems) in the bus scene. Mina continues her journey, trying to make her way through he ‘jungle’ of humping cars and taxis and the camera often loses sight of her. She gets into a taxi whose driver is having a debate with two passengers about the women’s role in society. In a traffic jam, Mina gets off, and disappears behind the cars, and out of the picture, again. Listening to her voice-recordings, she enters a new cab whose driver used to dub John Wayne and knows her father well.
After the dubber leaves Mina in her neighbourhood, the camera finally catches up with her: Mina enters a corner shop and leaves her mike with the shop owner, explaining to him that she no longer wants to act in the film. After she exists the store, she walks a short distance to her home, closing the
22 door behind her. The film crew asks the shop owner to return the mike to Mina and to convince her that she needs to keep it on. Following the film crew`s order, the shop owner goes over to Mina`s home where he gets rejected and blamed by her for being the reason that she “got into all of this”.
The film ends when one of Panahi`s crew members refuses the shop owner`s offer to introduce them to another girl with the same age and who has talent for acting. In the film’s final shot, the camera focuses on the (closed) white door of Mina`s home, then the screen turns black.
Reflexive Cinema – Breaking through the “Fourth Wall”
Until the unexpected break from the fictional narrative happens (00:38:58), and Mina announces that she doesn`t want to act anymore, one may argue that The Mirror has followed the path of a standard Iranian children`s film: a low-key story on an individual child`s simple request to find her way home from school. But the little narratives that move the audience with Mina along the streets of Tehran become more complex when Panahi breaks through “the frame of cinematic realism”, creating thus his own self-reflexive comment on cinema (Moruzzi 2015: 113).
After Mina`s ‘break-through’, the film itself continues in pursuit of Mina`s wish to find her ‘real’ way back home. For the rest of the film, Panahi and his film crew continue filming Mina`s (now ‘real’) journey home, who is no longer acting. Or is she?
The original film sets out to tell a story of a little girl who attempts to find her way home on her own because her mother has failed to pick her up from school. When Mina, who is called Mina in her ‘real’ life too, suddenly interrupts her performance, rips off her uniform, and refuses to continue acting, the film suddenly becomes a chronicle of her self-determined trip home. So, the viewer may ask: Is it still the same film, except now Panahi himself and the film crew are also in the scene, and the lead character is no longer following directions. Or is Mina as Mina continuing to perform in her role? To what extent is the rest of the film simply a reflexive version of the first third of the film? According to Norma Moruzzi it is impossible to really know and that might be exactly the point Panahi wants to establish with this film (Moruzzi 2015: 113).
In her essay about “Reflexive Cinema and Society in Post-Revolution Iran”, the author Norma Claire Moruzzi argues that in the moment when Mina looks straight into the camera (00:38:50) and then begins to speak on screen to the director rather than the audience, the film breaks with the most elemental convention of cinematic realism: the invisible “fourth wall” that allows the audience to enjoy the illusion that the cinematic representation isn`t artifice but is actually ‘real’ (Ibid.).
As the audience is used to a cinematic style that allows them to ‘get absorbed’ into the narrative, Moruzzi argues that, at the same time, the audience is invisible and absent from the reality before them (Ibid. 114). In any cinematic tradition; thus, it is exceptional that a filmmaker- which in this case is Panahi- dares to break with this realist convention.
23 What is of interest for this survey’s purpose then is to explore Panahi`s intentions to break through the ‘frame of cinematic realism’, evaluating The Mirror not only within the genre of children`s films but regarding it also as a route for the explorations of self-reflexive cinema.
After the 1979 Revolution filmmaking in Iran was severely influenced by the strict state restrictions on the realistic portrayal of private life, including sexual intimacy and the politics of the hejab. In consequence, Iranian filmmakers began to develop a style of self-reflexive cinema that acknowledged, on the one hand, the limits of cinematic representation and, on the other, integrated the presence of the filmmaker himself or his directorial control “directly into the cinematic project” (Moruzzi 2015: 115). By blending nonfictional methods and practices, many reflexive filmmakers began to ‘crack’ through the cinematic convention of modern realism, seeking to confront their audience with the ‘real’ world rather than an artificial composition. Nevertheless, breaking through the frame of cinematic realism also put into question other possible distinctions: between the genres (documentary and fiction), between the viewer`s role as a passive observer or active participant; between the authority of the director and the response of the actors. When Mina pulls off her hejab and insists she won`t act anymore, the viewer is thrown into the doubled perspective of reflexive cinema and may ask himself: is this scene ‘real’ or is it scripted; is the film a documentary or is it ‘original’?
Certainly, other post-revolutionary Iranian filmmakers, such as Makhmalbaf or Kiarostami, have already introduced and developed the genre of children`s films, or explored the diverse possibilities of reflexive filmmaking, but Panahi`s The Mirror may arguably combine all of these aspects: “It puts into question the authority of the filmmaker and the reality of the representation, while introducing a new set of reflexive protagonists- often girls and women- […] in the spaces of modern social experience” (Moruzzi 2015: 128).
By embedding his films in an aural landscape of vibrant city-noises (honking vehicles, street musicians, radio and TV broadcasts) and experimenting with different sound designs, Panahi stresses the human life in his characters: “Panahi`s films are charged with a very urban vitality, a love of the streets and of the people that inhabit them, and one of the incidental pleasures of all of his first three feature films (The White Balloon, The Mirror and The Circle) is the portrait of Tehran that emerges from them” (Rapfogel 2001: 5).
When Mina gets off the bus and sits down on the sidewalk to change her shoes (Fig. 2.4), Moruzzi argues that “she makes herself at home in the public sphere of the street” (Moruzzi 2015: 129).
Then she gets up and begins her ‘real’ journey home, carving her way through the urban chaos, meeting other pedestrians on the way, most of whom are very kind to her and offer their help to find the right way home. After the unexpected break from the fictional narrative happens and Panahi and his film crew decide to keep on filming, the last two thirds of The Mirror moves again within the general
