The Iranian cinema is today very much in
the forefront of world cinema. Over the last decade there has not been a year
in which Iranian films have not won trophies in one or other international film
festival. Abbas Kia-Rostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf are familiar names to serious
film buffs. Even Iranian female film
directors have to some extent come to international notice, unlike other
Islamic countries, and despite the anti-women strictures of the Islamic
Republic. The Iranian cinema has currently at least five highly productive
women directors. Films such as the Banuye
Ordibehesht (Lady of May) directed by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Apple by the 17-year old Samira
Makhmalbaf are only the best known examples abroad.
One might legitimately ask: how can such
films and such directors come out of such a reactionary and anti-woman regime?
Some of the reasons can be summarised below.
A transient atmosphere of freedom, lasting
a few years, followed the fall of the Shah’s regime in February 1979. In these
years the youth, and in particular the students, who had been totally deprived
of an open atmosphere during the monarchic dictatorship experienced a rapid and
phenomenal development in many social and political matters. These were not
normal political times. Such an atmosphere left its effects on culture and with
the exceptional attraction of the cinema for the Iranian people, in this art
form too. You can see the Iranian’s passion for the cinema graphically in
Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Salam Cinema,
which he made to commemorate the centenary of the birth of the cinema. Indeed
Makhmalbaf himself is a prime example of this generation. At the time of the
revolution he was a deeply religious and energetic 25-year old, who simply
because he was trusted by the regime, was given the opportunity to make over 90
films without even going to a film school. Most of these are not fit to be
shown, but the very art of the cinema transformed a fanatical and dogmatic,
though talented, youth into a good and thoughtful filmmaker. The same man
announced in his film Nassereddin-Shah,
film actor that the cinema is a creator of human beings.
A second reason for the attraction for the
cinema, especially among the young, is the almost total absence of other
leisure activities. After the Islamic revolution consolidated itself all mixed
gatherings were banned. A strict dress code for girls was enforced and even
boys had restrictions. They were forbidden some clothes and hairstyles. Pop music,
the voice of women, indeed almost any “happy” music could only be listened to
in the concealment of the home. The cinema became a window where people could
for an hour or so be entertained. Being relatively cheap, it is widely
available.
Thirdly, if you look at the age band of
these filmmakers, and especially the women, most were aged between 20 and 30
during the revolution. They had therefore experienced both regimes and most had
not been under undue religious influence during their formative years. While
Samira Makhmalbaf, aged only 17 when she made her Apple, appears an exception, her constant presence alongside her
director father cannot be ignored. In fact the profound rejection of many of
the values of the “Islamic revolution” by the generation born during or after
that revolution is a topic requiring a separate paper.
Fourthly, the Islamisation of the domain of
Iranian cinema after the revolution, or its cleansing as some would like to
call it, made it easier for women to enter the cinema by obeying the rules laid
down. Moreover, many women film directors, such as Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, who
had been trained in the state run radio-television, were expelled after the
revolution. With their skills it was natural for them to go into the
independent cinema. The anti-women policies of the Islamic regime in its
totality, and the fact that women had to bear an unjust burden of pressures,
has meant that the women’s movement has been exceptionally active during the
last 20 years. The struggle to assert women’s rights had been conducted
relentlessly and through countless routes. Women active in writing, translating
and publishing for women. Expansion of women film and theatre directors should
be seen in this light.
Restrictions can sometimes be the mother of
invention. Perhaps the flowering of the Eastern European cinema after the
relative thaw following the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union is a case in point. Yet one cannot push the analogies too far.
The experience of Iran is in many ways unique.
The generation of filmmakers active in Iran
have experienced a political and social atmosphere so turbulent and so special
that it is in may respects unique. This generation wants to share its unique
experiences. Much of what they have to say is new for the rest of the world.
Especially if these new experiences and visions are couched in the language of
the cinema.
Women
present but only as a shadow
The story of Iranian cinema and the picture
it paints of women, especially after the revolution, is a complex topic. In
this article I will confine myself to the way the Islamic Republic of Iran has
dealt with the question of women in the Iranian cinema. The importance and
popularity of the cinema in Iran meant from the moment it gained power the Islamic
government did everything in it could to bring the cinema under its total
control. This of course is not the first time that a government has used all
its cunning to make use of this magical giant to shape its own people. All
governments, and in particular the dictatorial ones, have approached the cinema
from this angle. One need only recall the German cinema at the time of Hitler
or the Spanish cinema in Franco’s time. But what that dictatorship does with
the question of women in cinema, particularly in an ideological way like the
Islamic Republic, may be unique in the history of cinema. For this reason, if
for no other, it must be studied.
The first clashes
From the perspective of the Islamic
Republic’s rulers, based on their religious interpretation of women, a woman is
defined and explained not only just through her sexuality, but with an
exaggeration of her sexuality. From this same viewpoint, when men are
confronted with the sexual power of women, their sexual instincts are seen as
feeble and yielding. The first prescription the Islamic regime wrote on the way
women should feature in Islamic cinema came out of this perspective and this
definition of women.
Accordingly the leader of the Islamic
Republic, ayatollah Khomeini, saw the pre-revolutionary cinema, as nothing
other than an epitome of corruption in the service of Western colonialism. “It
is the Shah who, in order to corrupt our youth has filled cinemas with colonial
programme and wants to bring up our girls and boys with unchastity and ignorant
of the dreadful state of the country. The Shah’s cinema is nothing but a centre
of prostitution and the educator of self-ignorant puppets ignorant of the
disordered condition of the country. The Islamic nation consider these centres
as being against the interests of the country” he declared [1]. Previously, in
his two books Kashef al-Asrar
(discovery of secrets) and Velayate Faqih
he had condemned the cinema for its direct link with Westernisation and a
source of corruption [2].
Thus the first step of the Islamic regime,
on the excuse of fighting corruption, was to hammer the cinema of the Shah’s
era with the bludgeon of denunciation and censorship in reaction to the
question of women in cinema in particular. The Pasdaran (revolutionary guards) were given orders to arrest and
confiscate the possessions of Iranian actors, actresses and filmmakers.
Screening of pictures of these actors, and in particular actresses, was banned
from the cinema and television.
The next step was to set up a group for
inspection, or as they called it to clean up, the cinema from corruption or of
films that are in conflict with Islamic decency. This group looked at 2,000
Iranian and foreign films and banned 1,800 of them, and set the censors
scissors on the other 200 to make them fit for showing in Iran’s cinemas
[3]. It was thus that in the first phase
the 98 year-old history of the Iranian cinema was washed clean in the
revolutionary bath.
The next phase they struck out to totally
control what remained of Iranian cinema. This control was so tight that in the
first three years film production came to a virtual standstill. The cinemas
were emptied of the cinema going public. But this was not what the rulers
wanted. They believed that the cinema could, and should, be turned to a means
of implanting their views. There was nothing to be done but for those who were
with the government to roll up their sleeves and create their own special
religious cinema. Obviously they could not entirely rely on their own forces
with their limited knowledge of the cinema. They needed the help of the
filmmakers and all the specialist forces in the cinema.
Thus the second part of our story went
ahead with the permanent presence of male and female Pasdaran, as well as the censors’ scissors in its various forms
both on and behind the scenes. One actress described the scene: These Pasdaran made sure of the correct
Islamic relations between all those working on the scene and filming. They
ensured total Islamic dress code, no contact between sexes, even hand contact,
no smoking or make-up, nor any verbal jokes between men or women on or behind
the scenes. They even interfered in the choice of scenes, their mixture, or
even the camera angles. This interference became so intrusive that in order to
get on with their work, film directors used, wherever possible, members of the
same family to portray husband and wife, mother and son, or father and
daughter. Otherwise actors and actresses had to get into a “temporary marriage”
or else they could not show their feelings and emotions to one another [4].
The pioneers of religious cinema then went
on to remove any contact between the sexes on screen, whether relatives or not,
and rid themselves once and for all of having to show any physical emotion or
feeling. After the banning on of any physical expression of emotion one of our
most famous actresses observed in an interview: I was suppose to play the role
of a mother whose only son had just returned from the war after a long absence.
Since I was not allowed to embrace, smell, let alone kiss him, I had to pretend
that I was so excited by seeing him that I became rooted to the spot [5].
In another episode, when an actress needed
to be made-up and the male make up artist as well as the actress were both
married, the make-up artist had to take the actress’s 6-year old daughter in
“temporary marriage” so that the actress, as his mother-in-law, would become
related by blood (mahram = people who
can socialise because of close kinship) to him and he could touch her face [6].
Gholam-Hossein Saedi, the great Iranian
dramatist who died in exile has pictured this tragi-comedy in his last play, Othello in the land of the exotic, where
a theatre group tries to stage Shakespeare’s play in the Islamic Republic.
Later the cabinet officially ratified the
regulations which were to Islamise the cinema on February 4, 1983. Subsequently
the ministry of Islamic Guidance (culture) created the office of censorship (momayezi) whose job was to review and
make decisions on films and scenarios. Large sections of these regulations
dealt with the question of the image of women on film:
1. With reference
to the above mentioned, Islamic hejab
(covering) must be obeyed at all times for women. This means: wearing loose
long clothes and trousers in dark colours. Even scarves and chadors (a one-piece cloth covering
head-to-toe) must be of dark colour. The hair and neck must be completely
covered. Only the face and the hands to the wrist can be visible. When this not
impossible, as when showing women in the previous [Shah’s] time, a hat or wig
can be used.
2. It is
prohibited to show the made up face of a woman
3. Close up of a
woman’s face is not allowed
4. It is
prohibited to show a variety of clothes throughout a film without a logical
explanation.
5. All physical
contact between men and women is prohibited
6. The use of the chador for negative characters and
persons must have a logical excuse.
7. Hair styles
which show dependence or approval of loose and immoral political, cultural or
intellectual groups inside and outside the country is not permitted.
8. The exchange of
any joke, talk, conduct, or sign between a male and female individual in a film
which suggest a departure from the behavioural purity acceptable to society is
banned.
9. To use young
girls is not allowed without permission of the Office of Supervision and
Evaluation.
10. Words, signs or
signals that directly or indirectly relate to sexual matters are prohibited.
11. The use of a tie,
bow tie and anything that denotes foreign culture is not permitted.
12. Smoking a
cigarette or pipe or the drinking of alcoholic beverages and the use of
narcotic drugs is prohibited.
13. The use of music,
which is similar to well-known internal or foreign songs, is not allowed.
14. Propaganda for
doctrines that are illegal and counter to the Islamic order is banned.
15. Sharia’ laws and customs,
religious beliefs and mandatory religious laws have to be followed and the
religiously forbidden be avoided [7].
The downloading of these regulations caused
fundamental changes especially in the presence of women in cinema –
particularly in films produced after 1983. However in the ensuing 15 years
these regulations have gone through various phases, depending on different
circumstances.
Phase 1: elimination
Iranian filmmakers found it easier to
remove women from cinema rather than confront the censor both at the script
stage and during filming. In 25 of the 27 films produced by 1985, the main
character is a man [8].
Some time later Hojatoleslam Javad
Mohaddesi theorised the removal of women from the screen: “Women are
personified in the Qur’an as dependent and shadowy figures and women are never
the hero of a story and have not been depicted independently and essentially.
In the whole of the Qur’an women are referred to by name only. The special
Qur’anic procedure is to give women a minor and sexual role in the story. To
depict a woman in a story or a play has no aim but to provoke satanic forces,
incite passion and increase the appeal of a film” [9]
By removing the image of women from the
cinema one function of the cinema, which is to present a holistic picture of
society through stories depicting a people, has been eliminated. The most
recent example is the Taste of Cherries
by Abbas Kiarostami, which won the Pulitzer Prize at Cannes in 1977. On the
whole the making of films without a female character saves the filmmaker much
headache and heartache in dealing with the religious censor.
Phase 2: diluted image
Filmmaking, however, could not survive
without the presence of women. At the very least you lose your audience. A
diluted or off-screen presence was a way out. For example in Telesm (The spell) by Dariush Farhang
(1986) the whole story is about a powerful princess who had disappeared in the
hall of mirrors of her castle. In this way the women is at the centre of the
story without having to appear on screen right until the end of the film. Or
Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Bicycle rider
(1987) where a man makes efforts for a woman who, being in hospital, has no
physical appearance in the film. Or in the Gozaresh-e
yek qatl (Report of a murder) where the voice of the secretary is heard
throughout the film, but because the action takes place at the time of the Shah
and her portrayal would cause technical and censorial difficulties, her image
is totally absent from the screen.
Phase 3: limitations
According to Article 2 of the Regulations
for Showing Films and Slides, the general roles that women can portray on
screen are as mother, carer of their husbands, children and housework. This means
confining women’s roles in the framework of the home. An example of a film made
within the limits set by this Article is Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s Kharej az mahdudeh (Off limits - 1987).
This woman, recognised as a feminist, who happens to be one of the most
prolific women directors in Iran, keeps her heroine Ra’na throughout the film
in the home. She even lets her husband shop for her groceries [10]. Even now
women are usually pictured in these roles.
Phase 4: return to the screen
Naturally the tale of the suppression of
the female image and presence of women both in picture and in the script could
not go on in its previous form. This was both because of the inner complexity
and contradictions of the art of cinema, and also the fact that the cinema must
answer the needs and tastes of different people. The Iranian cinema was forced
to undergo a number of changes. The main reasons that speeded up these
developments are:
1. The growth of
the women’s movement and the consciousness of Iranian women drew them into
increasing conflict with a regime, which was imposing endless pressures from
various angles on them. In particular, the cultural skirmishes that the women’s
movement had with the Islamic regime was able to change the cultural climate to
some extent. These conflicts continue to the present, and have become even more
acute since the election to the presidency of Khatami last year.
2. Pressures
brought to bear on the government to open up the cultural climate by producers,
directors and the audience alike [11]. For example many of the movie houses
which showed the regime’s propaganda films were empty while films by directors
who in one way or other were in conflict with the regime received an
overwhelming positive public reception. Moreover, increasing number of people
were using hidden satellite dishes receivers to watch satellite movies.
3. Fundamentalist
proponents of religious film are to some extent confident that they have been
successful in their bid to clean up the non-sharia’ presence of women in the
cinema. Therefore they are now less suspicious and distrusting of women and
cinema. They are relatively confident that they have established their
religious cinema.
4. Khomein’s fatwa in 1987 [12] which released the
hand of filmmakers to show women and give them in more important roles in film.
These developments have allowed films where
women have an independent role or depict personalities with power and courage.
Many of the main roles in films are now given to women.
Most importantly a number of female
directors found their way into the cinema. Before the revolution there were
only three female directors each with only one film to their credit. Shahla
Riahi made Marjan in 1956 [13] Kobra
Sa’idi (Shahrzad) made Maryam va Mani and Marva Nabili made Khak sar be mohr in 1978. There are now
eight female directors five of whom have produced films almost continuously
over the last few years. According to one female director, one reason for their
turning to film was that after the revolution women were purged from the
radio-television. It was natural for them, with their experience, to move to
the independent cinema.
In reality these few women tried very hard
to paint a true picture of Iranian women using whatever ruse or symbolic
language at their disposal to circumvent the strictures. The central role of
women can for example be seen in films such as Tahmineh Milani’s Afsaneh Ah (The legend of Ah - 1990), or
Rakhsan Bani-E’tamad’s Nargess (1992)
or her Banuy-e Ordibehesht (The lady
of May), and Puran Derakhshandeh’s Zaman-e
az dast rafteh (Lost time -1989).
Male directors follow suite
The reappearance of women has drawn viewers
into the cinema. It has now become fashionable for women to be given
significant roles even in films made by male directors. Many of Iran’s leading
directors have tried to sympathetically deal with the problems of Iranian
women.
For example Rajab Mohammadin’s Bekhatereh hameh chiz (For everything -
1990) women make up all the main roles and many of the subsidiary ones. The
doctor, hospital personnel, the manager, and the van driver are all women. The
main subject of Madian (the mare -
1985) by Ali Zhegan is lack of choice for women. In Arus-e khuban (Marriage of the blessed - 1989) Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s
main character is a woman photographer, who rides a motorbike and accompanied
by her fiancé goes out at night to hunt for the hidden truths in society and to
take pictures in the alleys and byways of the city.
In Alireza Raisian’s Reyhaneh (1990), the story revolves round the difficulties a
divorced woman faces. Ebrahim Mokhtari Zinat
(ornament - 1994) the topic is the conflicts and final victory of a nurse with
her husband and in-laws. She is forced into this friction in order to keep her
responsible job.
Many other directors have tried to portray
the abilities of the personality of women in a variety of ways. For example in Bashu qaribeh kuchek (Bashu, the little
stranger - 1988) by the prolific veteran Iranian filmmaker Bahram Beiza’i. Or
the pioneer of Iranian cinema Dariush Mehrju’i, who not only gives the main
role of his films to women, but chooses the name of the heroine of the film as
the name of his films such as Sara
(1993), Pari ( 1995) and Leila (1997). Mehrju’i also tries to
take his heroines out of the shadows of the home and give them jobs and social
identities. In Ejareh neshinha (The
lodgers - 1986) a women architect supervises the building and the property
business. In Hamun (1990) the female
character is a painter who also designs clothes and holds exhibitions. Leila, which last year caused a stir, is
an educated woman who through intense love for her husband and because she is
infertile, takes the road of traditional women and goes after finding a second
wife for her husband.
Other Iranian filmmakers have followed
similar paths. Perhaps the most significant are Ziafat (Banquet) by Masud Kimia’i,
Ghazal (Gazelle) by Mojtaba
Rai’ and Siamak Shayeqi’s Madaram gisu
(My mother hair).
Failings
But despite all these efforts have Iranian
filmmakers succeeded in showing the true face of Iranian woman in cinema? In
reality, what conceals the real presence of women, even when they are the
heroines of the film, or even where the story line revolves round the life of a
woman, are the regulations imposed by the religious censors which severly limit
the pictorial depiction of women.
Even as the central figure in a film, the
woman is denied the chance to show her real physical feelings even for her
child, father, husband, or another female character even if they play the role
of her mother or daughter. Where the director is forced to show his or her
female character even in the most exciting situations either sitting down or
standing still; when the emotions of not only the actress but her opposite male
character has to be self-censored what space is left for the director to say
all they have to say to the viewers? As one religious film director, a believer
in the Islamic Republic, put it: “in cinema we must show women only in a
sitting position so that the viewer instead of being deviated by the arousing
walk of the woman, concentrates on the hidden ideology within the work of art”
[14].
The Iranian filmmakers were forced to
concentrate all the feelings and emotions of the actress in her eyes. But our
religious censor could not tolerate even this. New regulations came out defining haram (religiously forbidden) looks and halal (permited) looks! I must here
point out that many of these regulations were not always obeyed to the letter.
A halal look
One of the greatest headaches for Iranian filmmakers
is how to portray love themes. Since love between men and women is a private
affair only between people religiously permitted to be intimate [mahram] it totally vanished from the
screen after the revolution until the mid 1981. Yet this state of affairs could
not go on. Love stories are of interest to humans and cinemagoers. They came
back but since women form one side of heterosexual love, love, with all its
sweetness, can cause much heartache for filmmakers.
Since filmmakers were deprived of the
depiction of the female body, and any physical contact between the sexes had a
total ban, even if they were man and wife in real life, the poor Iranian
director was forced to concentrate all love and emotion between two souls in
the face, and particularly in the expression of the eyes. But the religious
censor was wise to this. They went back to religious texts and the numerous
religious problem-solving editions [Towzih
al-mas’el], including Ayatollah Khomeini’s [15].
They then announced the regulations for the
“looking” and the look. Accordingly in the cinema only one look was
permissible: the halal look. This is
a sisterly look, never in close up, but a long shot. The haram [prohibited] look was ruled out and the poor directors,
actors and acresses left with a real problem. The most burning love can only be
portrayed by a look between two players seen from a distance, some polite
conversation or at best a love poem.
In Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh (1997), the story is of a girl from the Bakhtiari tribe, who
manages to escape with her beloved with all the dangers and difficulties this
entailed. Yet the whole of this glorious love has to be condensed in a mid-shot
of the girl turning to look across to the mountaintop. The lover is not even
shown. We only know of his presence through the neighing of his horse, shown in
a vague image in a very long shot.
Finally the man is forced to bring two horses so that any physical
contact between the two lovers before their religious marriage, even in our
imagination, is ruled out. All the images of the elopement of the girl with her
lover are in brief wide long shots showing them escaping on two horses.
Kia-Rostami tackled the issue in a
different way. In Under the olive trees
the wooing by the boy throughout the whole film is met by total silence and not
even a half-glance by the girl. The viewer is drawn into what the girl is
thinking, and what her answer will be. When the girl gives her final yes to the
boy’s love, Kia-Rostami is forced to place the couple thousands of metres from
the camera, and to convey her yielding, and set the viewers anxieties at rest,
he suddenly introduces a joyous baroque theme above the beautiful scenery of
the olive groves.
There are other restrictions too which
censors have officially or semi-offficialy passed on to filmmakers. Women must
have a measured and dignified bearing. Since the gait of a woman can raise
passions it is best to show her sitting or standing. Tahmineh Milani, a
prolific woman director, who has had many disputes with the censors and many of
her films have been denied permits said last year “in my view those who wrote
these regulations see all things in black and white. They cannot imagine that a
woman can speak, be intelligent, be human, head a department, and be educated.
Women are given the most isolated, passive and secret shape and this means
[they are] nothing. … Women cannot run, can have no close up, must not bend
forwards when sitting or getting up, not be made-up. This regulation have also
fixed the roles of women: a faithful wife, a concerned nurse, a kind mother …
The directive even forbids two women kissing. How can it be that a mother and
daughter cannot kiss in critical moments? I cannot imagine a more beautiful
scene than a father kissing the forehead of his daughter. In fact kissing is
the most beautiful way of expressing emotion. But our policy makers only
thought of the erotic aspects of this topic. What has become a tradition in our
cinema is [the image] of men embracing and kissing three times each and every
morning they meet. If you see men fifty times during a film they kiss [every
time], but women…” [16]
In another section she goes on
“unfortunately it has become in vogue that they regularly pass down [to us] a
singe model, and only [applying] to women. It is as if a woman is a dangerous
creature that you constantly have to tell her what to do or not do, to keep
society healthy…”
Thus love shared the fate of feeling,
affection and a woman’s body, to be suppressed by religious cinema. As a result
men and women are turned into beings without sex and feeling, and in the case
of women without a body. The ultimate image left of woman in cinema is one
which is un-human, one which has lost its real shape and soul, hidden amongst
the folds of her dark all-covering clothes. In this way too the most important
part of the being and personality not just of women, but men too, is
automatically eliminated in Iranian cinema.
Confusion
Almost two decades have passed since the
ayatollahs took over the rule in Iran and nearly a century since Iranian cinema
began. Yet despite every effort to impose a model for depicting the image of
women on the screen in keeping with its Islamic ideology, through countless
regulations, seminars and pressures of various kind the Islamic Republic regime
has been unsuccessful.
Seen from another angle the Iranian cinema
has experienced the greatest confusion, and chaos in its last 20 years. This
chaos has been fanned by continuous changes in those responsible in drawing up
directives, and hence in the directives themselves.
Not unnaturally this confusion has also
engulfed the filmmakers themselves. They have to juggle between values dictated
to them by censors of Islamic Republic’s religious cinema, in order to get
their films through the tunnel of the censor’s scissors, and the universal laws
of the cinema so as to keep their viewers in the movie houses – not least
inside the country. It is a Herculean task.
The cinema is an art form, which because of
its complexities, cannot be totally curbed and controlled. However, in real
life the highly restrictive regulations of the censors especially as it relates
to women, has truly tied the hands of Iranian filmmakers. No amount of wiles
and techniques of the art of cinema, no amount of creativity and intelligence,
complex techniques, and symbolic language is adequate to let the director
really say what they have to say.
The image of women in the Iranian cinema
today is in fact that very image that the Islamic Republic forces women to
adopt in society: an unreal presence, without sexuality, feelings and body. In
a way one can say that in the same way that women are forced into having a dual
character, in private and public, and can only reveal their real existence in
society with great difficulty, this too has been reflected in the cinema. The
screen image of Iranian women is nothing other than the deformed and unreal
image imposed on them by the Islamic Republic.
This is how Tahmineh Milani put it in
another part of the interview quoted above: “I say openly that I am fearful of
the future of girls and boys in society. I am more anxious about the girls,
since I see a duality in their being that has no end. I am certain that, as
those responsible have said, we have been defeated in the task of educating the
youth. I would very much like to make a film on this but I knew that this would
not be possible” [16]
Equally commercial
In the end we come to the conclusion that
the appearance of this false image of women, not just in Iranian cinema but in
Iranian society, has its roots in the viewpoint and approach of the policy
makers and in particular the cultural policy makers of the Islamic Republic.
How the Islamic faqihs view the
subject of women is outside the scope of this article.
But it should be observed here that this
viewpoint, and their approach to a creature called woman, especially in the
cinema, is from one angle no different from the commercial, popular and
cheap-to-please cinema, both before the revolution and also what the commercial
world cinema does with womankind. Both systems look at women as sexual object.
One removes the pieces, and body and later the physical presence of women from
cinema because she is a sexual being. Commercial cinema used this very view of
women to use parts of her body as breasts, buttocks, thigh, waist and hair to
attract viewers.
These two approaches may appear in
opposite, but are in reality two sides of the same coin. Both are the result of
the culture of a system of paternalism in society. Both try to present women as
a passive, fragmented and separated from her real being.
Naturally I am excepting the enlightened
cinema and the good directors. Other-thinking filmmakers have tried to use
symbolic language, deeper and more human dialogue to express the deeper emotion
of women. Yet the restrictive regulations of the censor is so complex that in
the final analysis these filmmakers will not succeed. The final image the
viewer sees is unreal and fractured.
The reality is that the cinema is an art
that is supposed to show the real life of humans, and people in society should
be able to project their common image through the medium of film. Therefore a
director, in addition to the skills and techniques of the art, should be able
to make their films in total freedom and without the prejudices ad fanaticisms
which control the nation’s culture. Our filmmakers in Iran not only have to
face all the strictures faced in other dictatorial countries, but also have to
manoeuvre the maze of Islamic regulations and especially the strictures relating
to the portrayal of the image of women.
Thus, despite heroic efforts by some
filmmakers, the image of women in the cinema of the Islamic Republic is a
missing link that has been locked up in the censors safe.
Parvaneh
Soltani
October
1998
Parvaneh Soltani is an actress and cinema
critique at present living abroad.
footnotes
1. Quoted from
Mohammad Ali Sadat. The spiritual
attributes of women. Teheran. Undated.
2. Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini. Velayate Faqih.
Teheran Amir Kabir 1971 p 292.
3 Hamid Nafisi, Iranian Cinema, section on supervision
and control over cinema.
4. Siqeh. In Shi’i religion a temporary
marriage can be arranged from one hour up to 99 years. See Javad Mohaddesi. Religious (maktabi) art page 181, quoted
in Hamid Nafisi, ibid.
5. An interview
with a famous actress [who asked to remain anonymous] Nafisi ibid.
6. On the story of
a film that had no religious warrant. Fouqoladeh,
Los Angeles October 1983 p 16.
7. Under the
magnifying glass. New laws for not
making film under the guise of directives for filmmaking. Free Cinema magazine no 5, page 61
8. Masoud
Pour-Mohammad. Special report: first
small stones…. Film Monthly, no 64, May 1985 page 8 Quoted by Nafisi ibid
9. Javad
Mohaddesi. Religious (maktabi) Art,
page 181
10. Hamid Nafisi.
Faded presence of women. Iranian Cinema
11. Interview with
Bahram Beizai’ – referring to an unsigned letter by Iranian filmmakers which
was circulated in Europe. Free Cinema,
no 1.
12. The views of Imam
Khomeini on films, serials, music, and the broadcasting of sport. Keyhan Hava’i. December 20 1987 page 3.
13. Hamid Nafisi’s
article on female directors of feature films from the beginning to today.
14. Actresses have
been excluded from films. Keyhan
(London) September 26 1985.
15. Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini Towzih al-Masael ya
Ezafate Masael-e Jadid (solution of problems or addition of new problems). Taheri, Teheran no date.
16. Tahmineh Milani. Interview in Zanan no 35, Teheran, June 1997.