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Year 2000: Recognition of The Iranian Cinema
22/12/2000
 More than a dozen Iranian filmmakers captured top prizes at major international film festivals in 2000. This should not come as a big surprise; the post-revolutionary Iranian cinema has been a festival favorite for more than a decade now, and its dominance shows no sign of abating. Indeed, the more favorable production climate following President Khatami's 1997 election resulted in the approval of many scripts treating socially critical subject matter, and this year saw completed films in a fascinating breadth of subject matters and styles.
Iranian films are now being produced in record numbers. From a mere 15 features in 1982, production has grown to an average of 56 titles per year during the past decade. Festival invitations and awards for these films have become a matter of national pride. Each achievement of the national cinema is avidly noted by a multitude of Iranian magazines and newspapers.
The international affairs department of the Farabi Cinema Foundation, a government organization responsible for the promotion of Iranian films and filmmakers, has been critical to the high profile now enjoyed by Iranian cinema. They treat television buyers, theatrical acquisitions representatives, and festival programmers to legendary Iranian hospitality during the annual Fajr Film Festival in February where most new Iranian films debut.
Three years ago, Amir Esfandiari, Farabi's International Affairs Director, added a market geared to his foreign guests, in particular the buyers. With a dozen market stalls representing Iranian production companies and cultural associations, foreign guests have the opportunity to meet local representatives touting their back catalogues on tape and flourishing colorful promotional materials.
Among other helpful organizations and agencies which promote new Iranian films are Iranian Independents, a private company involved in the promotion and marketing of Iranian independent feature and documentary films; Cima Media International, a semi-private company founded to enhance the marketing of Iranian titles and television productions internationally; the Iranian Society of Documentary Filmmakers; and the Iranian Society of Young Cinema.
2000 was a good year for Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami. Film Comment's survey of film writers and industry professionals crowned him "Director of the Year," and he was honored with the Akira Kurosawa Award for Lifetime Achievement at the San Francisco Film Festival. His most recent feature The Wind Will Carry Us, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 1999, made the rounds of smaller international festivals and carried off top prizes.
Kiarostami's influence marks several of this year's Iranian prizewinners. He wrote the script for
Willow and the Wind, a deceptively simple tale about community and responsibility. Kiarostami also helped launch
Djomeh, co-winner of the Cannes Film Festival Camera d'Or. A poignant rendering of love and loneliness, Djomeh was written and directed by Kiarostami's long-time assistant Hassan Yektapanah. Ironically, Yektapahah shared the prestigious Cannes prize with Bahman Ghobadi, Kiarostami's assistant on The Wind Will Carry Us.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose importance to current Iranian production rivals that of Kiarostami, also had a good year. He co-wrote and produced two prize-winners: his daughter Samira's Blackboards, co-winner of the Cannes Special Jury Prize, and his wife Marziyeh Meshkini's multiple-award-winning The Day I Became A Woman. Mohsen declared proudly, "Four years ago I stopped making films and started making filmmakers." The Makhmalbaf Film School and its production arm, the Makhmalbaf Film House, look to be one of the most significant developments in world cinema.
With a more liberal attitude now apparent among the bureaucrats who supervise Iran's film industry, more works have appeared which challenge the taboos of the post-revolutionary cinema. A number of controversial films won awards in 2000.
Jafar Panahi's The Circle offers a bold look at contemporary social problems, including prostitution and police corruption. After being removed from the 2000 Fajr Festival, ostensibly for being "offensive to Moslem women," it won a record number of prizes in competition at the Venice Film Festival.
Mariam Shahriar's feature debut Daughters of the Sun also ran into trouble at Fajr and was not shown to foreign guests. Perhaps it was because her tale of the bitter fate of rural women involves an actress portraying a boy, performing bareheaded, in a story where she arouses the passion of another girl. Competing with 65 other feature debuts, it won Best First Feature at the Montreal World Film Festival.
More slyly subversive, Bahman Farmanara's moving meditation on mortality, Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine was the big winner at the Fajr Film Festival. A sophisticated drama with a Fellini-esque flair, it employs black humor and shocking incidents to critique upper-class privilege.
Films treating newly permissible, titillating subjects such as relationships between men and women, the role of women in modern society, and the problems of young people have touched a nerve in the domestic audience and made major hits out of festival favorites The Girl in the Sneakers and The Bride of Fire. The former uses a rebellious teen to epitomize the constraints chafing urban youth, while the latter, set amongst the tribal people of the South, utilizes the conventions of melodrama to explore women's rights.
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