26: Jafar Panahi & Stories and Violence
Kathleen Norris on PANAFI’S CAKE: SWEETNESS, DESPITE IT ALL
Contemporary Iranian cinema is one of the wonders of the world. Despite continual repression by a harsh regime directors in Iran persist in making great films that help me remember that Iran is not an abstract enemy but a place where people in cities and small villages go about their ordinary lives, working, marrying, arguing, divorcing, farming in stony landscapes, contending with urban traffic. With no small sense of wonder I’m able to see the world through their eyes.
Many people in the West became aware of Iranian cinema in the 1990’s, when films such as Majid Majidi’s Children Of Heaven (1999) and Jafar Panafi’s The White Balloon (1995) and The Mirror (1999) became available. All three focus on children, perhaps a deliberate choice by the directors, as Iranian authorities would be likely to consider the films safe for export. But even these movies feature a critique of Iranian society. Children of Heaven reveals a sharp contrast between an old section of Teheran where a family lives in a crumbling building in a neighborhood with gutters running in the middle of narrow, twisting streets, and the modern metropolis with superhighways and luxurious gated estates. The brother and sister at the center of the film are acutely aware of their family’s poverty and we’re moved to see them go to great lengths to avoid telling their parents that the boy needs a new pair of shoes.
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