Jafar Panahi And Mohamad Rasoulof Season At BFI Southbank In August

Throughout August BFI Southbank will host a retrospective of films by two of Iran’s most important filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohamad Rasoulof. Xan Brooks says of Jafar Panahi: “A leading light of the Iranian new wave, the creator of haunting social-realist fables that were suppressed in his homeland but played well with art house audiences in the west…Panahi's new-wave compatriots have largely decided to abandon Iran…Yet Panahi has always identified himself as an Iranian film-maker, based in Iran”.
Having had three of his films banned by Iranian authorities, Panahi has long been considered a dissident with a social agenda. So much so that in 2010, he and Rasoulof were arrested at his home and accused of carrying out propaganda against the state. Panahi and Rasoulof were given six-year prison sentences. In addition Panahi received a 20-year ban from writing and filmmaking (sparking mass outrage from the film community include Martin Scorsese, Sean Penn and Harvey Weinstein) and while Rasoulof is now able to work, Panahi’s situation still remains unclear. This season will chart both their careers, starting with Panahi’s - from Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees (1994) on which Panahi was assistant director, to his latest ‘film’, the covertly exported This is Not a Film (2011). The second half of the season will focus on the lesser known but no less significant filmmaker Mohamad Rasoulof. The season will feature The Twilight (2002), Iron Island (2005) and The White Meadows (2009), and will finish with Goodbye (2011) which won Rasoulof the Best Director Award at Cannes despite him being unable to receive it in person due to his arrest.
After he assisted Abbas Kiarostami on Through the Olive Trees (1994) Panahi made The White Balloon (1995). The film tells the story of a small girl who negotiates the chaotic streets of Tehran in an effort to buy a goldfish. The Mirror (1997) followed two years later, similarly telling a story about a young girl negotiating the vibrant streets of Tehran on her way home from school.
The Circle (2000) depicts the lives of seven single women who experience repression and fear in their daily lives, and would mark the beginning of a string of Panahi’s films to be banned in Iran yet lauded by critics. In Crimson Gold (2003) Panahi cast an actual pizza delivery man in the central role in a ‘based on a true story’ tale of poverty and class divisions in Tehran. Again Panahi alienated the establishment but won over the critics, taking home the Un Certain Regard Jury Award at Cannes. Inspired by the ban on Iranian women attending football matches, Offside (2006) features young women disguising themselves as men to get into football stadiums to watch matches. With an ironic and humorous tone the film ridicules the contradictions of the ban and became Panahi’s third film in a row to be both banned by Iranian authorities and receive a major award on the film festival circuit (The Silver Bear at Berlin). During his time under house arrest following his conviction, Panahi was visited by his friend Mojtaba Mirtahmash. Prohibited from filmmaking Panahi, with the help of Mirtahmash, produced a powerful act of resistance by talking direct to camera, describing a film he was prevented from making. This Is Not a Film (2011) was smuggled out of Iran on a memory stick concealed in a birthday cake and played at the Cannes Film Festival, after which Mirtahmash received a three month prison sentence for the part he played in the making of the film.
The second half of the season focuses on the work of Mohamad Rasoulof. Rasoulof began making short films in 1991, with his first feature The Twilight being released in 2002. The Twilight is based on real events and cast with individuals involved. It tells the story of a long-term convict who marries a young female inmate, but once released from prison struggles to support his family. Iron Island (2005) takes place on board a largely isolated oil tanker which is moored off the Persian Gulf coast. Inhabited by members of Iran’s minority Arab-Sunnis, this community is ruled over by an authoritarian captain whose absolute authority is the focus of Rasoulof’s realist allegory. Continuing with his socio-political critiques 2009’s The White Meadows follows Rahmat, accompanied by a young boy Nassim, as they collect tears of people stricken by grief in a ceremonial vial and observe the suffering caused by prejudice superstition and unrelenting Sharia Law. While he was appealing his conviction Rasoulof was prevented from travelling to Cannes for the screening of Goodbye (2011) and his Best Director Award in Un Certain Regard was accepted by his wife on his behalf. The film follows a young pregnant lawyer in Tehran, whose husband is exiled to the desert because of his political journalism while her licence to practice law is revoked for activism. Described by one journalist as a silent scream of protest, it has an undeniable relevance to Rasoulof himself following his arrest.
Panahi and Rasoulof have both made films which seek to highlight injustice and suffering, but have in the process become victims of it themselves. This season will offer audiences a chance to see films which carry great significance to contemporary Iran, and campaigning for Panahi and Rasoulof’s human and creative rights remains urgent not only to ensure their personal freedom but to secure the future of filmmaking in Iran.
This Is Not a Film will be available to buy on DVD from August 27.
www.bfi.org.uk