The rest of the world got its first glimpse of “Under the Moonlight” earlier this month at the Cannes film festival, which has been a major supporter of Iranian cinema. Indeed, the film is merely the latest in a steady stream of Iranian movies that have won attention–and admirers–around the world over the past decade. What the French new wave was to film fans in the ’60s, Iranian cinema was to art-house regulars in the ’90s. Audiences nursing hangovers from Hollywood pyrotechnics embraced Iran’s spare stories of daily life, frequently featuring child or nonprofessional actors. Last year Samira Makhmalbaf took the Cannes Jury Prize for “Blackboards,” about a group of Kurdish teachers who travel around looking for students. Abbas Kiarostami’s film about a man trying to commit suicide, “Taste of Cherry,” won the Palme d’Or in 1997. Iranian films, Kiarostami joked, were one of the country’s biggest exports, “in addition to pistachio nuts, carpets and oil.”
Increasingly, Iranians are beginning to enjoy them as well. All over the country, moviegoers are lining up to see groundbreaking films like “My Favorite Wife.” In 1983 only 10 percent of box-office revenues were from Iranian films; last year 90 percent were. Much of the credit for that goes to President Mohammed Khatami, a moderate intellectual whose 1997 election helped loosen censorship rules. In the early 1980s, for instance, women weren’t allowed to be portrayed running on-screen because they didn’t look dignified and demure enough, the censors thought; now they can fly like the wind. Such changes are here to stay, Iran’s cultural critics believe. “No one can turn the tide now,” says sculptor Bita Fayyazi. “Going back is just not possible.”
Khatami’s influence on the industry actually began well before he was elected president. During the revolution, mobs demonstrating against the shah often attacked cinemas as symbols of Western decadence. But after the shah fell in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared that film wasn’t inherently anti-Islamic and set out to create an Islamic cinema. Khatami, who became minister of Culture in 1983, took interest in the infant genre and made it his pet project. He hired enthusiastic film-lovers for his ministry, and established the Farabi Cinema Foundation to help produce, finance and distribute Iranian movies. “We were at the height of the war [with Iraq] then,” says film distributor Mohammad Attebai. “Our cinema was almost nonexistent but they managed to build it from scratch.”
The quest for Islamic cinema has produced a distinctive, elliptical style. Because nudity and sex scenes are banned–as is criticism of Islam–directors have been forced to be more creative in depicting intimate relationships. In the 1998 film “Leila,” for example, about an infertile couple, the young newlyweds can’t be shown necking, but their love is conveyed through their shared jokes and glances. “Iranian cinema is very subtle,” observes Negin Nabavi, who teaches Iranian film at Princeton University. “One often has to read between the lines. That’s what makes it different from Hollywood, and contributes to being a genre in its own right.”
Developing a genre doesn’t guarantee a healthy movie industry, however. Iran is home to 65 million people but only 300 movie theaters. And though they are drawing more viewers than ever, movies are no where as popular in Iran as they are in, say, India. The government maintains a monopoly on importing film equipment, so moviemakers are often forced to wait to use cameras and lenses. The movies that make it to the West, charge some Iranians, are mere “festival” or “tourist” films, and scarcely reflect the reality of the Iranian on the street. “I think this trend in our cinema to make intellectual films for foreign audiences is ruining the industry,” notes “Under the Moonlight” director Reza Mirkarimi. “Our filmmakers feel there’s no other way to make a film except making something deep for festivals.”
And though censorship has eased, it is still a huge obstacle. Directors must submit their scripts and finished films for approval by the government-appointed censors. Artists complain that censorship produces a stunted vision of Iran. “In my life, I can fall in love, betray, be betrayed,” explains actress Fatemeh Mo’tamed Aria. “But I can’t express it in my cinema. As an actress, I always play a very unhappy woman!” Films deemed daring are often given permits to be shown only for a week or so, and movies that are lauded abroad frequently aren’t shown in Iran at all. Jafar Panahi’s film about a group of women who escape from jail, “The Circle,” currently touring art houses in the West, hasn’t been granted domestic distribution. And the reasons are often maddeningly mysterious. “They never tell us why,” notes distributor Attebai. “It seems that cinema has more taboos than other media.”
Mirkarimi’s experience in making “Under the Moonlight” illustrates some of the difficulties. He says he aimed to make a movie that both ordinary Iranians and foreign film critics could love. But his exploration of the clergy earned the criticism of two groups: some clerics, who found it sacrilegious, and intellectuals, who found it too religious. Still, the director remains optimistic that the movie will be a success–if it is not banned. “Whenever you want to do something different, you have to be ready to face the consequences,” he says. Luckily, most Iranian filmmakers are willing to do that.
