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CineSource Collective Narrative
Afghanistan: A Land Without Art? In the difficult debate about Afghanistan, neither the right nor the left is mentioning one critical subject: art. Admittedly, Afghanistan is plagued by a host of more pressing problems, from the brutal U.S. invasion to even more murderous Taliban, from the multi-million dollar opium business to the grinding poverty. But, as difficult and double-jeapordizing as these threats are, are they as dangerous as the Taliban’s proposition to have a society without art, music and film?
The bombing of the monumental Buddha statues in 2001 exemplified the Taliban’s opposition to art but figurative paintings were also destroyed, theaters closed, films burned, music outlawed, musicians maimed and television and music radio forbidden. Despite some “liberal” pronouncements against dismembering civilians and burning schools, Taliban anti-artism has not been eased or even discussed much. It continues to symbolize a sad first for humanity as well as Afghanistan, which historically had great music and art.
Even more ironically, if the Taliban retake Afghanistan, they will trumpet their achievements on the Internet using video, representative images and art, which they now allow, albeit only for news or military purposes. Alas, radical Islamists aren’t the only ones around obsessed with the destruction of symbols – or their creation.
“Artists are historical and cultural in our country. Artists have been around a long time,” said Lima Sahar, a young singer from Kandahar, which is the heart of Taliban country. Despite dozens of death threats, she become a finalist in the talent show “Afghan Star,” 2008. Although all artists are known to be a tenacious bunch, determination is especially common among filmmakers who often risk fiscal, emotional or even physical ruin for their art.
No wonder the Taliban were also counterattacked by a phalanx of filmmakers led by the Iranian Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose “Kandahar,” 2001, was a veritable visual hand grenade lobbed into their midst. Partially shot in Afghanistan, where he secretly researched the film, it tells a vicious and surreal story in a series of loosely connected vignettes, using the "string of pearls" system favored by Iranian and other Asian filmmakers, rather then Western three act construction.
Based on a true story, “Kandahar” follows a Canadian Afghan woman trying to get back to that city to stop her sister from committing suicide, due to the Taliban’s extreme abuse of women. The film was originally titled “The Sun Behind the Moon,” in the poetic Iranian tradition and with obvious gender references, but also because she intended to kill herself during the last solar eclipse of the millennia. Neglected until September 12, 2001, “Kandahar” soon opened from Paris, where it won the Fellini Unesco Prize, to New York, where I saw it a month later at the Lincoln Center Theater, in a full house, alongside a fairly stunned audience.
"Kandahar's" lead was played by Nelofer Pazira, the actual woman who returned to Afghanistan to rescue a friend, not a sister. Pazira is a fascinating journalist and filmmaker herself – she has won prizes and plaudits for documentaries and activism – but she isn’t that captivating as an actress. Although “Kandihar” doesn’t quite gel as a masterpiece, many of its scenes truly are. It stands as a devastating critique of the Taliban, told entirely in local terms: kids screaming their prayers to AK-47s; a black American Muslim “doctor” dispensing pharmaceuticals to impoverished Afghans; amputees hopping after prosthetic limbs tossed from a foreign aid airplane.
Makhmalbaf was the perfect filmmaker for the job, considering he grew up poor in Tehran and become a radical Islamist himself as a teen. Jailed under the Shah for attacking a policeman, he educated himself in prison and eshewed violence for aggressive culture. After an early release, due to the Islamic revolution, Makhmalbaf became a filmmaker. He went on to write dozens of screenplays and direct 18 features and numerous shorts, often about the individual against the society and in a variety of styles, from sur- to neo- realist.
Unlike the Sunnis, the Shi’a have always supported the visual arts, from Persian “minature” paintings to portraits and then the building-size face banners currently used by religious, political and film figures. Add poetry, music and ancient culture and no wonder Iran became a world cinema power. Even more surprising, this transpired largely since the Islamic revolution. Although the Ayatollahs often ban films internally, and Makhmalbaf films were banned five times, they are not so stupid or unartistic to stop their cineastes from earning prizes and money abroad.
Although not as acclaimed as titans of Iranian film, like Kiarostami and Majidi, Makhmalbaf is immensely talented – a veritable one man cultural movement, who is also a prolific published author, educator, and producer. Finally leaving Tehran for Paris, after the election of the hayseed and Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad in 2005, Makhmalbaf now lives in Kabul, where he helps build schools and hospitals as well as produce films. Makhmalbaf is leading nothing less then a full force film invasion of Afghanistan by his phalanx, which also includes his entire family.
Marzieh, his wife, started as a cinematographer but went on to direct “The Day I Became a Women,” which Makhmalbaf wrote and produced. It won 13 prizes internationally. Makhmalbaf set up a film school in Iran in 1996 and later a primary school program for Afghan refugee children. Two graduates of his film school were his daughters Samira and Hena.
Samira’s debut feature, “At Five in the Afternoon,” after the Garcia Lorca poem about firing squads, was the first film shot entirely in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion. About a young woman who dreams of becoming president, and rebels in little ways – like getting her photo taken without her veil or buying some high heels – it won the Jury Prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, despite being a little rough around the edges.
Younger sister Hena was only 14 when she made the "Joy of Madness," the making of “At Five,” using a small video camera, which was said to be rather intimate and startling. Hena went on to do her own feature just a few years later – both sisters working with dad’s close assistance, of course. Her “Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame” also follows a girl, who is impoverished and living in the shadow of the Buddhas, as she braves war, machismo, prejudice and primitivism in order to go to school. Like “At Five,” it was criticized by American reviewers for being a tad too political and didactic, but the use of powerful symbols or references, like the Buddhas, or desperate quests, like the female striver, is standard to the local cinema vocabulary.
Next came “Osama” by Siddiq Barmak, an Afghan protegeee of Makhmalbaf, who learned his craft in Russia. Makhmalbaf provided encouragement, much of the financing and his own Arriflex 35mm camera. The results are striking. “Osama,” which I saw, looks great, accomplished and more “western,” with subplots and crosscutting, as well as a strong actress as the central character, Osama. Playing off the cachet of the world’s most famous Osama, she is a female gogetter – yet again – but this time pretending to be a boy, both a classic Shakesperian and Iranian cinema trope.
“Osama” took the 2004 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film as well as the Fellini Unesco Prize, now a virtual province of Makhmalbaf and his phalanx. Barmak also directs the Afghan Children Education Movement yet another school founded by Makhmalbaf. “Osama,” was colorful and well shot, with beautiful crowd scenes of women blossoming like blue flowers in their neon-blue but full-covering chadors, but it doesn’t pull punches. There’s even a desperate male character rationalizing male oppression – three-quarters through a movie about terribly abused woman and her absurdly difficult struggle. Indeed, this is precisely what the Afghan story has to offer the evolution of the human narrative: conflict, chaos and seeming irresolvable problems.
Which brings us to “The Kite Runner.” It started as the 2003 worldwide bestseller by Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan doctor living in the Oakland suburbs Fremont, and tackles Afghanistan’s toughest issues: oppression of the poor, hidden love, vicious bullies, and extreme fanaticism. Although very believable, it also uses highly symbolic characters who endure unbelievable horror in acceptable twists of dramaturge. The 2007 film, directed by the Swiss director Marc Forster didn’t quite capture that elusive quality, but remains a testament to the narrative power and tragedy of Afghanistan.
Filmmaking continues expanding today. In addition to Makhmalbaf’s phalanx and school there is even the Afghan Film Organization. It includes the directors Horace Shansab, Yassamin Maleknasr and Abolfazl Jalili and a school for actors as well as directors which led to “Zolykha's Secret,” 2007, by Shansab. A powerful and lyrical tragedy, it played to packed houses at major festivals world-wide. Talented actors have emerged, including Amina Jafari, Marina Gulbahari and Saba Sahar, the sister of the singer, as well as a monthly magazine, Theme, published by the Afghan Cinema Club.
Similarly hard at work are native documentarians like Mithaq Kazimi, who did “16 Days in Afghanistan,” and Wazhmah Osman, of “Postcards from Tora Bora” fame. A French organization Ateliers de Varan runs a documentary program, which will hopefully continue despite the killing of one of its directors, Severin Blanchet, by a Taliban suicide car bomber on February 26, 2010. PBS’s Frontline aired on March 7th an amazing doc, “Embedded with the Taliban,” by the award-winning journalist, Najibullah Quraishi. It shows the stark normality of the Taliban fighters, just regular folk who grow up with out women, art, or film – although you can hear them sneaking some music on the truck radio.
All this filmmaking, art making and culture making would be drastically diminished, if not utterly obliterated, if the Taliban retakes power. As devastating as the war by the United States is, it has comparatively low casualties, and nothing can be as devastating as depriving a society of its own culture, its native mechanism for reflecting on its unique issues.
As Mohsen Makhmalbaf symbolizes in his evolution from radical Islamist to filmmaker, and then school maker, the only way for Afghanistan to solve its host of pressing problems is by educating its citizens, first in school and then in advanced culture. Only then can a society informed by its own ideas, issues and culture, unravel its own Gordian knots and solve some of its problems. D. Blair Mar 22, 2010