For those of you who enjoy films!

["Shahab Mesbah" <meteor2@moscow.com>]

Here is an international (Persian) film, which will give a glimpse of the
culture. Interesting how similar we all are. Maybe it will come to town!

Shahab...


> Directed by Majid Majidi
> Starring Hossein Abedini, Mohammad Amir Naji, Zahra Bahrami
> Iranian boy meets Afghan girl in a Middle Eastern film that might make it
> out of the art house.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> By Stephanie Zacharek
>
> Oct. 9, 2001 | With the world's attention fixed on the Middle East right
> now, many Americans are playing catch-up as they scramble to learn more
> about Islamic culture. Turning to movies from Middle Eastern countries is
> both one of the most dangerous and the most useful things they can do.
> Movies are never an accurate and complete depiction of any culture. (Would
> you want audiences overseas holding up "The Wedding Planner" as a textbook
> on the way average Americans live?) At the same time, movies are part of
the
> shorthand people around the world use to shed light on their own everyday
> experiences.
>
> The vast majority of the movies made in the Middle East that Americans get
> to see come from Iran, a country that despite (or possibly because of?)
its
> strict censorship rules has had a renaissance of sorts over the past 30
> years, particularly since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Many American
> filmgoers are at least familiar with the name Abbas Kiarostami, one of the
> elder statesmen of the Iranian "new wave." But he's just one of a number
of
> directors whose work is increasingly finding its way to the U.S. Some of
> those younger filmmakers include Jafar Panahi ("The Circle") and Majid
> Majidi ("Children of Heaven," "The Color of Paradise"), whose new film
> "Baran" plays the New York Film Festival on Oct. 9 and 10, but is likely
to
> get a relatively extensive nationwide release (for an Iranian film, that
is)
> thanks to its distribution deal with Miramax.
>
>
> "Baran" isn't a political movie but a love story; at times it's almost a
> romantic comedy. But its very accessibility -- it's gorgeously shot and
> never ploddingly earnest -- could make it the first Iranian film to be
> widely seen by American audiences who aren't necessarily hardcore
art-house
> denizens. Moreover, it reflects some of the political realities in the
> Middle East that many Americans are just now becoming aware of. For
example,
> an introductory note at the beginning of "Baran" explains that Iran hosts
> the largest number of Afghan refugees of any Middle Eastern country.
>
> The tension, as well as the uneasy friendliness, between those refugees
and
> Iranians is the net on which Majidi (who also wrote the screenplay)
> embroiders the finer points of his story. Latif (Hossein Abedini) is a
> handsome, lazy, essentially good-natured Iranian teenager whose job is to
> serve tea and food to the Afghan workers on the construction site run by
his
> boss, Memar (Mohammad Amir Naji). Memar hires Afghan workers at much lower
> rates than he pays Iranians, but he's not supposed to be hiring them at
all;
> when the inspector comes to his factory, the call goes out for all the
> Afghans to hide. If Memar is caught employing them without authorization,
he
> could be fined so heavily that he'd have to let them all go.
>
> Latif is resentful of the Aghan workers on the site. With his teenage
> self-absorption, he's convinced he works harder, for less money, than they
> do. He believes this is unfair because he's Iranian. (His job consists of
> making tea and bringing it around on trays, while the other workers, many
of
> them in their late 50s, haul bags of cement on their backs.) His attitude
> changes when he meets a young Afghan woman (Zahra Bahrami), whom, for
> various reasons, he is unable to court. He goes out of his way to do kind
> things for her family, ultimately making a sacrifice that threatens his
> status in his own country -- all for a woman who, when she feels his gaze
> upon her, is instinctually compelled to throw her burqa over her face to
> make sure her modesty isn't compromised. It's clear, however, that no
mere>
> piece of cloth has the power to dampen the sexual charge between them.
>
> Majidi has a delicate touch and an extraordinary visual sense: "Baran,"
> although it takes place mostly on a dusty construction site employing
> impoverished workers, and in refugee enclaves that are far from luxurious,
> has a rich, lavish look. Majidi uses sunlight, a completely free resource
if
> you can time your filmmaking around it, as a dazzling special effect; he's
> one of the most visually gifted young directors I've come across in recent
> years.
>
> In fact, "Baran" looks so good, and tells a story that's so universally
> appealing, that I suspect some American aficionados of Iranian cinema will
> carp that it's too "Westernized." The more important point, though, is
that
> it shows us a slice of life that's very different from our own and yet
> instantly recognizable. If that's always been the point of world cinema,
now
> is a good time to be reminded of it.