In the last twenty years Iranian cinematography has received the biggest number of awards at international festivals. Filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami, Dariush Mehrjui, Jafar Panahi, Majid Majidi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, as well as his daughter Samira, who at the age of eighteen directed a very good film, The Apple, achieved the status of internationally acclaimed film authors. Most foreigners believe that the case of Samira Makhmalbaf is special due to the position of women in the traditional Islamic society as well as Samira’s more famous father. However, like many western stereotypes about Iran this one is not true because ten percent of Iranian films have been directed by women, a fact which was further enhanced by the recent program of the Asian film festival in Bombay. This retrospective pays tribute to women in cinema. Only one of the film authors in this program is a man - Behrouz Afkhami, one of the most commercial authors in Iran, who is not very well known outside of his country. His interesting film Hemlock an extremely impressive and emotional story about adultery. We would not expect such a film to come from a country where any visible intimacy between a man and a woman is forbidden and where having a lover is considered a criminal act. The director’s representation of such a woman as a complex personality and of her experience of the whole situation in a way has made Hemlock fit better into this so called “women’s” program of Iranian films.

Pouran Derakshandeh, the first woman who started to direct after the Islamic revolution in the late 1970s deals with contemporary topics. Her uneven but very original film Candle in the Wind a story about a young man who cannot find the meaning of life in a big city that resembles any metropolis anywhere in the world. Even though women in this film are only in small roles, in Bombay she defended her thesis that women in Iranian films are much more complex than in other international films: “Sex and violence, the main ingredients of western films, do not exist in Iranian. In many western films women are merely perishable goods, while in Iranian films they receive the respect that they deserve”.

Endorsing this thesis is the protagonist of the successful film by Ensiyeh Shah Hosseini, Rush! It’s Gone, the interweaving and conflict of tradition and modernity in a provincial fishing village in which a woman is the main cause of dramatic action. Nevertheless, an important part in this film is played by a boy who reminds us of an important role that children have had in many of the most esteemed Iranian films due to the fact that through telling a story of a child it was easier to avoid censorship while criticizing contemporary events. Therefore, the very emotional short films by Leila Merhadi Mother and Pendar a novelty because they portray children’s exploring of the world around them in a very convincing and impressive manner. In Kakolie Ferial Behzad is a boy, the protagonist of a fairy tale that undoubtedly stems from tradition.

Thematic and stylistic differences of these films show previously unknown components of Iranian films and enable us to complete the picture of this outstanding national production of films that belong to the very best films in the world.
(Tomislav Kurelec)