The
tight-knit Islamist villages dotted along Iran’s southern coast look extreme
even to many Revolutionary true believers throughout the rest of the country.
Down there, the chador is not sufficient. Women must wear Burkas. At least it
is the Gulf-style metallic mustache-guard burka rather than the completely
encasing version preferred in Afghanistan, but if you think it is so comfortable
than why don’t you start wearing one? The women who live there are desperate,
miserable, and bereft of hope, judging from the interviews Mehrdad Oskouei
conducts in The Other Side of the Burka, which
screens as part of Documentary, Iranian Style, a new retrospective of the documentarian’s work starting this Friday
at Anthology Film Archives.
The
catalyst for Burka was the suicide of
a long-suffering wife and mother named Samireh. Ironically, she seemed to be in
better spirits than many other women, but there is no secret why she did what
she did. The words of her widower husband speak volumes: “As the saying goes,
women are like footwear, if you lose one, you can easily obtain another. But,
what am I to do with my children?” Well, maybe he could consider stepping up
and taking responsibility, but we’re just spit-balling here.
In
any event, that pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? Oskouei quickly establishes
what social conditions are like. Women are married off early in this region—thirteen-year-old
brides are not uncommon in the community. They are forced to have many children,
but their husbands often have difficulty supporting their families. On the flip
side, when times are good, the men often take younger second wives.
Oskouei
records one harrowing story after another chronicling physical abuse, mental
cruelty, and perverse attempts to induce abortions. The filmmaker tries to show
the men some compassion too, explaining how over-fishing forced many fishermen
to resort to smuggling, running a very real risk of arrest and imprisonment to
feed their families. Yet, it is as obvious as the burka on your face they would
be much better off if they married women who were somewhat older and allowed
them to complete their education and pursue employment outside the home.
Again,
it is striking how completely these women trust Oskouei. They have difficult
stories to tell, especially to an Iranian man, yet they give him shockingly
intimate testimony, on-camera. They are brave to reveal so much, but he was
also pretty gutsy to expose the systematic injustices they continually endure. It
clocks in at an economical fifty-two minutes, but it says plenty in that time. Very
highly recommended, The Other Side of the
Burka (paired with Oskouei’s documentary short, My Mother’s Home, Lagoon) screens this Friday (2/23) and next
Monday (2/26) during the Mehrdad Oskouei retrospective at Anthology Film
Archives.
