DCIFF ’11: My Tehran for Sale

Recently, in response to the categorical rejection of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s appeal and the truly barbaric sentence of one year in prison and ninety lashes handed down to actress Marzieh Vafamehr, many prominent Iranian artists (including the great Shohreh Aghdashloo) have called on the world to “boycott official Iranian film and television organizations and sanction its members.” While their outrage is appropriate, the work that caused Vafamehr’s plight should not be thrown out with the bathwater. An important film even before the arrest of its lead actress, the Iranian born Australian-based filmmaker Granaz Moussavi’s My Tehran for Sale (trailer here) recently screened during the inaugural Dialogue of Cultures Film Festival in New York.

In what will become an ever more self-referential turn, Vafamehr plays Marzieh, an avant-garde actress seeking to expatriate because her plays have been banned by the censors. She is well educated, middle class, and ideologically moderate, none of which are much of an advantage in contemporary Iranian society. Navigating the Kafkaesque immigration process for years, Marzieh is hoping to soon liquidate all her possessions to finance her move. Of course, complications arise.

Initially, Marzieh has a bit of good fortune. Attending an underground rave in the countryside with her friend Sadaf, Marzieh happened to be in the stables with Saman, the recently repatriated son of immigrants looking to make his fortune in Tehran. Given the unambiguous nature of their encounter, this scene probably did not help Marzieh’s case. However, the real scandal is the conduct of the morality police, terrorizing women like Sadaf for their unadorned heads.

Quickly Marzieh and Saman become something of an item. Despite his myriad of faults, Marzieh enjoys a somewhat pleasant interlude. Still, grim realities are ever-present in the margins of Sale, represented by a woman committing suicide rather face the disgrace of pregnancy out of wedlock, the whispered news of yet another colleague’s arrest, or simply the general sense of unease surrounding her life.

In truth, Marzieh is not always fun to be around. Flesh and blood humans are messy that way. In a sense, Sale is like Agnieszka Holland’s A Lonely Woman. In both films, the toxic repression of their societies metastasizes inside the respective protagonists, at least spiritually and in Marzieh’s case, physically as well.

Based on a limited sampling of Iranian films to screen on the festival circuit in recent years, Sale is a tad ambitious in the amount of sensitive subject matter it forthrightly addresses, including artistic censorship, drug use, romantic relationships, secular music, and tragically AIDS. We even hear the lashes administered on others which will also be in Vafamehr’s future unless sufficient pressure is brought upon the Islamist authorities to reverse course. As an artist, Moussavi should explore any area her characters take her to. In practical terms though, the extent that she does so is fairly bold.

Shot on location in Iran (with all the proper permits according to Moussavi), Sale was intentionally scrupulous about observing Islamic decorum throughout the production, aside perhaps from a few scenes of women without headscarves. Of course, one of the advantages of a police state is that the authorities do not have to justify a seemingly arbitrary decision. Frankly though, it seems clear Vafamehr is being punished for the manner in which Sale holds a mirror up to Iranian society, presenting a vision the government does not like to see.

While her sentence could be dubbed the harshest review ever, Vafamehr is forcefully compelling as her namesake. Smart but flawed, she conveys Marzieh’s mounting frustration with visceral power that literally bursts out of her in one unforgettable scene. In a less showy role, Asha Mehrabi is also very engaging as the well-intentioned but essentially helpless Sadaf.

This is a film that has been caught up in macro dynamics beyond its possible control. Sale is an intense film featuring a bravely revealing performance from its lead. It ought to be thought of as an Iranian cousin of Cassavetes films like Opening Night and A Woman Under the Influence, but in the current climate, it stands as a pointed rebuke to the hypocrisy amok in Iran today. The fact it deliberately stops short of endorsing anyone or anything outside the current norms clearly matters little to the mullahs in power. Recommended as a film in its own right and as symbol of artistic freedom under fire in Iran, Sale ought to be widely screened by film institutions in coming months as a way to focus attention on Vafamehr’s shocking plight.

DCIFF ’11: This Prison Where I Live

For comedians, Burma is a tough room to play. The hecklers can be torture. Just ask beloved Burmese comedian Maung Thura, popularly known as Zarganar, except you can’t. British documentarian Rex Bloomstein shot a considerable amount of footage of the multi-talented performer during his last period of relative liberty. Shortly thereafter, Zarganar was sentenced to fifty-nine years in prison (later reduced to a mere thirty-five). Appalled by the severity of the term, Bloomstein returned to Burma to try to capture a sense of what Zarganar means to his countrymen in This Prison Where I Live (trailer here), which screens during the inaugural Dialogue of Cultures Film Festival in New York.

Relatively funny and wildly charismatic, Zarganar’s humor falls squarely in the tradition of Yakov Smirnoff’s Soviet jokes, not surprisingly, given the similarity of their circumstances. Zarganar is not the only Burmese comedy act to run afoul of the powers-that-be, but he is arguably the most prominent (no disrespect to the Moustache Brothers). To mangle Thoreau’s words to Emerson, how can you be an engaged comedian in Burma and not be in jail or under house arrest these days?

Though he had a wealth of Zarganar material, Bloomstein lacked the resources to release it for public consumption in a meaningful way. Then an unlikely German Zarganar supporter entered the picture. As executive producer Michael Mittermeier explains, he felt an affinity with Zarganar, because nobody expects German or Burmese stand-ups to be funny. Based on the footage of Mittermeier’s act, there is good reason for this. Imagine Carrot Top without the props. He is also shockingly divisive, performing a bit that openly likens the American efforts to topple Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime to the Holocaust early in the film. Not exactly the shrewdest way to broaden the Zarganar campaign.

At least Mittermeier opposes rape and torture in Burma (though evidently not in Iraq), yet as the bankroller, we are stuck with far too much of him rhapsodizing over Bloomstein’s footage of Zarganar. However, Bloomstein’s interview sequences with the film’s real subject are a different matter entirely. Clearly, the filmmaker established a genuine rapport with Zarganar, laughing and joking together like old friends, despite the gravely serious themes of their conversations.

Unfortunately, Bloomstein and Mittermeier were determined to have a present day third act, so we watch as they try to steal exterior shots of the provincial prison where Zarganar is being held. Why they placed so much importance on this is difficult to understand. After all, the video to get is from inside the prison. Not surprisingly, all they have to show for their efforts are some blurry shots, but in the process they got their local fixers into a major fix.

Let’s focus here people. The real story is the desperate situation Zarganar faces, not how sad it all makes Mittermeier feel. Reportedly, the Burmese comic’s health has deteriorated, with his captors providing little or no treatment. Admirably humble, he is also a heroic figure, worth spending time with in any film. Though it is hard to not recommend any film embracing his cause, one just wishes Prison was considerably better than it is. Recommended with reservations nonetheless as we await Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi in The Lady, it screens this Friday (10/21) in New York at the Quad Cinema as a selection of the 2011 DCIFF.

DCIFF ’11: Transit Cities

How can a major metropolis simultaneously become larger but less cosmopolitan? Such appears to be the case when Laila Kamel returns to her family home in Amman, Jordan after a long stay in America. Things have changed for the worse in Mohammad Al Hushki’s Transit Cities (trailer here), which has a special one week New York theatrical run in conjunction with the Dialogue of Cultures International Film Festival, beginning this Friday.

After fourteen years, Kamel returns to Amman a divorced woman. It is a personal failure she is not eager to admit to her family. However, her father is not exactly grilling her for information. Broken by his own disappointments and openly contemptuous of her lifestyle choices, he barely speaks to her. Of course, he hardly speaks to anyone, so acute is his depression.

Much too her surprise, Kamel’s mother and sister now wear the hijab in public. Granted, Amman is not Saudi, but the prodigal daughter is shocked by the radical shift in gender role expectations. Not surprisingly, she has a difficult time acclimating to the “new” Jordan. Nor does she win many new friends disdaining religious hypocrisies, like the practice of charging Murabaha or Islamic interest.

It is more than a bit surprising the state chartered Royal Film Commission Jordan would partner in Transit’s production, yet here it is. Indeed, the film portrays Jordan as a society in regression with a distinctly inflationary economy. In this non-usurious environment, coffee for two in a comfortable café will run you sixty dollars (it must be shade-grown fair-trade). However, if Kamel invites over a man for a long night of wine and reminiscing, it is a scandal.

Saba Mubarak makes a strong impression as Kamel, vividly expressing all her mounting frustrations, resentments, and self-doubts. She is a complex character, who sometimes makes matters worse for a host of contradicting motivations, but is never unreasonably unreasonable. Likewise, Ashraf Farah brings assured nuance to the jaded Rabea, her father’s former young colleague, with whom she shares considerable history the film merely hints at. Together, they develop very intriguing not exactly romantic chemistry together.

Only Jordan’s second “indie” production, Transit is quite stylishly put together. Though Al Hushki intimately focuses on Kamel, cinematographer Mahmoud Lofty evocatively captures the mood of dislocated alienation, like a Lost in Translation with a point to it all. Traditional in its instrumentation but often sounding relatively modern in its melodic and harmonic approach, Nadim Sarraj’s score also perfectly suits the film’s between-two-worlds themes.

While clocking-in just over the seventy minute mark, Transit is a wholly engaging and satisfying film (though alas, not necessarily an optimistic one). A shrewd choice to serve as the DCIFF’s showcase selection, it screens for a full week in New York at the Quad Cinema starting this Friday (10/27)—and tickets are only $5.00.

DCIFF ’11: Cirkus Columbia

Communism was supposed to create the “new man.” Somehow it did not take in the former Yugoslavia. Perched on the brink of war, a small Bosnian-Herzegovinian town engages in some major score settling throughout Danis Tanović’s Cirkus Columbia (trailer here), which opens the inaugural Dialogue of Cultures International Film Festival, a new nomadic festival devoted to themes of globalization.

In Martin Buntić’s village, the Serbian Communists are on the outs and the politically connected Croatians are in. Much to the surprise of his mother Lucija, this includes her long estranged husband Divko, who has returned from a twenty year exile to evict them from his family home. He also brought along a German trophy fiancé and a considerable bankroll. Supposedly, he will marry her as soon as he divorces Lucija, but it does not seem to hold much urgency for the prodigal father, as the displaced Azra cannot help but notice.

In turn, Martin and his friends certainly notice her. As old man Buntić belatedly tries to play Daddy Warbucks to Martin, at least when not berating him for being such a slacker, the son starts to get ideas about his prospective step-mother. Meanwhile, with the shelling of Dubrovnik reported, choosing sides appears increasingly inevitable. Martin’s surrogate father Ranko Ivanda, an officer in the Serbian dominated People’s Army, is explicitly told to put his ethnic loyalties first, while his best friend enlists with the local Croatian paramilitaries.

Selected by Bosnia-Herzegovina as last year’s official foreign language Oscar submission, Cirkus portrays a considerable amount of ethnic conflict within their borders, but perpetrated by other nationalities. It also presents Germany as a Switzerland-like safe haven, first for the senior Buntić under Communism and later for those seeking to flee ahead of the anticipated carnage.

Petty and manipulative, the audience should loathe Divko Buntić. However, the haggard looking Miki Manojlović humanizes him to a remarkable extent, clearly conveying the emotional weight of his years of alienation. In contrast, Boris Ler’s Martin Buntić comes across like a commercial for Ritalin. What the attractive Azra, played with admirable charm and conviction by Jelena Stupljanin, could see in him is quite the head-scratcher.

Indeed, their Summer of ’42-ish relationship is the weakest link of the film. Rather, Cirkus is most successful capturing the milieu of impending war, as the country appears to hang in mid air, like a towering fly ball at the top of its arc, about to come hurtling down into a maelstrom of violence. (That purple metaphor was dedicated to Tom “Flat Earth” Friedman.)

Frankly, the politics of it all are somewhat tricky to entangle, at least as presented in Cirkus, which is probably appropriately realistic. There is a part of the film that laments the fall of Communism, because it allowed the once unified country to splinter along ethnic lines. Yet, who does it think supplied most of the arms to the Serbian Army and their Bosnian-Serb allies, who committed the worst (but not only) atrocities? At one point, the former Communist mayor expresses regret the Berlin Wall was brought down from the western side. Again, who does he think put it up in the first place? On the other hand, the clear Serbian nationalism of the dissolving Yugoslavian Army is depicted in no uncertain terms.

There are some lovely moments of innocence soon-to-be-lost in Cirkus. Handsomely lensed by cinematographer Walther van de Ende, the film captures the village’s Old European charm and also dramatically illustrates why lifelong citizens would become desperate to leave. Artfully rendered if somewhat uneven, Cirkus is still worth checking out when it opens the DCIFF tomorrow night (10/20) at the SVA Theater and screening again next Monday (10/24) at the Quad Cinema.