Rice Cinema film festival highlights lives, roles of Iranian women

Rice Cinema film festival highlights lives, roles of Iranian
women
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BY ELLEN CHANG
Rice News Staff

The lives and roles of Iranian women, the reform movement
in Iran and the country’s political and cultural atmosphere
are all highlighted in the 10th annual Houston Iranian Film
Festival, which continues at Rice Cinema Jan. 24.

The festival,
which began Jan. 10 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
ends Feb. 1.
The film festival features the best of Iranian cinema, which
has emerged during the past 10 years from having a minor
role at international film festivals to now being at the
forefront of screens worldwide. Two directors will be present
to discuss their films.

This year several
female directors have provided a rare look into the Iranian
society and culture from the viewpoints of women and young
adults, who are some of the most victimized social strata,
said Hamid Naficy, chair of the art and art history department
and the Nina J. Cullinan Professor of Art and Art History.

“This will
be one of the most well-rounded presentations of contemporary
Iran through cinema,” he said. “By featuring films
that Iranian filmmakers have made living in both Iran and
abroad, we are providing views of the society from the different
sides of the exilic divide. We are offering reflections
and refractions of the Iranian society.”

Many of the films
chronicle the changes that have occurred in Iran during
the past 25 years as it emerged from a monarchy to a theocracy
that is currently experiencing the pains of democracy. In
1978, Iran underwent a social revolution that was supported
by the majority of its citizens. It resulted in the Shah
of Iran being ousted in 1979 and the emergence of Ayatollah
Khomeini as the new leader of the Islamic Republic. The
political upheaval led to many Iranians moving abroad.

A reform movement
began in the mid- 1990s, culminating in the election of
the Reformist president Mohammed Khatami in 1997, who was
re-elected in a landslide four years later. His leadership
has allowed women and young Iranians’ concerns and
voices to be heard, especially in bolder films that deal
critically with social and women’s issues.

The first weekend
of the festival is dedicated to filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad,
the foremost female director to emerge in Iran since the
country’s civil revolution. The festival will feature
her films “Nargess,” “The May Lady”
and “Under the Skin of the City,” which focus
on the lives of women in a fast-evolving society that grapples
with patriarchy and modernity. “Our Times” is
Banietemad’s latest documentary showcasing the reform
movement in Iran and the roles that both women and young
adults played in the most recent presidential election,
where Khatami was re-elected despite heavy opposition by
hard-liners.

Banietemad will
make a special guest appearance at the screenings to answer
questions about filmmaking, Iranian society and women’s
roles in it and censorship.
The second weekend features several thought-provoking and
controversial films and documentaries about how women are
treated under the Islamic Republic and how the situation
has changed during the reform movement.

Pirooz Kalantari’s
documentary “That is Life” brings to life the
angst-ridden lives of university students who live in shabby
dormitories in Tehran, Iran.

The husband-and-wife
documentary team of Hamid Rahmanian and Melissa Hibberd
offers an insightful, affectionate and humorous look at
the interaction of an American wife with her husband’s
family members and housekeeper in Iran. Rahmanian also will
be present to talk about the film.

Another upcoming
filmmaker and performance artist, Ghazel, who lives in both
Iran and France, will present several humorous and critical
skits about her and other women’s lives in Iran. Ghazel
has made about 400 short films that are all less than one
minute long. Her “Me” films bring out and critique
the dichotomous lives of Iranian women with incisive humor,
said Naficy.

Audiences also
will get a chance to see “Women Like Us, ” directed
by Persheng Vaziri, who documents the lives of five ordinary
women.

The festival
also includes two feature films, “Bemani” and
“Women’s Prison.” Directed by renowned filmmaker
Dariush Mehrjui, “Bemani” focuses on women confined
by the Iranian tradition. Recently banned in Iran, Manijeh
Hekmat’s “Women’s Prison” gives a critical
look at the treatment of women in the Islamic Republic.

The films offer
audiences a glimpse into Iranian life, culture and history
and also act as “cultural ambassadors” by connecting
Iranian-Americans to their culture, said Naficy.

“The films
demonstrate that Iran is a highly complex, multicultural
society in which autocratic and democratic tendencies are
vying for position,” he said. “It is also a highly
pluralistic society in which young people and women, the
objects of oppression, are now demanding change and are
becoming agents of their own social transformation. Cinema
plays an important role in their self-actualization and
transformation.”

Iranian films
have been widely praised since the 1970s, when they began
receiving prizes at international film festivals. But filmmaking
in Iran halted during the cultural revolution of 1979, when
a third of the country’s cinemas were burned down or
destroyed and film production came to a virtual standstill,
said Naficy.

“What is
remarkable is the speed with which a new cinema emerged
soon thereafter becoming within a decade one of the most
vital cinemas of the world,” he said. “In the
first decade after the revolution, more women directed feature
films than in the entire eight decades before. Changes have
been remarkable.”

For more information
about Rice Cinema films, go to <http://ricecinema.rice.edu>.
For more information about the festival’s films showing
at the museum, go to <www.mfah.org>.

The festival
is sponsored Rice Cinema, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
the Department of Art and Art History’s Jerome Segal
Fund, the President’s Fund for Museum Collaboration
and the Rice Iranian Student Group.