By Holly Nelson
Organizers hope a local film festival highlighting Iran’s internationally recognized cinema will foster acceptance and understanding of Iranian culture.
The Iranian Film Festival in Ottawa is organized by the Canadian Film Institute (CFI) and the cultural section of the Embassy of Iran.
It showcases the work of Abbas Kiarostami, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival and other lesser-known Iranian filmmakers.
Although filmmaking has been taking place in Iran for the past 40 to 50 years, it has flourished in the last decade.
Iranian films are made under government restrictions that prevent filmmakers from exhibiting behaviours that contradict Islamic law — essentially banning sex and violence.
The majority of films focus on social problems and human relations, says Fazel Larijani, the cultural attaché for the Iranian Embassy.
“We produce more art and philosophical films,” Larijani says. “They’re more introspective and intellectual, which I believe has given them more attention. In a global society it is inevitable that interactions amongst cultures will take place. Art and films are a good language to help facilitate this.”
For example, the festival features The Colour of Paradise, Sara, Leila, Maternal Love and others.
The Colour of Paradise tells the story of Mohammad, an eight-year-old student studying at a school for the blind in Tehran. After a year, Mohammad returns to his birth place with his father, setting off a series of remarkable discoveries for both the father and son.
Directed by Majid Majidi, The Colour of Paradise won the 1999 Grand Prize at the Montreal World Film Festival.
He says that international recognition has boosted the industry and adds that interaction between cultures helps develop the culture of each society.
“Understanding a bit of how it is to be in another person’s body — what it feels like to wear the clothes, wait for the bus, drink the tea, or drive around trying to get a good mobile phone reception — is not enough to understand a culture,” says Laura U. Marks, a Carleton University film studies professor via email from Beirut. “For that you need knowledge of language, history, religion. But it builds a basic human sympathy, and cinema does it well.”
Marks is on sabbatical and is currently living in Lebanon studying independent cinema in the Arab world. She says that audiences benefit from viewing films from a different cultural perspective.
“Films can emphasize the ‘ordinariness’ of life in other cultures,” she says. “It helps to strip away the exoticism.”
The films in the month-long Iranian festival were also screened for audiences at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Larijani says they were well received.
“After showing the films, people said they were impressed by the scenery and content of the films,” he says. “There was much debate about film and culture in Iran.”
He says the positive dialogue gave him the impetus to bring the films to the Ottawa market.
In fact, this is not the first time Iranian films have been featured in Ottawa.
“One of the reasons that our director programmed this festival again was because of the success with previous Iranian series,” says Anita Lee, the institute’s assistant to the director.
“A major part of CFI’s programming has always been working with foreign embassies to showcase their countries’ films in Canada,” Lee says. “Working with the cultural departments within the embassies that are actively looking for venues to exhibit their countries’ works, we have the advantage of having them to bring us films of high artistic and cultural values that are usually unavailable in commercial distributions.”
Lee says the institute’s programmers were attracted to the films because of their prestigious international reputation, as well as their rich and unique cultural perspectives.
The festival began on Feb. 2 and runs every weekend until March 2 at the National Archives Auditorium.