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Next week at the Sundance Film Festival, one film will prove topical to anyone watching the current events in Iran. In the wake of protests against the government of President Ahmadi-Nejad, some Iranians see parallels between the recent unrest and previous political conflicts, in particular the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the lesser-known story of the 1953 coup that restored the shah to power.
Women Without Men, the first feature film from Iranian-born artist, photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat, tells the story of the CIA-engineered coup through the eyes of four women. It has already picked up a Silver Lion for the director at the Venice Film Festival, where she walked the red carpet flanked by her cast and crew symbolically bedecked in green and defiantly flashing the two-fingered opposition salute. The 52-year-old is an outspoken supporter of the Green movement that arose out of Iran’s disputed election but she is clear about her priorities. “Number one, I want to be an artist and I want to make a good film and I want to make art that can survive over time, not because it relates to issues that we are concerned with today. Then I want to be an Iranian and I want to be an activist. But I think my number one priority is to be an artist.”
Born in 1957 into a west-leaning, well-to-do family that supported the shah, Neshat was encouraged to pursue her education and her interests as an artist. She went to a Catholic boarding school, before leaving Iran in 1974 to study at Berkeley in California. She now lives in New York City and often works with other Iranian-born artists such as Sussan Deyhim and Shoja Azari.
The 1979 revolution prevented her from returning to Iran until 1990, when, shocked by the changes she saw, she began to produce artwork focused on women in Islamic societies. The photographic series Women of Allah consisted of portraits of Muslim women, often in religious dress, overlaid with calligraphy and juxtaposed with provocative symbols such as guns, as she explored the conflict between religious devotion and violent martyrdom. Her split-screen installation Turbulent , which set female and male perspectives in opposition, earned her the international prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999.
Well-established as a photographer and visual artist by 2003, Neshat turned her attention to Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men. She first developed a series of video installations based on the characters and then reworked the material as a film. The novel by the exiled Iranian author, banned in Iran, appealed to Neshat on several levels. It features strong female characters from a range of social positions, among them upper-class Fakhri, troubled prostitute Zarin, inquisitive Munis and devout Faezeh.
Neshat found parallels with her own work in the subject matter and the novel’s magical realism. “For me, this is a poetic gesture, to make a film that allegorically, metaphorically deals with four women looking for an idea of freedom, democracy and independence and the country of Iran looking for an idea of freedom.”
Made with a European-based cast and shot in Morocco, the film is the work of exiles: many of the participants are banned from returning to Iran. Neshat has not been back to her homeland since 1996, and in the past has described herself as living between two worlds, not necessarily comfortable in either. Keenly aware that she is afforded more freedom working in the west, she nevertheless draws parallels between herself and women living in the Islamic republic. “In terms of my personality and the way that I function, I am not really that different from the Iranian women living in Iran, because, you know, we all have our own pains and problems. Theirs is oppression. Mine is separation from my country. I feel devastated by the politics that have defined my life and I feel angry but, at the same time, I am very strong and I am a survivor.”
Women Without Men amplifies the personal themes she has explored in other works. “Everything I have done in the past, whether photography or film, has been about stressing that Iranian women are oppressed, but they are not losers and they are really defiant, they are a powerful force in the community.”
In the film, the leading characters gravitate to a mystical garden, a place of transcendence in Persian culture. This garden embraces women cast out by society or their families. Neshat uses colour to contrast the moods of her characters with the turmoil raging in the country, as the garden changes from a bright, blooming oasis to one drained of all colour and life.
As the women chafe at the restrictions placed on them by society, the country is rocked by the 1953 CIA plot, backed by Britain, to reinstate the shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and depose the elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had nationalised the oil industry. One of Neshat’s characters, Munis, takes to the streets to protest, proclaiming, “I was there not to watch, but to see ... to act.”
The prominent role of women in last year’s protests was a surprise to some foreign observers but not to Neshat, who was well aware that women had been active in 1953 and 1979. She compares the Munis character to Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot dead during a protest in Tehran in June 2009. “In my film we see the whole political movement through the eye of a woman who is not ideologically formed,” she says, “and then you think about Neda, who was not ideologically organised. She was just an innocent bystander who cared deeply about what was going on on the street and then became a martyr and therefore a symbol of the Green movement and the struggle for democracy. So I was interested in showing how we can talk about politics through the woman.”
By the end of the film, the shah is restored to power and the garden is left a wreck. Munis states: “All we wanted was to find a new way.” While the outcome of the current political unrest in Iran is unclear, Neshat feels her film is a hopeful work, one in keeping with the cycle of her homeland: “The movement has started and it will not end. In this film what we are saying is that we fought for freedom and democracy in the 1950s and today, so this idea of struggle continues, and at times we are defeated and we fall down, but we always, as the Iranian nation, rise again.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/23f29d22-0161-11df-8c54-00144feabdc0.html
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