by Brian Griffith and Zhinia Noorian.
For some reason, Iran seems to have an unusually large number of great female filmmakers. In recent years there were over 50 women making films in Iran. Shirin Neshat, who is best known for her Silver Lion Award-winning movie Women Without Men (2009), tried to explain:
“Perhaps those who are more oppressed tend to be more creative about speaking out. And evidently, it’s far harder for a woman to find a voice in Iran; as writers, artists, or filmmakers, they have to endure far more, in every aspect of life, and therefore their point of view is often more poignant. … And because women are under so much pressure, they end up being more innovative about dealing with crises and devising ways out. They become more subversive, in my mind. … Westerners have this sense that Iranian women are submissive victims. But they’re not victims, and they’re certainly not submissive. … What I’m saying is this: through their resistance and strength, Iranian women have a voice in Iranian society, and they continue to have a voice, perhaps more so today than ever before.” (Azam Zanganeh, 46–47)
These film makers have worked around the state’s puritanical censors, and advanced their own sense of morality. Some of their films portrayed dutiful women who made sacrifices for their families and the nation. But increasingly they showed women who defended their friends and children from abusive men, from war, or the state. They explored the complexity of sexual desire, abuse, infidelity, abortion, double standards, and the fragility of modern individualistic human relations. Largely due to these female film-makers, cinema critic James Rosenbaum wrote that “while Iranians continue to be among the most demonized people on the planet, Iranian cinema is becoming almost universally recognized as the most ethical as well as the most humanist” (Ebrahimi, 144). Here’s a brief description of one female film director’s career:
Tahmineh Milani is the director, producer, and screenwriter for over a dozen major films, many of them strongly feminist. Her films have won six international awards, two of them for best director, and two for best screenplay.
As an electrical engineering student in the late 1970s, Milani was a left-wing activist against the shah. Then in 1982, after the universities temporarily closed to make the curriculum more Islamic, she joined a movie-making team, and became assistant director for The Red Line. She had her first chance as lead director in 1989, with Children of Divorce, and then started producing internationally acclaimed films every year or two. In The Legend of a Sigh (1991), a woman sighs in despair at ever getting her writing published, and the sigh materializes into a figure who lets her switch at will between five different identities. In the 1992 movie What Did You Do Again?, a girl discovers the power to change her family just by talking to herself. Milani’s 1996 film Two Women follows the lives of two female friends, who are separated because one of them is forced to marry a jealous, controlling man. Conservative critics accused Milani of encouraging women to revolt. She said the critics were just scared that their own wives would riot after seeing the films.
In The Hidden Half (2001), a young woman joins a Marxist rebel group against the shah in the 1970s. Then after the revolution she has to conceal her past, even from her husband after she gets married. Finally, however, she has to reveal the hidden half of her life. When this film was released, the government charged Milani with counter-revolutionary propaganda and threw her in Evin prison for two weeks. After President Khatami intervened to release her, she wove accounts of the women she met in prison into the film Settling Scores (2007). In this movie, a group of women who are released from prison rent a house together and make plans for revenge on men. Pretending to be prostitutes, they lure targeted men home, beat them up, rob them, and throw them out. Some authorities have regarded Milani as “extremely feminist,” but she’s probably best known for her comedies such as What’s Up? (1991), which features a deeply emotional robot (en.iranwire, Tahmineh Milani).
From the upcoming book, Mother Persia: Praise for Great Iranian Women
Sources:
Azam Zanganeh, Lila (2006) My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices. Beacon Press.
Ebrahimi, Mehraneh (2019) Women, Art, and Literature in the Iranian Diaspora. Syracuse U. Press.
en.iranwire, Tahmineh Milani