Iranian Cinema thrives with Hamedan Film festival

The West despises the current Iranian regime but one would find hardly any one in the West who doesn't admire the sheer uniqueness of Iranian cinema. Indian filmmakers admit that they would love to emulate the Iranian success at international film festivals. 272 short and feature films from 39 countries, including India, will be screened at the 22nd Hamedan International Children and Young Adults Film Festival (June 20-25, 2008).

132 films will vie for honours in the competitive category and 140 in the non- competitive section will be screened, said the secretary of the festival Majid Shah Hosseini Sunday, June 16.

"Films from Argentina, Germany, USA, UK, Austria, Spain, Estonia, Indonesia, Belgium, Portugal, Thailand, China, Japan, Russia, India, Greece, Sweden, Serbia, France, Finland, South Korea, Croatia, Egypt, and Hungary will participate in the six-day event," Hosseini added according to the Iranian news agency, IRNA.

He stated that on the sidelines of the festival, question and answer meeting, painting workshops, cultural products exhibition, and photo and painting exhibitions will be held.

Iranian director Rasul Sadr-Ameli and film expert Mohammad-Baqer Qahramani are the Iranian members of the jury.

Maryanne Redpath, director of the Generation, the children’s and youth film section at the Berlinale, Greek actor Michail Maniatis, Singaporean filmmaker Songyos Sugmakanan, Chinese producer Yao Guo Ming, and Serbia’s Media Education Centre Director Miomir Rajcevic are the foreign members of the jury.

Indian films at Hamedan

From India, two films by Vinod Ganatra entitled “Hide and Seek” and “Heda-Hoda”, Bipin Nadkarni’s “A Home in the Sky”, Rishi Deshpande’s “The Will to Win!” and Kranti Kanade’s “Mahek” will be screened during the gala.

Hamedan is the oldest city of Iran

The city of Hamedan in
Hamedan province is situated in the middle of western Iran about 340 km away from the capital of Iran. It's a world-fame seat of learning and spirituality. Hamedan (Ecbatana), the oldest city of Iran, is also one of the oldest cities in the world.

The 22nd Hamedan International Film Festival for Children and Young Adults will pay homage to Iran’s award winner actor Reza Naji in one of its commemoration programmes, according to Tehran Times.

Naji won the Silver Bear prize for best actor at the 58th Berlin Film Festival for his role in director Majid Majidi’s “The Song of Sparrows” in February 2008.

Iranian films at international film festivals

Iranian films feature regularly in the world's top most film festivals and win laurels for the country.

The 19th Marseille International Documentary Film Festival will be the venue for a screening of Life by Iran's Mahmoud Kiyani Falavarjani. The 2008 Marseille International Documentary Film Festival runs from July 2 to 7 and its international program will include 33 documentaries from 19 countries.

Three WomenThe Age d'or & Cinedecouvertes Competition section of the Brussels European Film Festival (June 28 to July 6, 2008) will be screening two Iranian films in Belgium.

Manijeh Hekmat's Three Women and Pouria Azarbaijani's Unfinished Stories will compete with 20 international films.

Three Women

Three women of three generations- grandmother, mother and daughter- have been lost in the past, present and future. It's a strong, naturalistic drama about Iranian women searching for their roots amid questions about their country's heritage. With a rebellious daughter repping the problems of contempo youth, a middle-class mother standing for the "burned generation" that came of age with the Islamic Revolution and grandmother symbolizing traditional ways. The film offers a compelling sociological portrait- Variety.

Iranian women directors vs Farah Khan, Tanuja Chandra etc.

The great thing about the Iranian cinema is that women directors are in the fore front. They are much more imaginative, assertive and original than their counterparts in India- Farah Khan, Tanuja Chandra and Kalpana Lajimi- all put together. Only Aparna Sen could match the talents of the Iranian women. Obviously, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta and Gurinder Chadha are not included as they are not based in India. Women filmmakers in Iran have won top awards at international film festivals. And, this is in a nation where women are subjected to various restraints.

Abbas Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf and others...

'Offside' 2006 by Jafar Panahi won Silver Bear Grand Jury PrizeBritain's Channel 4 celebrated the success of Iranian cinema in May 2008.

"Its most famous filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami, made where's the Friend's House? in 1986, at a time when Western cinema was at its shallowest, and the contrast was remarkable. Thereafter, Kiarostami became one of the most surprising (that word again) humane and innovative filmmakers in the world. Soon after that, his acclaim was matched by a precocious, self-educated former revolutionary, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who had been imprisoned by the Shah for attempting to stab a policeman. In 1996, Makhmalbaf made what I think is the signature film of the 1990s, A Moment of Innocence, in which the policeman himself - and Makhmalbaf - each film their versions of the stabbing.

Kiarostami's and Makhmalbaf's unique way of turning reality over before our eyes, like a plough tills soil, was Iranian cinema latest challenge to expectations, but it was not the last. At the end of the 1990s, Makhmalbaf's daughter Samira became the latest women to join the country's swelling rank of female directors - far more, in proportion, than in the so-called free West. Samira's film The Apple took the 1998 Cannes film festival by storm and she was - wait for it - only 18. And Iran's box of cinematic magic tricks was still not over. A few years later, Samira's younger sister, Hana, became, at 15, the youngest director ever to play in a film festival's main competition.

So the magicians of Iranian film have been dazzling us for years now. Predictably, when digital filming came along in the mid 1990s, they took to it more intelligently, with more daring, than directors from any other country. Mania Akbari's new film 20 Fingers is the latest example of this. Together such filmmakers have won more prizes than another other national group of directors. What they have lacked in money they have more than made up for creatively." - Mark Cousins