The True State of ‘Film Culture’ in Today’s Iran
by John T. SimpsonSpeaking at a film seminar in Tehran this past week, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis made the following statement regarding the recent controversy over such films as “300″ and “The Wrestler,” which resulted in the Iranian government demanding apologies for the cultural slanders contained within:
Mr. Ganis praised Iranian civilization and said the film “300″ was based on a comic strip; its audience was not interested in the film’s credibility.
“No film can distort Iran culture,” Mr. Ganis added.
While it may be true that no film can distort Iranian culture as the esteemed Mr. Ganis claims, the current Islamist regime in Iran can most certainly distort culture in film, and do. And they have created masterpieces that would have had Hitler and Goebbels in jaw-dropping awe. You really only need to see the names.
TOM AND JERRY IS A JEWISH CONSPIRACY
As to the Zionist “Tom and Jerry,” the erudite Iranian scholar Hasan Bolkhari explained in his film seminar broadcast on Iranian TV that the cartoons were a conspiracy by the ”Jew Walt Disney” to improve the image of mice in Europe.
See, Jews were called ‘dirty mice’ during the Holocaust, so “Jew Disney” didn’t want people looking at mice and thinking ”Jew!” Ergo, Tom and Jerry. The Esteemed Mr. Bolkhari then went to say that yes, in fact, Jews WERE dirty mice! Cunning, too! Just like Jerry!
By the way, Mr. Bolkhari is not a lone nut job. He is in fact an Iranian Scholar who is cultural advisor to the Iran Education Ministry and is considered a “mass media expert” for the Iranian government. Much as I’m sure Josef Goebbels was considered a “mass media expert” for Hitler’s Third Reich.
For sci-fi buffs we have BLACK HOUSE, the epic and eminently bizarre tale of evil Jews in Space.
And let’s not forget the kids. It’s ALWAYS about the kids!
Cartoons teaching children hatred and martyrdom are as ubiquitous on Iranian TV stations as SpongeBob reruns are here. In fact, Iran is now exporting these cultural kiddie masterpieces to the larger Muslim world and is doing boffo business. A 2005 BBC report on Iran’s animation industry called this development, in blackly ironic fashion, “booming.”
Which brings us to this puzzling follow-up by the esteemed Mr. Ganis:
“Iran has the potential of making “big movies” if it can attract investment to cinematic marketing.”
The obvious question here, to me at least, is how can Iran’s film industry attract any significant financing when the country is under sanctions by nearly every nation on earth? And will be under even more if the Big Three in Europe have their way?
As to making big movies, the Iranian film industry seems to have had no problem producing films with blockbuster impact.
One such Iranian film, ASSASSINATION OF A PHARAOH, praises Khalid Islambouli, the ”martyr” who assassinated former Egyptian President and “traitor” Anwar Sadat in 1981 for signing the Camp David Peace Accords.
The responses from the Egyptian government and people were nuclear. The film was protested by President Mubarak, the Egyptian Parliament, and by throngs of enraged protesters in the streets of Cairo. Egyptian pundits condemned the depravity of it all and expressed deep skepticism of official Iranian government denials of complicity.
Columnist Ibrahin Sa’ada of Egypt’s daily “Al-Akhbar” was particularly vehement:
This film reveals the depravity of the Iranian ayatollahs. Can anyone believe that the Iranian regime, which tells every citizen when to breathe and when to stop breathing, really knew nothing about this film, and that a ‘group of people simply decided to produce a film against the late Egyptian president and to glorify [the assassin Khaled] Islambouli and his gang, calling them “innocent and kind-hearted martyrs”?
The Iranian ayatollahs, heirs of Khomeini, who have cut out the tongue, chopped off the hand, wrung the neck, and slashed the veins of every oppositionist…does anyone believe that they let a ‘group of people’ write a script for a documentary, shoot it, produce it and air it without their consent?
Though the Egyptians can’t prove complicity on the part of Iran’s government, and the Iranians themselves deny involvement with the film, there are circumstantial factors that lend credence to Egyptian skepticism.
First, this Iranian film classic was debuted at a government-sanctioned film festival held by the “Committee for Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement in Iran.” Speaks volumes.
Second, the Iranian thugocracy has named a street in Tehran after Islambouli. Columnist Makram Muhammad Ahmad, head of the Egyptian Journalists Association, responded in force to that REAL cultural slander in the Egyptian daily “Al-Ahram”:
How would the heads of the Iranian regime feel if the Egyptians set up a statue of the [late] Iranian Shah in a Cairo square?
For the explosive climax, the Sadat family has launched a half-billon dollar defamation lawsuit against the Iranian regime over the film. Sounds like boffo box office to me.
But film content is not the only glaring oversight Mr. Ganis et al have made with regard to Iranian film. He also seems to be quite oblivious to the harsh plight of Iranian filmmakers themselves. French-Iranian filmmaker Mehrnoushe Solouki was arrested and thrown into Iran’s notorious Evin prison for the egregious crime of stumbling upon a mass grave.
Ms. Solouki described her experience of the discovery of the graves:
It was nothing like a cemetery. And it was obvious that thousands of people were buried under these stones and dust. And when I asked some of the people who were there, they said that nobody is talking about these people.
Iranian security forces picked her up after she spoke with a professor who, according to Solouki, believes what happened to the people in the grave is a crime against humanity. Radio Free Europe reported in early November that the grave contained the bodies of regime opponents executed in 1988.
Here is how Ms. Solouki, since released from prison after considerable international pressure, described her experience at Evin Prison, where detained American Roxana Saberi is currently confined:
My solitary confinement was like stepping into a grave. There was nothing, I was sleeping on the floor and there was a 24/7 light bulb on over my head.
Iranian filmmaker Tamineh Milani, a feminist who made a number of films highlighting the position of women in Iran, was arrested, tried and sentenced to death for the unforgivable offense of making and pitching “The Hidden Half.”
The film, a drama about a man torn between two women, one of whom is a political prisoner, and another who, unbeknownst to him, has her own political past. Among other things, the film depicts internal struggle in Iran soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
For this heinous celluloid offense to Iranian culture and Islamist purity Ms. Milani was charged by the Iranian regime with “supporting factions waging war against God, and of misusing the arts in support of counter-revolutionary and opposition groups.”
The blackly comic irony of the charge of misusing the arts would be uproarious if the situation were not so serious. Like Ms. Sokouli, Ms. Milani was eventually released after concerted outrage from both within and without Iran.
But Ms. Sokouli and Ms. Milani are the lucky ones.
Esha Momeni, a 28-year-old graduate student working on her master’s degree thesis in Iran about the country’s women’s rights movement, was arrested by Iranian police in October 2008 after filming interviews of women’s rights advocates. She was then imprisoned and held without bail in some subterranean Tehran hellhole.
In November of last year Ms. Moneni was finally granted bail after her father put up the deed to his apartment. But she must now stand before a tribunal for “acting against national security.”
Her fate has yet to be decided. But like Ms. Solouki and Ms. Milani, there are concerted efforts ongoing that may yet persuade the Iranian regime to release Esha. As in Hollywood, cut-throat totalitarian dictatorships hate bad press. Ruins their image.
But in Iran, who can really know?
And just how many other filmmakers and creative artists, not to mention ordinary citizens who do not enjoy such high visibility as the aforementioned filmmakers are languishing in Iranian hellholes, enduring nightmarish conditions and even torture without relent?
Were I an Academy President knowledgeable of all these circumstances I would have not left for Iran in the first place, especially given the Iranian regime’s atrocious human rights record.
If, say, I were requested by President Obama to go on a mission to extend one last olive branch to Iran, I would have at least made the first condition of any visit contingent upon the release of Esha Momeni before I even left the states.
And I certainly would not have remained in Tehran after that olive branch was slapped out of both my and President Obama’s hands with the apology demand. For film, I apologize to no one! By my standards, and that of most Americans I’m sure, in-your-face is where film needs to be!
But that’s just me. Like Mr. Ganis and the rest of Team Hollywood appear to be, I am not willfully blind or oblivious to the harsh and nightmarish realities of the Iranian thugocracy. And I would have been quite vocal to anyone demanding an apology for cultural slanders in film, especially given all I now know about theirs.
In fact, were I in Mr. Ganis’ place right now, I would probably be languishing in Evin Prison right across the hall from Roxana Saberi.
But as Mr. Ganis and Team Hollywood sip tea, share pleasantries and teach film seminars to the Goebbels-like propagandists responsible for the REAL cultural slanders in film I have elaborated on, and all of which is only scratching the surface, he and the rest of Team Hollywood seem to be as oblivious to the true state of Iranian film culture as they seem to be to the mobs of Iranian Gestapo and Hamas Blackshirts dancing in the streets of Tehran for ‘innocent’ blood-drenched Brother Omar Bashir, and by default genocide, beneath their gilded Iranian cages.
It would seem the Iranian film industry is not the only one in a very sorry state.
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41 Comments
When our celebrities lend credibility to oppresive regimes, they screw over their supposed counterparts who really "speak truth to power". It must appear like Jane Fonda sitting on anti-aircraft turret to them.
In other Iranian news, someone hurled a shoe at Ahmadinejad. http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1069220.html
Something tells me that this won't be as pleasing to Hollywood liberals as the shoes being thrown at President Bush last year.
Here is what Iranian dissidents think of our liberals.
http://ardeshird.blogspot.com/2009/03/voa-persian...
[...] Hollywood types lending their approval to the Iranian regime’s propaganda, they really don’t seem to be speaking truth to power or any of the other feelgood crap they [...]
There's a kernel of a good idea with this cultural exchange … to let artists in the U.S. reach out to artists in Iran and put all politics aside. But as you've so eloquently stated, that kernel is quickly lost thanks to the ugly realities that exist in the country. That won't stop Ganis and co. from talking up their mission, and feeling oh, so good about the 'work' they got done with their trip.
Useful idiots. But what is the true payoff ? Do these people feel better about themselves or was there a quid pro quo ?
Some introductions maybe, a nod to potential investors that so and so is okay and maybe you should give him some money ??? Probably through a third party in Dubai or a friendly go-between in LA. Follow the money, see who is funding their projects tomorrow. If it doesn't happen, they're idiots. If it does, they're just traitors.
Maybe Sean Penn can help cement Hollywood relations with Iran by visiting them and presenting a screening of 'Milk'.
I'm surprised the Iranian president hasn't been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize yet. Now that the Hollywood contingent has descended, he probably will.
http://the100mostannoyingthings.blogspot.com/
This is one of the most interesting contradictions the Hollywood left has to deal with. They truly believe dreck
like 'Rendition' will show the mullahs whose side they are really on. After the parade of middle-east themed
garbage that spewed from our glittering film capital, you'd think they'd be buds by now.
You would be thinking wrong.
No, Iran recently told Hollywood 'they needed to apologize' for their secular ways… by the by, 'the Jew' Walt Disney was anything but; he was regarded as at least mildly anti-Semitic. So, the facts mean nothing to these people- they'll just get in the way of good propaganda…
…"charged …of misusing the arts in support of counter-revolutionary and opposition groups.”
Wow, is all I can say to this charge. No artist in this country can even imagine living under this kind of oppression. American artists constantly confuse public criticism for "oppression".
If he screened that film their, methinks Penn would be in cement! They have such a warm and fuzzy view about the subject.
It was my understanding that, wrt the Iranian Film industry, every film script, prior to any production or filming, MUST be approved by the Iraninan goverment. Their approval is contingent on several things, not the least of which are, men and women cannot make physical contact (even though they may be playing man and wife), no nudity, no statements made against the goverment, etc. My point is, if these constraints are still in place, and if they are known by filmmakers up front before any production begins, and the Iranian government stands by these rules, HOW could hollywood possibly work within those constraints and make money. The Iranian directors that have, have made very good films but not necessarily mainstream films! Why don't we see if the Iranian government would let Judd Apatow make Knocked Up, in Tehran??
Think not.
I've had it with "your comment awaits moderation" and then it is moderated out of existence. I wrote nothing that needed moderation, insulted no one, just made what I considered a salient point. Dirty Harry, if you're reading this, you need to stoke up DHP. This is a good site for reading but does not offer the opportunity for good dialogue.
"Throwing shoes is SOOOOOOOO last administration"
Yeah 300 was based on a comic book, which was based on a real historical battle. Leonidas did exist. He was one of two Spartan Kings and Gorgo, according to sources really did say to her husband, Spartan come back with your shield or on it. That the Iranians cannot grasp that a few Greeks made Xerxes wet his pants for a few days makes sense considering that they are mostly smoke and wind anyway. Immortals we'll put them to the test.
This visit to Iran from this hollywood group is disgusting. It makes me furious. If they only knew how ridiculous they look. Such hypocrites.
Ummm…wasn't Tom and Jerry a Hannah & Barbara creation for MGM, not Disney? Not to punch holes in anything a "scholar" would pontificate, but…
Indeed it was…which shows how much a "scholar" knows.
Good link. Great post in general, very informative. I have noticed that Leftists in the Jamie Glazov sense tend to have not a clue what's going on in the world that they so vigorously defend. I think they just like the glamor of looking like a rebel. Furthermore, this post does a great job in describing the Iranian film industry, which most Americans don't know a lot about. It only shows why it's good some countries don't have more global appeal, though our industry is a mess and it does have global market.
So much for research — Walt Disney happens to be the only non-Jewish original studio mogul.
They're all fronts for the Zionist Oppressors anyway. MGM, SchmemGM. Can't expect a scholar to waste his time with corporate branding, let's get real here.
Does Sean realize what happens to gays in Moslem countries ?
Having met Ganis, I can attest to his useful idiocy.
300 is a re-telling of a TRUE STORY as told by Herodotus, within his "Persian Wars." Herodotus wrote the book as an investigation as to why a huge and powerful Persia could be beaten in war by a bunch of small fractious city states on a rocky peninsula. Persia was, in his telling, a nation of slaves, toys of the Emperor, who fought out of fear for their own lives and that of their families. The Greeks were on the other hand, free people, who fought for their own and their citys' honour. That is the story of Thermopylae; and of Salamis; and of Marathon.
The message of the Persian Wars forms the basis of our own ideas of freedom. That American movie makers apologize for that message, blow it off as "comic book trash" and of no importance in the face of Iranian outrage is a mark of Hollywood's decadence.
At least now I know where MIchael Moore learned his craft.
I loved "300." That said, I hope it's not the only introduction the younger generation gets to the Persian Wars, let alone to everything Thermopylae stands for. Given the current status of public school education, I'm afraid it may be. Elephants? Twice the size of mammoths? A Persian king who looks like a homoerotic black S&M chandelier? Spartans who speak the Welsh/Scottish Greek dialect? The movie wasn't trash, but it was comic book.
Unfortunately, this treatment allowed the Iranians to come up with their own take on Thermopylae, as evidenced here: http://www.iranian.com/Daryaee/2007/March/300/ind... It's the lecture I'm sure our Hollyweird gang got when they arrived in Iran. But if the movie at least got the youngsters interested in reading about the Persian Wars and the probable salvation of western civilization, good. They certainly won't learn it by the time they get to college, where western civilization is denigrated as Euro-centric oppressive racism.
I say it again, this same country Iran, who executed a young girl by hanging her from a from a crane should be blacklisted. Any women such as Benning, should be ashamed of themselves. Hollywood is full of morons.
if only it was attached an RPG!
What is wrong with these people?? Are they insane??
A touchy group. Perhaps the Israelis will drop a nuke or two when they do their inevitable fly-over. I will contribute to that fund any day.
I say it again, this same country Iran, who executed a young girl by hanging her from a crane should be blacklisted. Women such as Benning, should be ashamed of themselves. Hollywood is full of morons.
"This film…without their consent?" Reread the quote, and reflect: Have two paragraphs come from anybody else that describe the Ayatollahs so well?
The above quote comes from an Egyptian columnist. As such, he is sanctioned by the unfree state he lives in and writes for. I say if what he writes is true, motive is irrelevant. It may be that what he writes serves the morally crippled government he depends upon, but if what he writes is true, those facts are independent of the ruling parties' desires.
More to follow.
While Egypt's hands may be stained, truth is not. This man may have been writing an article in favor of political factions that exist in his country, but it simply doesn't matter. His viewpoint, and his government's views, do not matter, so long as the words written reflect truth. A rational person paying attention to the actions of the Iranian regime would accept the above arguments as plausibly true, based on past history.
/Just a basic defense against the what-if types and the relativists. Call me old-school, but when the thing speaks for itself, when truths are self-evident, we can ignore motives. Even the foul tell the truth now and again. It's the "now and again" that ensures they'll never be lumped in with the righteous
I know a lot of people didn't like the Hollywood guys' visit in Iran. But I actually think it is a good thing. I see the positive side to this. Hollywood and the Mullahs? Think! The Mullahs hate Hollywood because it propagates modernity, decadence, nudity, and all the stuff the Mullahs hate you name it. Nah the Mullahs aren't that stupid to enjoy Hollywood style support. It would finish them off.
Darryl Zanuck wasn't Jewish either.
[...] film seminars to? Your heel-ground filmmaker buddies? Or these Iranian Goebbels-like propaganda film industry [...]
[...] Hitlerite regime, there is no separation of anything from ideology. Not only does Iran have a film industry worthy of Goebbels, they’ve even sentenced filmmakers to death for celluloid slanders! [...]
[...] Hitlerite regime, there is no separation of anything from ideology. Not only does Iran have a film industry worthy of Goebbels, they’ve even sentenced filmmakers to death for celluloid slanders! [...]
[...] I have to wonder. To paraphrase Jon Stewart, Is this Hollywood Diplomacy Inaction? Like they’re afraid if anyone in Hollywood said anything bad about Iran, it might set back the Obamamessiah’s ‘reaching out’ to today’s Third Reich? Or if AMPAS said anything bad about Iran in a press release, they might not be allowed back to apologize, or train Iran’s propaganda film stooges again? [...]
[...] covering Iran (unlike some people) and hammering AMPAS for their tea and finger-cookie soirees with these guys, when I saw what Iran was pulling with Roxana and called it for what it was: a hostage crisis. [...]
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