The way I see it: Hana Makhmalbaf

Makhmalbaf, aged 19, is a film director from Iran. Her debut feature, “Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame”, set in modern Afghanistan, is out now.

• 1 Does art make a difference?
Every morning we wake up and go to the mirror and check ourselves. If we look good, we enjoy what we see; otherwise we make some adjustments in order to be happy. Cinema is like putting the mirror in front of society.
• 2 Should politics and art mix?
Today, no matter what you talk about, people try to find a political message. In fact, my main point in my film is to leave politics and its wars to one side, and instead pay attention to the lives of children whose culture and future are destroyed as a result of violent conflict.
• 3 Is your work for the many or for the few?
I would like my film to be watched by as many people as possible. The first and best award for a film is its audience.
• 4 If you were world leader, what would be your first law?
Mutual agreement, despite all the differences that exist between people. There is no one truth that we would wish the whole world to believe.
• 5 Who would be your top advisers?
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, my father. He is not just a great film-maker, but very human at the same time. Seeing my father’s heart, I not only fell in love with the cinema, but with every creature in this world. This love of my father has inspired my life.
• 6What, if anything, would you censor?
I would censor censorship.
• 7 If you had to banish one public figure, who would it be?
I became a film-maker to avoid this. I prefer to stay on the side of the people who are at risk of being eliminated by those in power, but who are not responsible for violent acts.
• 8 What are the rules that you live by?
What remains in the world is the effect of what people have done. So why should we leave our children and the following generations a legacy of destruction, rather than construction and a green and peaceful land?
• 9 Do you love your country?
I see the whole world as my country. Maintaining your sense of humanity is more important to me than the unnecessary boundaries imposed by nationalism.
• 10 Are we all doomed?
The choice remains ours, becoming Gandhi or Hitler . . .

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2 comments from readers

freedomlover
25 July 2008 at 20:40

Mohsin Makhmalbaf is not ADVISER, he is actual film maker of these films which are out under the name of his children!!

freedomlover
25 July 2008 at 20:48

“The Voyage of Kandahar”, Makhmalbaf’s chauvinistic vision of the people of Afghanistan

By Aazar Darakhshan

“8th March” Magazine, Issue no. 5, April 2002

Muhsin Makhmalbaf, a film maker from ex Hizb-u-llah (God’s Party) who recently joined the so-called assemblage of “reformists”, eventually made the most of the opportunity. While the call for the Afghan issue was at its climax, he directed a film called “The Voyage of Khandahar” on the demand of UNESCO. The western Imperialists too, as an acknowledgment to this service, granted him with an award in one of the hundred film festivals, which he, of course out of “generosity”, was not ready to accept, and insisted upon the fact that his only reward can be a solution to the problem of the “Women” of Afghanistan!!!

“The Voyage of Kandahar” is the eye-witness story of an Afghan girl who lives in Canada and enters Afghanistan illegally via Iran to rescue her sister who is left in Kabul, and out of the blue, the heroin (rawi) of the movie of Makhmalbaf is a journalist besides.

Makhmalbaf has left no stone unturned in portraying a contemptuous and despicable picture of Afghan people. A picture which has quite alike resemblance with the circumstances of the invasion of Imperialists in Afghanistan. Throughout the film, the people of Afghanistan are despised, incapable and unidentified people, making the spectator feel how customary it is for this nation to be rescued by an external power. It was not pointless that the American President, George Bush asked for a copy of this film.

Let’s take a look at different actual scenes of the film.

The story begins in one of the Afghan refugee camps in Iran. The process of “enforced go back” of homeless wandering Afghans is pictured where a young girl is giving safety instructions regarding the toy shaped mines they’ll come across on their way. The male member of each family possesses many veiled women. The heroin (rawi) of the film, whose performance is the reflection of Makhmalbaf’s notion of Afghanistan, in the beginning, speaks of the absence of Taliban and then, questions over the reason behind women veiled even there, and whether it really is an imposed curb of the Stat or their own culture?

It is surprising that Mr. Makhmalbaf, even after two decades of imposed Hijab on women in Iran, still doesn’t know whether it is the culture of the people or a means of state suppression of women. The dull-witted logic of Makhmalbaf, who wishes his film’s popularity among a handful of western intellectuals, leads to the relegation of the clear reality of ideological containment of women by the Islamic regimes of Iran and Afghanistan, to the culture of the people in a deceptive style.

Not this, but a benevolent prayer is the start up scene of this film which is supposedly the escort of those oppressed vagrants. One of the characters in this scene says: “Go and pray so that the world comes to set you free, and if no one comes for rescue, don’t get worried, imagine that you are like ants, then your home would seem to you as if very big and comfortable.” (As it is). Is it possible to abuse a nation so shamelessly? Whose logic in this world is willing to take people not more than ants? Whose logic is this which tells the people of a country to keep their fingers crossed so that someone comes to salvage them because they are no more than ants? This thinking is parallel to the blatant circumstances created today by the Imperialists under the leadership of America. From the Director of CIA to the Foreign Minister of USA, to the Chairperson of this or that Trade Institution, to the Chief Editors of newspapers and Bureau Chiefs of the news agencies …each and every has the right to decide over the destiny of the people of Afghanistan but not themselves?

The Afghan family, who carries a UN flag given by the Islamic Republic so to be so called safe from any violence, is kicked out of the vehicle, assaulted with a knife and looted in all their possessions by the driver in the middle of the way. All over this incident the man with three women, the journalist girl and ten children are mere abject observers and do nothing but implore. According to Makhmalbaf this number of people can do nothing about one knife-equipped man, subsequently no sign of resistance but of cry and pray!!!

But, as the film is supposed to be regarding Afghan women, we see scenes of groups of women, which cant be figured out, whether are going to a wedding or it is just an excuse to pass-by the Taliban check posts and reach the areas under their control. Any way their presence in the scene is not important, but the way they are depicted by Makhmalbaf is of a moment of concern (qabil-e-tamul). Bunches of women with colored veils are brought in the picture with music and sites as their background and an endeavor is made to provide the spectator with a pleasant view through yellow, lemonish, blue and …images in the arid deserted region. We do see some scenes of women veiled but most of them are expressionless which makes them inert (munfael). The Afghan women of Kandahar film don’t provoke any feelings in any woman. They are unidentified, passive (munfael), and unvoiced. It is not known, where all those clandestine schools are, which were established by Afghan women as a form of resistance against the pressures of religious misogynist jurisdiction. Not even at least one resisting Afghan woman can be seen in this “documentary” film. Makhmalbaf doesn’t even put an attempt to capture the hidden side of the veil and portray the hell-like prison of women underneath. Perhaps according to the advice given in the beginning of the film, Afghan women are necessarily to concur that now they ought to be veiled, so better seek enduring it in a variety of colors. However and factually, mainstream of women in Afghanistan are underprivileged and their veils are of a substandard gray-colored fabric, making it further frustrating and austere. That is why Makhmalbaf’s film is left unsubstantiated even in this field as well, by screening unreal images of women’s conditions.

In an additional glance, a crowd of more than hundred men and women are screened surrounded by one male and three female Taliban, and are controlled! And it is shown that this mass of hundred people is so submissive and altered (maskh) before the four guards, which subsequently leads to minds made up over the fact that the people of Afghanistan would never be competent enough to overwhelm Taliban and for sure western powers and army is looked-for to bring justice.

Yet inadequate for Makhmalbaf, he strives to present altered, anagrammed and unreal pictures of a nation who according to him is turned to despised and profit gainer (manfiat jo) elements due to miseries and calamities, and the original people pictured in this film are all deceitful and charlatan from a to z.

In some scenes of the film, there is a little boy supposedly the lady’s escort till Kabul, who was left in the middle of the way by the bandit, who throughout the journey tries hard to fish out money from the journalist girl by hook or by crook. He even goes on to sell her the ring he found on the way which she considered a bomb.

Another handicapped man who is also up to dragging out money from the journalist girl for taking her to Kabul, has made the Red Cross team sick and tired. He goes there everyday so by deceit, get an artificial limb and sell it in the market. No doubt such people are found every where in the world. But when the only depicted pictures of a nation are these ones, then the creator and his chauvinistic and arrogant vision must be doubted over.

Some other contemptible scenes of the film can be seen where Makhmalbaf seeks depicting war as a run of the mill phenomenon for the people. In one of them, Makhmalbaf, making use of colors and music, presents a mundane but beautified sketch of despair and disaster of thousands of handicapped Afghans. Makhmalbaf believes that human beings are happened to get accustomed to all kinds of adversities and wretched circumstances or - according to the dialogue in the beginning of the film - better get used to it. In this scene we see a bunch of disabled people who run in a dance tune (aahang-e-raqs goona) towards a place where artificial limbs are being thrown down the skies and they run to get those landing limbs.

In a word, “The Voyage of Kandahar” is not at all a documentary. There is neither a sign of purity and intimation of Afghan people nor of their resistance, struggle and eminent headstrongness in this film. No doubt the resistance and defiance of Afghan women is of its own kind. Makhmalbaf has used real human beings to give their unreal picture and this is the point where we distinguish between a documentary and an unjustified film.

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