Report on the 60^th San Sebastian International Film
Festival

60 Years Is Nothing

 The 60^th edition of San Sebastian Film Festival was held in a descent way with over 200 movies in various sections, enthusiastic viewers, passionate and friendly hosting, and very little shortcomings in the tumultuous days of Spain’s deep economic crisis, and in its organizers’ words amidst a crisis that has left its mark on creativity and culture by ruling them out as unnecessary extravaganza. Like the other four times I had visited he festival in recent past, it had a pleasant discipline and tempo and a cordial atmosphere both in the movie theaters and in the spectacular city that is to become Europe’s cultural capital by the year 2016. The festival was first held in 1950 to attract more tourists to the beautiful beaches of San Sebastian with its golden sand and azure water. It became officially an international film festival in 1953and later became Spain’s most credible and impressive film event. It also became the best place to detect and follow the newest and most notable films from Latin America as well as a platform for the region’s creative filmmakers and a very good venue to introduce their films to European film markets. The festival’s budget this year was less than previous years. But organizers do not run a festival only with money. They invested their heart in order to ad value to the spectacular festival.

Preparations for holding the 6th festival started only a few days after the 59th edition when an email from the organizers informed reporters that posters were being designed by graphic artists for the 60th edition of the event. From then on, in between the news of new films and celebrities to take part in the event, we also saw various posters in the emails from the festival. Those posters were beautiful, created in various styles with a variety of motifs. Every one of those posters could have been elected as the best poster, if there was a contest among posters for film festivals. Later a modest black and white poster was chosen from among all those colorful beautiful designs. It showed a 60 with the last figure looking like an opened link of a chain. It was not a surprising choice. A country with great painters such as Francisco Goya, Diego Velazquez, El Greco, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali with about four million Euros I revenues from tourism who go there to see the works of hundreds of such great artists did not need to boast colors on the posters of its most important film festival. Such a simple but otherwise solid and eye-catching work of art has been born out of such a celebrated good taste. From another point of view, such a choice could be a sign of sympathy with the economy of part of the population: A choice that has to be appreciated.

Posters and teasers of film festivals are part of their identity and they can be memorable when they are created beautifully and in an artistic way. The film festival in San Sebastian has always had the shortest, the most attractive and the most memorable teasers. The posters have always been consistent with the teasers as far as their motifs are concerned. The teasers are so short that they will not be boring even you watch them several times during the day. You are going to love them every single time. As young adults we used to draw the picture of a standing man on a 5x% cm cardboard and on the other side of it we sketched the same man in a moving position. Then we whirled the threads we had fastened to the two sides of the cardboard and created some sort of enjoyable moving image. This year’s San Sebastian Film Festival’s teaser had used the same technique of animation. The figure 60 was printed on both sides of the cardboard and when it moved we saw the figure 60 in many – perhaps 60 – positions which turned from a shaking pale grey into a static 60; the same familiar one that we had seen on the poster. In this way we saw 60 years of ups and down of the history of the festival in a matter of six seconds.

Usually the competition section of a class A film festival features 18 movies. This year, for the first time, only 13 of the 18 entries in this festival were reviewed by the jury. Out of the other five Arbitrage (Nicholas Jarecki) was shown at the opening ceremony and Quartet (Dustin Huffman) at the closing ceremony; and Argo (Ben Affleck), Atraco! (Eduard Cortes) and The Impossible (Juan Antonio Bayona) were shown out of competition. Apart from the financial strains, the only intelligent guess about why only 13 films were shown at the competition section, which is the core of any festival, is that there are less and less good films and more and more superficial movies everyday that cannot add value to such a festival.
The selection committee had chosen 17 films for the New Directors section. All of these films including the Iranian entry Parviz by Majid Barzegar, had their first screening at San Sebastian. At the closing ceremony the section’s jury, headed by Iranian distributor Katayoun Shahabi who distributes Iranian films in the international market, expressed appreciation for Parviz and the Peruvian entry The Cleaner by Adrian Saba. However, the most spectacular section of the festival was Zabaltegi, with 28 films that had already been shown and were acclaimed at other international festivals. These included Amour (Michael Haneke), the winner of Palm d’Or at Canes 2012, and Caesar Must Die by (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani) the winner of the golden bear at Berlin 2012.

I was surprised upon my arrival after I found out that there were only two films planned for journalists for 26 September. It was unprecedented. I had only seen it in Animafest Zagreb (1986) that organizers had let alone reporters for half a day. But the surprise did not last long. Every day after the festival opened, there were more and more flyers, posters, handwritten slogans and graffiti around. On the 26 September there was an all out demonstration by leftist and right wing groups against unemployment, poverty and the economic austerity policy of the government. That was why the organizers had minimized the number of films to be screened on that day.
When I woke up on the 26^th I could hear the demonstrators’ slogans chanted from all over the town. In every neighborhood groups of 30 to 40 people had set out to go to the venue of the demonstrations with their flags and slogans. It was in the vicinity of the festival palace. I gave up my breakfast and moved quickly. I walked past the closed doors of the festival’s palace and made it to a square where tens of thousands of people had gathered. There was the deafening sound of the crowd’s demands for some things to be eliminated and other things to be created. The police were standing in a distance and their looks told you that were sympathizing with the crowd. After a few speeches the crowd began to move in dense rows. It took them an hour to get past the festival palace. As their voice came from a distance, the street floor became filled with flyers and statements on paper and the autumn breeze carried them here and there. Such demonstrations have been going on across Spain for quite a few years now. Whether they really work is another story. According to one of my Spanish friends although the organizers may not benefit from such demonstrations, there are two groups who certainly benefit: Those who make the flags and flyers and sprays and loudspeakers and the factories that produce batons, helmets, armored personnel carriers and water cannons and other devices.

I saw two films by two Iranian directors on the same day. Parviz, the second movie by its director Majid Barzegar with its impressive global motif elicited a long standing ovation by viewers. With its new outlook and innovative story and delicate directing style this film signified a certain type of independent cinema which is alive and kicking. This unique and different movie with a superb memorable performance by Levon Haftvan created a new image for Iranian cinema. The other Iranian film Rhino Season owed all of its merit to the eye-catching cinematography of its director of photography Touraj Aslani who won the jury’s award for photography. Good films are not simply made by putting together big names without having a good screenplay and reasonable characterization. Apart from the beautiful frames presented by Aslani the film lacked any artistic value. It’s fabricated story is utterly attempting to appeal to non-Iranian viewers. Most of the film’s symbolic scenes look naïve and superficial and often  include undue self-reflections such as the gathering of cats that reminds one of the director’s (No One Knows About Persian Cats), the falling turtles (Turtles Can Fly) and the horse that pushes its head into the protagonist’s car (A Time for Drunken Hoses). It was interesting that the film was presented as an entry from Turkey, where the story of characters like Sahel have been so true during the past four decades.

Argo was shown at San Sebastian 27 days before its international release. I knew about the film’s story before going to the festival and was looking forward to watching it as its story could be interesting to Iranian viewers. The film’s trailer was full of familiar commercial clichés. Which look shiny thanks to good music and fluid editing and good performances by actors. The film mildly criticizes US government for the 1953 coup that made the Shah’s government last a bit longer to suppress freedom fighters and to widen the class gap. It’s a convincing beginning. But the film distances itself from reality as it continues and then becomes a thriller. The film is about 6 US embassy staff members fleeing Iran but where the people are present in the scene, it is the cliche that prevails: The same cliché that presented a distorted image of Iranians following the seizure of the embassy by a group of students. When the episode took place Ben Affleck was only six years old.  His views and mind appear to be under the influence of the media he admits have scared Americans by their exaggerated stories and pictures following the 4 December 1979 seizure of the embassy.  Argo starts with a series of pictures and documentary footage. From among the pictures of the revolution presented in Argo there is a vague picture of a man being hanged on a crane. This is one of the pictures Affleck presents to depict the inhumane behavior of violent Iranians in those days. This comes while on those days no one had even thought of the idea of hanging on a crane. Two other such examples are the scenes that show the van carrying embassy personnel and CIA agent Tony Mendez comes across a group of demonstrators in Tehran who support the student. The demonstrators chant slogans and shout angrily as they see the foreigners and beat and kick the car. This comes while from the viewpoint of the demonstrators they could have been the staff members of any other embassy in Tehran and therefore they saw no reason for such a Zombie-like behavior. Since a long time ago the bazaar in Tehran has been frequented by foreign tourists. Those working and living in that area are used to seeing foreigners and like them as generous customers who usually do not haggle before shopping. That a traditional man of the bazaar makes such a fuss by seeing a foreigner woman taking a picture of his shop among supporting by standers looks funny to any Iranian viewer.
Iranians did not expect Ben Affleck to make a film to cater to Iranian taste as he works within the frameworks of Hollywood rules. But a film that boasts to be based on a historical event with many repercussions and has reconstructed the embassy compound in Tehran in great detail gives rise to the expectation that it should have attached more significance to the role of the main characters. Affleck’s most notable mistake is that he forgets to talk about the role and presence of the students. He has simply omitted them from the story. This ignoring is to the point that he shows a bunch of adolescents sitting in hall trying to put together shreds of confidential papers.
According to Affleck what mattered to him was only the entertainment side of the story. He has simply sought to make an entertaining movie not a political film. So, one may ignore the final scene in which the guards chase the Swiss aircraft that carries the six Americans on the runway based on the idea of a last minute breakthrough. As if the airport was located in wilderness, lacked a control tower and was not situated in a densely populated city. As if they could not make a phone call to the control tower to stop the plane before takeoff and as if fighter jets could not take off and force the aircraft to land. The question is whether the impact of this “entertaining non-political film” on the public opinion among Iranian and non-Iranian viewers did matter at all to Affleck? He presented an unpleasant image of Iranians in a well made movie. It is sad to divide the people of the world into first and second grade. Governments come and go, but the people will always be there.

Amour, Haneke’s moving film with its eternal story is a movie about death. It is a rebellious performance of man’s longing for a decaying world. Darius Khonji’s brilliant photography is another testimony to his ability to portray the worlds of filmmakers with various styles and visions. Amour is one of those films that would linger in one’s mind for many years. Caesar Must Die embodies several different visions of the world. It is a unique adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. Instead of working with professional actors the Tavianni Brothers have had an unmatched experiment. They have used the inmates of Rebibbia prison in Rome where they serve often long terms from ten years to life imprisonment. The story and the message of the film transcends the play and its black and white and color scenes span from the Roman empire to modern day European Union. This line by the actor who played Casius at the end of the movie is enduring: “Solitary confinement became a real prison since I began to know art.”

The seven-episode-movie 7 Days in Havana is fun. It has seven separate but other wise liked stories directed by six directors and performed by a very well known actor. Every episode describe one day of a week. It covers the unusual everyday life of its characters. The film is far from the familiar clichés of Cuba’s official propaganda for tourists as they were used before the country’s recent reforms. It conveys the real spirit of the city, its neighborhoods, ambience, generations and cultures. Emir Kusturica’s performance in the episode directed by Gaspar Noe and Elia Suleiman’s performance in the episode he made are so pleasant and both episodes are so comic. The two have appeared as themselves. Kusturica has gone to Havana to receive the best film award and Suleiman is there to interview Fidel Castro with the mediation of the embassy of Palestine: an embassy where there is no one although there is a TV set constantly on, broadcasting an exciting speech by Castro.

From among the four Spanish movies Snow White (Pablo Berger), The Dead Man and Being Happy (Javier Rebollo), Atraco! (Eduard Cortés) and The Artist and the Model (Fernando Trueba) shown at various sections of the festival, Snow White has a stunning directing with eye-catching performances, a very simple art directing and an absurd ambience. This is a valuable work of art from Spain. It is a simple but otherwise intelligent adaptation of the Grimm Brothers Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Here the protagonist is a rigorous female matador and the story goes on in southern Spain the 1920s.The film is full of incidents, feelings and laughter. The Dead Man and Being Happy is a talkative and slow movie about a sick man in the final days of his life. Based on the cliché of this type of films, he sets out in a journey in search of his past but finds nothing and leads no one to nowhere.  The only memorable thing in this film is the performance by Jose Sacristan as the murderer.  Atraco! Is one of those films that cannot be categorized in any genre because it is a combination of all genres: comedy, noir, drama, thriller, costume and whatever. The story is about a mock robbery to get back the stolen jewelry of the wife of Juan Peron, the former Argentine dictator who was toppled with a coup in 1955. Like most similar films, at the end of the movie no one gets the jewels that remain for generations to come. The Artist and the Model is an eye-catching movie about the originality of art. However, it remains at the surface of this controversial subject and does not offer anything new. The screenplay by Jean-Claude Carrière and Fernando Trueba is about a disillusioned sculptor who regains his love of beauty after many years upon meeting a young girl. Everything in this movie is in its right place, its beautiful scenes take place at the border between Spain and the war stricken France of 1943 with black and white photography Jean Rochefort plays the sculptor, Claudia Cardinale plays his wife and Aida Folch plays the young model. They have all performed very well but the film is less than impressive.

In Something in the Air Olivier Assayas talks about the restlessness of the the post 1968 generation in France in the early 1970s. Gilles, a young student is restless in the midst of political turbulence. Like his friends hie is divided between social commitments and personal ambitions and has to make a firm choice. Just like Gilles and those in his generation the movie is also divided over choices and at the end leaves the viewers in an undecided state. Something in the Air is several steps behind its director’s brilliant TV series Carlos. It is not even as good as his Paris Awakens which he made more than 20 years ago in 1991. The Attack by Ziad Doueiri, a co-production from Lebanon, France, Qatar and Belgium is also in an undecided state.  It is made based on a book by Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul who writes under the alias Yasmina Khadra. His novel is about a suicide bomber and her husband in Tel Aviv. Amin Jafari is a Palestinian surgeon who is not a stranger in Tel Aviv. He has a good family and professional life and has many friends. But when his wife is found behind a suicide bombing at a restaurant and kills herself and 18 others he has no longer any place in Tel Aviv or Gaza. The film’s a motivation is to gap the bridge between Israelis and Palestinians but this paper bridge will have to collapse with the first drops of rain.

Foxfire (Laurent Cantet), Fishing Days (Carlos Sorin), Twice Born (Sergio Castellitto) and The Hypnotist (Lasse Hallstrom) were among the competition section films that were at a lower level than the other films of the directors who had created them although viewers would decided to see these films based on the credibility of the directors’ names. In Foxfire, with a story that goes on in the early 1950s based on a novel by the celebrated Joyce carol Oates a group of young girls form the Foxfire secret association led by a neurotic Legz to take revenge of men and take the law in their hands, but will have to pay a high price for that. Foxfire has been most adversely affected by the sidelines that dominate the main story line. Fishing Days adds nothing to the carrier of Carlos Sorin who has such a good film as Histrorias Minimas in his track record. Marco, a peddler who has a background of drinking decides to change his life after detox. Part of the therapy calls for a hobby and he chooses fishing and sets out for southern Argentina to among other thing find her daughter who has been away for some years. The film only attempts to tell this story but fails from going any further to the deeper layers of the novel. The crime thriller The Hypnotist by Lasse Hallstrom might be a hit in Sweden where viewers like psychodramas, but it is far less than a second grade Hitchcock movie. Hallstrom who has won international acclaim and an academy award for his family drama My Life As A Dog shows with this new film that a good screenplay does not necessarily make a good film. Twice Born is made by prolific Italian actor Sergio Castellitto and looks better than the other three movies. With a story that takes place during the Balkan war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the film has a good start and continues very well but the multitude of its sentimental finales ruins the directors superb work on the reconstruction of the Sarajevo war scenes. In one scene the protagonist decides to commit suicide out of despair and jumps from a rock into the waves. After a long pause his son brings his head out of the sea and the entire theater dedicated to the press burst in applaud!

Another film in the competition section was The Dead and the Living, with a below average quality of a television film. Capital whose name reminded one of Karl Marx’s book was a film by Costa-Gavras one of the most political filmmakers of world cinema who has won many international awards including academy award. In spite of its good screenplay and well calculated structure, the film was not a surprise and offered a cliché-like caricature of the topic of crisis in global economy and was unlike its director’s memorable movies such as Z, The Confession and Music Box and will be forgotten quickly. The film is the story of an ambitious banker who would resort to anything in order to reach his goal; exposing the destructive structure of capitalism. The message of this film is an old statement Costa-Gavras reads out to the press after the film is screened: “We are the slaves of capital. We shrink when it shrinks, we grow when it grows. And when it is victorious, we celebrate. Who is going to set us free? Shall we take the initiative and liberate ourselves from the clutches of capital? At least we should come to know those who serve the capital and the way they serve it.” In the House, made by now well known French director Francoise Ozon is a pleasant and engaging movie that won the Golden Shell award at this year’s festival. This is one of those films whose straightforward story will be popular with ordinary viewers while its complicated motifs will attract the attention of the elite: German a literature teacher at high school is marking his students’ test papers. All of them are terrible except Claude who sits at the end row so that he can see everyone. His writing is powerfully imaginative. As he calls on Claude to pay more attention to the reality of life around him, he begins to write more seriously inspired by the life of those around him. They end up in a situation where Claude collects information about everyone including the teacher’s wife. Gradually the border between reality and imagination become blurred to the point that when the teacher reads Claude’s writings his relationship with his wife falls apart. He helped Claude to be a writer such as Louis-Ferdinand Celine who wrote a bitter ending for the story of his characters.

The action thriller Savages by Oliver Stone with its two absolutely different endings was something like a computer game. I could tolerate it only thanks to the brilliant performance by John Travolta. The film was full of inconsiderate scenes of bloodshed and savage torture, masochism, treason, crime and sadism of two drug producers and a Mexican drug cartel and its mercenaries, with the loose message that for some people (definitely for Stone, they are capitalist “systems” such as the one in America) man’s life has no value and they would kill and destroy whatever that comes in their way, in order to materialize their bleak goals.  Had the film a few more comic scenes like the one in which we see a gallon of artificial blood spilled next to a shop, it could have been categorized as a parody to the Godfather.

Delicateness, liveliness and sometimes lyrical tone of Me and You by Bernardo Bertolucci removed the dull sense of watching movies like Savages from my eye and mind. After eight years being far away from cinema Bertolucci in his 24^th film, which he made on a wheelchair, worked on a story by Niccolo Ammaniti whose prevailing theme and preoccupation has always been the psychological crises and sentimental complexity of contemporary German middle class. Like his previous work, The Dreamers (2003), this new movie is also about the challenges of adolescence and a new quest into this tumultuous period of its two leading characters. The story mainly goes on, and is filmed, in their house’s basement with its delirious labyrinths. Lorenzo is an isolated 14 year old adolescent with an abnormal behavior whose relationship with his parents and peer has been disrupted. He decides to hide in this deserted basement in order to escape from all of his problems. However, an unwanted surprise meeting with his half sister changes his world. Bertolucci has tried his best to make this film in the best possible way having in mind his physical situation these days. Therefore, it is not devoid of small shortcomings which are mainly about the performance of his actors. Nevertheless, like his previous works this film too has a calculated and refined structure.  A lighting that makes the scenes look more or less like paintings, delicate compositions in difficult indoors settings, the meaningful art directing with abandoned objects and a music which is consistent with the characters’ mood are not the only positive characteristics of this movie. The maestro has embodied a new and different message compared to his vision in his previous films: Change yourself, and the world will change.

Silver Pages
by Massoud Mehrabi

The film literature in Iran was introduced about two decades after production of early Iranian films. Two or three years after production of the first Iranian film in 1900 (which conformed to the same standards as early movies of the world), the sole official and state-run newspaper started to show interest in “cinematograph”. Naturally, film critique and other theoretical issues were not extant in those years. News about the most amazing phenomenon of the century as well as its good and evil effects on viewers and the whole society were the most important issues.
The first film critique (in the modern sense) was written by Ebrahim Moradi, a pioneer director of dramatic features in Iran. His writings, which gradually improved, focused on technical and dramatic problems of films. Few other writers started to follow suit with Moradi, though they later used what they had taught from him against his own films.
Growth of film literature in Iran is much indebted to art and cinema press. Although no films were produced in Iran between 1937 and 1948 due to various reasons, including the World War II and its consequences, since the more recent world cinema productions were screened in the country, cinema magazines were thriving. During that period, apart from various newspapers and magazines, three specialistic film magazines called Namayeshat (Entertainment), Jahan-e Cinema (World of Cinema) and Hollywood were published in Tehran and criticized all aspects of cinema art and industry, including films. Toghrol Afshar, Houshang Qadimi, Troal Gilani, Babak Saman, Farrokh Ghaffari, and Houshang Kavousi were among prominent critics of those years whose writings helped to promote film knowledge in Iran. Those periodicals and articles later gave rise to books on cinema.
The first book on cinema was published in 1927. It was written by Zabihollah Behrouz in two chapters. The first chapter was about the position and role of cinema in the world and its undeniable impact on human societies and the second chapter was a screenplay adapted from ancient Persian legends. Although that screenplay was never produced as film, the book was received warmly by movie buffs and encouraged other people to publish similar books and this continued until 1947. Three consequential books were published in those years: Troal Gilani wrote The Technique of Cinema, Toghrol Afshar wrote In the Rainbow of Cinema, and Hossein Saffari translated Lo Duca’s History of Cinema into Persian. The three books are considered among important events, which along with a number of earlier books determined the policy and orientation of film literature in Iran. The Technique of Cinema was an educational book which introduced its readers to filmmaking equipment (from raw film to cinematographic camera) and explained the filmmaking process from the beginning to the end. The book even included a chapter on how to become an actor and acting techniques. In the Rainbow of Cinema focused on theoretical issues of cinema and film analysis. History of Cinema and its writer are so well-known as to obviate explanation.
As film literature in Iran started with publication of a screenplay, publication of similar books continued with more zeal in later years. Among different types of cinema books, which ranged from theoretical and reference books to biographies of actors and filmmakers, screenplays ranked first both in terms of number and reprints. This was especially true after 1979 revolution when directors could not make every screenplay either due to their themes or inadequate funds. During those years, enthusiasm for screenplays was (and still is) so high that the Iranian auteur, Bahram Baizai, who has thus far only made six feature films, has published 26 screenplays. Some of his screenplays are more interesting and more impressive than his films. He is followed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf who has published all his screenplays (even those which have not been produced as film). On the whole, screenplays written by these two filmmakers have been republished 50 times. The screenplay of Makhmalbaf’s banned film, Time of Love, has been reprinted 11 times. Although publication of film books was not as extensive as it is now, screenplays also accounted for the main part of pre-revolution film literature and most of them were screenplays of prominent films. L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni) and The Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini) (whose translations were published in 1965) started a trend which continued with The Discreet Charm of Bourgeoisie (Luis Bunuel), Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica), The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein), M (Fritz Lang), and Face to Face (Ingmar Bergman). Since that time, the works of nearly all prominent filmmakers have been published in Iran.
After screenplays, educational books on filmmaking are the next in demand. Before the revolution, most young people who were interested in this subject were members of a center called Cinemaye Azad (Experimental Cinema Center) and since they used 8-mm cameras, books like Film and Director (Don Livingston, 1963) or Film and Education (Dr. Ebrahim Rashidpour, 1967) were all they needed for primary education. Today, however, there are tens of state-run and private filmmaking centers with 4,000-5,000 students. Therefore, all educational books imaginable have been published in Iran: from Eugene Vale’s The Technique of Screenwriting to Lee Strasberg’s A Dream of Passion. Apart from translations, tens of other books have been written by Iranian instructors.
The situation is very satisfactory for theoretical and analytical books. Although they rank after screenplays and educational books, the quality of their authorship and translation is ideal. Almost all books written by great theoreticians of world cinema have been translated by the best Iranian translators: from Andre Bazin and Rudolf Arnheim to Peter Woolen and Allan Casebier and W. F. Perkins. Iranian theoreticians have also authored valuable books some of which, including the works by Dr. Babak Ahmadi, can be presented internationally.
Books on history of cinema and reference books are like a magical substance which strengthens structure of every country’s film literature and determines its identity. There is no shortage in this category of books. Apart from books written by Lo Duca and Arthur Knight, which were respectively published in 1948 and 1962, the most important books in the history of the Iranian cinema which have been written by such prominent authors and researchers as John Howard Lawson, Christian Thompson, Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Eric Rhode, David A. Cook, and David Robinson have been translated and published. In addition to those books, many volumes have been compiled on the history of the Iranian cinema in addition to guide books and encyclopedias about Iranian and world cinema films and characters by Iranian authors, including myself, which can provide future researchers and authors with a comprehensive and rich source of study.
Iranian film literature is very rich. If professional Iranian filmmakers had established a better relationship with it from the early days that the Iranian cinema took shape, the situation of that cinema would have been much better now.

Report on the 42^nd Karlovy Vary Film Festival (June 29-July 7, 2007)

Tales of Suffering and Ecstasy
by Massoud Mehrabi

The main reason for my third trip to Karlovy Vary was neither its old and creditable festival, nor its great film program, but it was the magic of Karlovy Vary which enticed me. Without any doubt, many correspondents, film critics, and guests, who arrive in the city every year (to pay pilgrimage to it), are more infatuated with the city than its film festival, though they may say nothing about it in their reports. Only one single visit to the city is enough to make its beauty as well as spas and scenic specters part of your dreams even when you are wide awake. It is a fact that the city is cinematic than its festival.

Karlovy Vary is located 110 km west of Prague. The old and historical part of the city is located in the bottom of a valley flanked by relatively high hills and surrounded by lush forests. A river passes through the city and its bed has been designed into small cascades. Therefore, the sound of water is heard like a soothing music which calms down human soul. On both sides of the river, there are buildings which are quite balanced in terms of number and stories, external decorations, paintings and their classic architectural style. The first feeling that sweeps over you in the first glance is that you are standing among a magnificent historical film décor. Not only external view, but internal components of that décor indicate high artistic tact. It is for the beautiful location of the city that, thus far, more than 100 short and feature films have been made there.

The city owes most of its fame to spas. Apart from special baths inside or on the side of hotels, the water from mineral springs is directed to several pools that are located along the main boulevard of the city via canals where tourists can drink the water or pour it in something and take it as souvenir. Karlovy Vary, which is located near border with Germany, has drawn many courtiers and royal families from all across Europe and even Asia and Africa to its spas in late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, including Iran’s Mozaffareddin Shah who visited the city in 1900. The city is not simply famous because it has been visited by kings and emperors, but such dignitaries as Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Ludwig van Beethoven have also visited it while Friedrich Chopin, Karl Maria Weber, Richard Wagner, and Nicolo Paganini have lived there for a time. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Johannes Brahms, Anthony Dvorak, and even Karl Marx have been there. Presence of masters of world classic music in the city has, undoubtedly, been due to the effect of the city on their creativity. Other things have also contributed to make the city more famous. One of them is a crystal factory, which still produces the finest crystals in the world. All told, the climate is heavenly. The Republic of Czech is the roof and garden of Europe and Karlovy Vary is the roof and garden of the Republic of Czech.

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Karlovy Vary Film Festival is 62 years old and has gone through many ups and downs. Its first edition opened in July 1946 as an international, but noncompetitive event simultaneously in Mariánské Lázně and Karlovy Vary. In 1948, the festival moved to Karlovy Vary and a competition section was added to it where films could win prizes. Later incidents were influenced by political developments following domination of communists on the country in February 1948. Thereafter, especially during the Cold War, the festival paid more attention to political, rather than artistic, films. Even worse than that, the festival was broken in two parts as of 1959: it was alternatively held in Moscow and Karlovy Vary! Therefore, this year’s festival was its 42^nd, and not 62^nd, edition. Karlovy Vary was established concurrent with film festivals of Cannes and Locarno and is the second oldest film festival in the world after Venice Film Festival. However, internationalist decisions made by the leftist authorities prevented Karlovy Vary Film Festival from being appreciated for all its capacity.

The festival’s standards took a nosedive in 1970s and movie buffs lost interest in it. Therefore, some thought that Karlovy Vary was not a good place for a film festival and it should be transferred to the capital city to attract more viewers. The tug-of-war continued until 1994 when a new festival opened in Prague and started its work just before the 30^th edition of Karlovy Vary. However, they failed to marginalize Karlovy Vary and it was the new festival that gradually vanished.

At present, Karlovy Vary Film Festival is a full-fledged cinematic event. During this year’s festival, about 260 short and feature films from 58 countries were screened in 20 main and subsidiary sections. There were films for almost all tastes. Therefore, all sections of the festival including competition section, documentary films section and even retrospective of Bretislav Pojar (the grand master of animation) attracted special audience. Ordinary movie buffs chose their favorite films out of catalogues and watched them. However, choosing was more difficult for us, the critics and correspondents, who watch films from a professional slant. We were naturally attracted to films in the competition section, most of which were screened for the first time. We consider them unexplored treasures and are too eager to watch them, though most of them turn out to be disappointing. In reality, we already know what would be the result and then ask the same repetitive question: “How many good films, do you think, are made in the world every year?” Well, their number can be counted on fingers. The same happens in all festivals with small differences, but the grumbling critics never learn from the past!

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Cinema Thermometer
 by Massoud Mehrabi 
  
   Iran has gone through many ups and downs during the past 25 years. Those developments have led to basic changes in political, economic, social and cultural structures of the country. Eight years of war with Iraq, tensions related to reconstruction period after the war, election of a reformist government and subsequent conflicts between it and fundamentalist groups, establishment of a radical government, the issue of nuclear energy and so on portray a picture which is indicative of more tumult ahead. Despite such historical developments, International Fajr Film Festival has moved steadily ahead like a boat sailing on choppy seas and this year, it will berth for the 25th time.
   About 25 years ago, when the first instance of the festival was held in the heat of war with only five Iranian films taking part and an unknown jury that did not consider any of those films to be worthy of a prize, it was hard to believe that the festival will reach its 25th anniversary. Some festivals had been held before and none of them had lasted for more than two or three years. International Fajr Film Festival evolved year after year in a gradual manner and grew stronger in parallel to developments of the Iranian cinema. Since the first year, holding the festival at an international level greatly tempted its organizers and policymakers, especially in view of the fact that before victory of the Islamic Revolution, Tehran International Film Festival had been held for six consecutive years as a Class A festival. Therefore, starting at the fourth festival, three sections were added to it in which foreign films were screened, thus giving “international” credit to the event. One of those sections was “children and young adults cinema,” which evolved into an independent festival three years later (this was also due to the fact that Tehran International Festival of Films for Children and Young Adults was one of the most creditable and important global festivals in the field). During the past 25 years, the Iranian cinema has been constantly growing despite all difficulties with International Fajr Film Festival as its full-length mirror. For many years, most filmmakers regardless of their attitude toward cinema policies and political officials have been eager for their films to be screened at International Fajr Film Festival because the attention of all filmmakers and serious moviegoers is riveted on this major event of the Iranian cinema.
   During all those years, International Fajr Film Festival has been a reflection of policies adopted by the country’s cinema officials. During early years, Iranian cinema authorities were very sensitive about making sure that domestic productions completely comply with their policies and goals, though that sensitivity has relatively faded during recent years. Although, supervision over production of a film usually started with studying the screenplay and approving it and continued until the very end of filmmaking process, if the film had not remained inside the predetermined framework, it was rated C or D. That rating caused the film to be publicly screened only at a limited number of low-quality and inferior theaters and the filmmaker would have received less financial assistance and equipment (which are usually supplied by the government) for his next productions. Rating films started from A, which was given to those films that completely complied with predefined cinema policies. A-rated films and some B-rated film, which were also called asterisked B (B*), were screened at competition section of International Fajr Film Festival while films rated B without asterisk, C, and sometimes D, were screened out of competition and even in accessory and less important sections. The jury of the competition section that was determined by cinema (and sometimes political) officials, awarded the best prizes to films that they liked and, thus, sent signals to other films to show them the correct direction in which they should move.
   What said before may cause one to think that the Iranian filmmakers have not been independent and all decisions were actually made by policymakers and cinema officials; but this is not the whole truth. It is true that most films that were rated C or D were insignificant movies that were merely made for commercial purposes and to earn more money at any cost. From this viewpoint, the measures taken by cinema authorities was, in general, to the benefit of the Iranian cinema and the “new Iranian cinema” which had grown a little before the Islamic Revolution, turned into a strong tree and bore fruit after the revolution as a result of the said policy. Most cinema authorities, like well-wishing filmmakers, were concerned about the national cinema, which has its roots deep in the Iranian culture and its artistic aspects prevail over its commercial and populist aspects. The cinema authorities clearly announced that the main goal of their policies was to “support, guide, and supervise” cinema activities while filmmakers tried according to their artistic capabilities and their understanding of cinema, to produce films that would make them dignified in the eyes of critics, viewers, and the history of the Iranian cinema. Of course, there were few filmmakers and films that did not receive the praise that they deserved.
   For many years, International Fajr Film Festival has attracted not only ordinary and transient viewers, but also special and professional ones. Film buffs give up their daily chores during 10 days that the festival is going on and try to watch three or four films every day as a selection of films that will be screened at the Iranian theaters during the forthcoming year and also to watch a number of major foreign films before their public screening. Those viewers feel less need to go to theaters during the year and quench their thirst for cinema by watching the latest films of the world on DVDs that can be bought at very high quality and everywhere in the big cities of Iran for one euro. During many years of the festival, especially during the first and second decades, this group of viewers crowded around theaters that screened festival’s films so intensely that the window panes were broken. They stood in long lines for many hours to watch films that were made by such filmmakers as Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami, Massoud Kimiaei, Bahram Baizai, Dariush Mehrjui… and sometimes forced festival organizers to consider extra showtimes at 02:00 or 03:00 hours in the morning! They thought that films made by the said directors will be censored on public screening or will be totally banned and sometimes, their worst fears came true.
   International Fajr Film Festival is thermometer of the Iranian cinema. Higher temperatures shown by this thermometer do not necessarily indicate illness, but are the sign of more warmth, vivacity, liveliness and prosperity of the Iranian cinema. The festival is still a meeting place for cinema policymakers, filmmakers, and viewers who try to do their part in increasing the temperature.