One of the most influential filmmakers to have emerged from post-revolutionary Iran, Mohsen Makhmalbaf is also one of the front-ranking figures of contemporary world cinema.
The twenty-two films (shorts and features) he has made so far bear the hallmarks of sophistication and humanism. At all times, they have stimulated, both in Iran and the world, strong and varied reactions from viewers and critics alike. He has, in turn, been called ‘caustic’ and ‘poetic’, ‘controversial’ and ‘popular’ ‘misanthropic’ and ‘lyrical’ – in any case always startling and complex. And Makhmalbaf himself has always been a maverick.
Makhmalbaf was born into a poor family in Tehran in 1957. At the age of eight, he had already begun working to support his mother. A working-class teenager and an Islamic activist in the 70s, he was imprisoned for wounding a policeman. Luckily, he was freed in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, after having served five years in jail. Upon his release, he helped found an artists’ group called the Islamic Propagation Organisation, became a prolific writer of plays, essays and short stories before moving on to writing screenplays.
But while he started out as a hardliner in post-revolutionary Iran, intent on wiping out all traces of pre-revolutionary cinema (he claims that he had never seen a film before embarking on his own), once he ventured into filmmaking he underwent a conversion. Ironically, some of his own films were to be banned in the years to come.
The Peddler (1987), a collection of vignettes exploring the plight of Iran’s urban poor, was disturbing and provocative, even as it displayed an array of stylistic influences. As Makhmalbaf matured, his fundamentalist views abated. In an interview he admitted he was ‘extremist’ early on in his career, but that with the passage of time his way of thinking became ‘more relative’. He continued, however, to focus on social realities. His Marriage of the Blessed on the Iran-Iraq war stirred a heated debate for its apparent anti-war stance. A time of love was banned for five years for its moral ‘ambiguity’ on adultery; so was Nights on the Zayandeh Rood, which dealt with those who had died in the 1979 revolution; the award-winning Once Upon a Time, Cinema, was at once a dense tapestry of, and a tribute to, Iranian cinema. Makhmalbaf calls it a ‘fantasy on the pattern of fairy tales of One Thousand and One Nights.’
{{/usCountry}}The Peddler (1987), a collection of vignettes exploring the plight of Iran’s urban poor, was disturbing and provocative, even as it displayed an array of stylistic influences. As Makhmalbaf matured, his fundamentalist views abated. In an interview he admitted he was ‘extremist’ early on in his career, but that with the passage of time his way of thinking became ‘more relative’. He continued, however, to focus on social realities. His Marriage of the Blessed on the Iran-Iraq war stirred a heated debate for its apparent anti-war stance. A time of love was banned for five years for its moral ‘ambiguity’ on adultery; so was Nights on the Zayandeh Rood, which dealt with those who had died in the 1979 revolution; the award-winning Once Upon a Time, Cinema, was at once a dense tapestry of, and a tribute to, Iranian cinema. Makhmalbaf calls it a ‘fantasy on the pattern of fairy tales of One Thousand and One Nights.’
{{/usCountry}}And then in 1996, after a career spanning fourteen years, and with some fifteen international awards in his pocket, Makhmalbaf – in his own words - “stopped making films and decided to make filmmakers.” The Makhmalbaf Film School was created in 1996 as a way of sharing his knowledge and experience. State funding was sought and a large student body expected to enrol, but eventually the filmmaker settled for a small group of eight drawn mainly from family and friends. The four-year programme offered a broad-based education that focused on individual topics for specified periods. The school was positioned as part of the Makhmalbaf Film House, a self-styled home film studio, which also included a production wing, to help finance and distribute films made under its auspices.
The Film House offered students the possibility of majoring in any one filmmaking discipline. Three students including Samira (Mohsen's daughter) and Marzieh Meshkini (Mohsen's second wife who is his late first wife’s sister) chose direction. Each of the films produced during this period – including Mohsen's The Silence (1998) and The Door (1999) – were made, at least partly, by the School and its production company, and most students played a role, frequently working as assistant directors. For example, Samira's younger sister, Hana at 15, was the still photographer for Meshkini's debut feature The Day I Became a Woman (2000). She went on to make Joy of Madness on sister Samira shooting At Five in the Afternoon. Brother, Maysam (23), a still photographer and editor, made a documentary profiling the making of Samira's second feature Blackboards (2000). Called How Samira Made Blackboards (2000), the film had its first international screening at the Cannes Film Festival. She has just completed her second film ??????
Marzieh Meshkini did a five-year course at the Makhmalbaf Film School and has been an assistant director on five films made by her husband and daughter. Her own visually arresting work, The Day I Became a Woman, is set around three stages in a woman's life. Each tale is based somewhere between realism and allegory and bathed in images that could be surreal or could just be everyday.
Samira Makhmalbaf quit school at fourteen to study with her father. At eighteen, she became the youngest director ever to be invited to the Cannes Film Festival with her film The Apple (1998) – it was shown at more than 100 festivals - and at twenty, the youngest to win the Jury Prize at the same festival for Blackboards.At Five in the Afternoon, made three years later in post-Taliban Afghanistan, ran off with the award once again. Today, Samira is one of the most lauded directors in the world.
The Makhmalbaf case is truly unique in the annals of film history. It is difficult to find what one critic calls an equivalent combination of artisan-based filmmaking with a family co-operative. All the members of this family have made works that are striking and original. Each demonstrates his/her personal style and concerns. Mohsen, Marzieh, Samira, Maysam and Hana have enriched Iranian and world cinema with their talent, commitment and, not the least, with their generosity and willingness to share.