Tag Archives: Iran

The Wisdom of Jafar Panahi

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I attended a screening of Jafar Panahi’s latest film It Was Just an Accident at the Jacob Burns Film Center after which the director offered his thoughts on filmmaking and life. The experience has left me in absolute awe.

Mr. Panahi has directed eleven films over a span 30 years, a remarkable career not just for his masterfully inspiring work but also as he’s worked under an oppressive Iranian regime which has repeatedly interrogated and jailed him and then banned him from filmmaking for the past 20 years. And what did he do over these years? Made films.

Jafar Panahi, while banned from making films, made his film Taxi Tehran, telling the stories of an array of Iranians as he drove them in his cab.

It Was Just an Accident asks the question: “What we would do if we were able to capture our torturer. Would we berate them? Torture them? Kill them? Bury them alive? Let them go free?” It is a punishingly raw story, dotted with humor and revelation.

As in almost all Panahi films, a little girl speaks loud and true in It Was Just an Accident

Mr. Panahi’s humility is astonishing. He praises the people for sharing their stories and his actors for their bravery, claiming that he does little beyond frame the work. When asked why he does not leave Iran, he simply states that it is his home.

His strongest opinion is perhaps that there are two kinds of filmmakers: those who make films for the audience and money – some 95% – and those who tell their own stories and make the audience come to them. They’re now coming to Mr. Panahi; the Oscar extravaganza awaits. And little will he care. I just hope that he is treated properly when he returns home, and the threats abate.

Jafar Panahi’s “Taxi”: Marvelously Sordid

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I finished a bag of chips as we started to watch Jafar Panahi’s Taxi. I was about to get up and throw it away but waited.

The opening shot held too much promise, a point of view from Panahi’s car as he started through Tehran. I folded the bag and held it tight.Screenshot (65)There is so very much to say about Panahi’s film Taxi – searing political statement, marvel in story-telling, profound celebration of life, comic odyssey into sordid realism (a phrase repeated throughout) – but what struck me most is the advice given by Panahi to a prospective filmmaker who sits in the back of the car. Screenshot (53)After being told that the young man had read many books but could not find a good subject for a film, Panahi replies: “Those films are already made, those books already written. You have to look elsewhere.” Screenshot (68)If only Hollywood and the rest of the film-making world would listen to that; it’s the ideas that matter and not the budget. Imagine what the Oscars might look like then, with none of the Mad Max, Gravity, Lord of the Rings nonsense. Actual films instead…what a world that could be.

The film ended as suddenly as it had began, the camera removed, the screen now black. I realized that I still held the plastic bag tight and, at long last, stood to throw it away.