To mark the video and DVD release of one of the most acclaimed films of
the year, Jason Wood talks to Blackboards director Samira Makhmalbaf.
kamera.co.uk: Firstly, what difficulties have you encountered as a female director working in Iran?
Samira Makhmalbaf: We have a lot of limitation in terms of written law and unwritten law. It is in the minds of everybody that a woman cannot be a filmmaker. It's a challenge but this situation is now slowly changing in the minds of the people. When you break a cliché the changes can start and so I now very much hope that we can, as we think about freedom and democracy, produce more women directors. I'm optimistic about the future.
You also have to encounter strict state censorship. How has this affected your work?
Because the state does not let Hollywood cinema come to Iran we have already had to find our own way, a national way of expressing in a very personal the thoughts we have. With the enforced censorship you must simply find new and interesting ways of expressing ideas through the vocabulary of cinema.
In terms of your relationship with your father [the acclaimed director Mohsen Makhmalbaf] you've had a wonderful apprenticeship in terms of cinema.
I have indeed acted in my father's movies from an early age but I really didn't want to act. I wanted to be involved in cinema so much and I begged my father to be involved as an assistant in some way. With Blackboards I did benefit from my experience but I only realised this as I began to make the film. My father experiences the same thing and on the first day on set says that he sometimes feels as if he knows nothing about cinema. It is sometimes good to know nothing. You have to be like a baby, seeing everything for the first time.
Your new film is highly original. How did the concept evolve?
After The Apple (1998) I was looking for a subject that would give me a lot of energy and it was whilst I was travelling to Kurdistan with my father, who helped write the script, that the idea really came to mind. I thought that as a subject it could be surreal and at the same time very naturalistic with social and humanistic meanings.
You deal with political and social themes in a humanist way.
It's important the way you look at things. There are more social problems and humanistic problems that occur because of political situations. I'm obviously talking about war and it doesn't even matter which war exactly. I like to think about things in a humanist way, about this I am very conscious.
I think this is why audiences connect so much with your films and the films of the new Iranian cinema.
It's very important, yes. It's a serious problem for humanity but I think a lot of Iranian directors are able to deal with important issues in a spiritual and poetical way which makes them simpler to understand. It goes for the heart and it is so simple.
How aware are you of the renaissance that cinema from Iran is experiencing outside of your country?
A lot of the films which Iran produces and indeed has produced in the past has not been seen outside of Iran so I do not think that there is necessarily a new wave of Iranian cinema. Also, because of censorship, a lot of the films that have been exported to Europe and America, films especially by the likes of Abbas Kiarostami have not been seen in Iran and so I have become aware of their impact only when I have traveled. Historically Iranian cinema, which is over 100 years old, has consistently produced work of high quality.
Blackboards features a superb young cast of largely non-professional actors. How did you find your performers?
It was a long and painstaking process which involved me visiting many different local villages and speaking to people one by one until I found the people with the right energy for what was going to be a very difficult and arduous shoot.
You seem to have so much experience of different people and yet you are so young.
It's a skill to be young and to communicate well with people of different generations. I also have developed more of an edge by making movies. Your heart becomes like a mirror, you are able to reflect the experiences and emotions of thousands of other people. You have to really open your heart, ears and mind. It's a good challenge.
Having achieved so much relatively young, what aspirations remain for you?
I want to continue making movies but I also want to live and to continue to learn. I've learned that though it's good to create its also good not to try to force it, to sometimes not to create and to simply explore.
