QUICK SELECT
DISSIDENTS
NEW DOCUMENTARIES CELEBRATE THOSE WHO HAVE CHALLENGED THEIR NATIONAL POLITICAL CONSENSUS. PLUS WE CELEBRATE THE WORK OF IRANIAN FILMMAKER DISSIDENT JAFAR PANAHI.
In July, Arc cinema looks at the lives and work of three men who have enjoyed success and acclaim, but then have become amongst their society’s leading critics, at sometimes great personal cost.
AMOS OZ: THE NATURE OF DREAMS
Dir: Masha Zur Glozman/Yonathan Zur, Israel, 2009, 86 mins, video, (G)
Directors Glozman and Zur delve into the public persona and private concerns of Israel’s controversial novelist and social critic, Amos Oz. “I commend the film ... to all those troubled by fanaticism and intolerance in any of their modern guises.” (Evan Williams, The Australian.) Canberra Premiere.
THE CIRCLE
(Dayereh) Dir: Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2000, 90 mins, 35mm, (PG)
Eight Teheran women; one just born, another aged and embittered, the rest somewhere in-between. Mostly they are criminals of one sort of another, on the run or trapped where they are. Their ‘crimes’ are vague, their guilt or innocence unimportant, as they are really themselves the victims: of fate and of a social system that criminalises most of their economic options. Panahi’s Venice Film Festival award-winning film was one of the first to bring out some of the darker secrets (including prostitution and sexual violence) of how many women live in the Iranian republic.
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS
Dir: Judith Ehrlich/Rick Goldsmith, USA, 2009, 92 mins, video, (PG)
Enemy Number One: the high-level Pentagon insider whose change of mind and heart led to the leaking of 7,000 pages of top secret
documents to The New York Times, the eventual end of the Vietnam War and the fall of a President. Best Documentary Oscar nominee
and winner of a Special Jury Award at the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival.
Daniel Ellsberg will join Canberra audiences via video, for a post-screening discussion.
AMOS OZ: THE NATURE OF DREAMS
Dir: Masha Zur Glozman / Yonathan Zur, Israel, 2009, 86 mins, video, (G)
Directors Glozman and Zur delve into the public persona and private concerns of Israel’s controversial novelist and social critic, Amos Oz. “I commend the film ... to all those troubled by fanaticism and intolerance in any of their modern guises.” (Evan Williams, The Australian.) Canberra Premiere.
RED, WHITE AND GREEN
Dir: Nader Davoodi, Iran, 2009, 57 min, video, (unclassified 18+)
Nader Davoodi’s Red, White and Green focuses on Teheran in the three weeks prior to the Iranian elections in June, 2009 and the enormous sense of optimism felt by so many regarding the possiblity of change and reform for the Iranian Republic. How differently things would turn out is best indicated by how many of the political, social and cultural leaders interviewed during the film – including Jafar Panahi– have since been arrested or gone to ground.
Following the screening a panel of Iranian cinema watchers will look at the case of Jafar Panahi in the context of the complex relationship between Iran’s political and film cultures.
THE WHITE BALLOON
(Badkonake sefid) Dir: Jafar Panahi, Iran, 1995, 85 mins, 16mm, (PG)
Little Razieh wants a new goldfish for the family’s courtyard fishpond. She nags her mother into giving her the money. However there are many a slip between the goldfish seller’s shop and the fishpond, and the adventure becomes one about the choices Razieh has between her mission and all the temptations the streets can offer a little girl with big dreams. Written by Abbas Kiraostami, Panahi’s breakthrough film was a charming tale of innocence distracted, that became an instant children’s classic and also delighted a new western audience for Iranian cinema. From the collection of the NFSA.
CRIMSON GOLD
(Talaye sorkh) Dir: Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2003, 97 mins, 35mm, (M)
A jewellery store robbery goes wrong, ending in killing and a desperate suicide. In flashback, Panahi and screenwriter Abbas Kiraostami go back behind the headline to reveal the deadly slow burn of how this came to pass, through the story of two motorcycle pizza delivery men whose jobs expose them to glimpses of a better life, but also to humiliation and the broken bottom rungs of Teheran society. Beginning as a thriller, Crimson Gold instead emerges as a film Rossellini or De Sica could have made in late 1940s Italy.
