It’s difficult to imagine more contrasting ends of the movie spectrum than the Hollywood elite and Iran’s persecuted directors, but the might of the former is being used for the protection of the latter in what could be a test case for Iranian artistic freedom.
Hundreds of members of the film community, from Sean Penn and Steven Soderbergh, to Ang Lee, Spike Lee and Mike Leigh, have signed a petition expressing their solidarity with Tahmineh Milani, an Iranian director currently threatened with execution over her film The Hidden Half.
Milani is one of Iran’s best-known directors, thanks largely to her consistent focus on the plight of Iranian women. With films such as Two Women and The Legend of a Sigh, she has played a part in establishing her country’s cinematic reputation. However, she has taken greater risks than her better-known contemporaries, rarely cloaking her messages in allegorical terms and frequently speaking about her work in public.
A little controversy at home has helped Iranian films elsewhere, but The Hidden Half has proved to be a risk too far. The film focuses on a dutiful wife who reveals her turbulent political past to her husband, a judge who is deciding the fate of a similar woman facing execution. The wife’s naive involvement, as a student, with a left-wing group opposing the Shah puts her on the wrong side of the fence after the Islamic revolution in 1979.
Milani’s arrest in late August came the day after an Iranian paper had published an interview with her, quoting her comments about acquaintances who had been executed, imprisoned or expelled from universities after the revolution. Her home and office were raided and documents and computer files confiscated. Milani was charged with “supporting factions waging war against God” and misusing the arts in support of counter-revolutionary and armed opposition groups.
Milani is not the first cultural figure to be arrested by the conservative Revolutionary Council (headed by supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini), but her case has proved to be exceptional. For one thing, in contrast to other controversial films, such as Jafar Panahi’s The Circle, The Hidden Half had been through the censorship process and was officially granted a release from the Ministry of Culture.
For another, Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami publicly came to her rescue. Although he has declared his support for the arts in general terms, mindful of the many awards heaped on Iranian film in recent years, this was the first time he publicly defended a filmmaker, in direct opposition to the Council.
“Khatami said that he was surprised by her arrest since the film had been approved,” says Mohammad Nikbin, Milani’s husband, who plays the judge in The Hidden Half (Milani speaks little English).
“He told the Revolutionary Council that he had checked with the Ministry of Information on her political activities and her past, and that he knows her personally to be a good citizen and he supported her release on bail.”
She was released a week later and recently attended the Cairo film festival, where The Hidden Half won two prizes, but the charges have not been dropped. “To tell you the truth, we are really confused,” Nikbin says. “The sentence for these crimes is execution. That is still a threat, but we have to see if they can prove them. Our confiscated documents have not been returned and we haven’t had a date for a trial yet.”
Tehran has been described as “a dragon with two heads” by Iranians. The tension between the fundamentalist Revolutionary Council and Iran’s liberal, democratically elected president has been well documented and speculated upon, particularly in light of the United States’s courting of Iranian support for its attacks on the Taliban.
Milani’s case could contribute to a new climate of artistic freedom in Iran — a key victory in Khatami’s drive for reforms — or she could fall between the cracks of this fragmented power system, which is why Hollywood’s intervention could be crucial.
“The decision to do this was very delicate and we did not want to make the situation worse,” says Ray Privett of Facets Multimedia, the Chicago-based film company that organised the petition. “But we consulted with many people around the world, including Iranian filmmakers abroad, before we prepared the petition. In many cases like this, the director or artist simply vanishes and we did not want that to happen.”
Filmmakers in Iran, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, have also supported Milani, and the International Film Critics Society is preparing another petition, with signatories from 52 countries.
“We appreciate that people are concerned about us,” says Mohammad Nikbin. “I hope that the charges will be dropped and Tahmineh will be able to make films again. We are optimistic.”
To sign the petition for Tahmineh Milani visit www.facets.org