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An Iranian Director Enters a Circle of Women

By Joan Dupont
International Herald Tribune
September 21, 2000, Thursday

TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival, which started as a modest noncompetitive event 25 years ago, has become a window on world cinema. Other festivals award trophies, Toronto - a giant shopping mall - markets exotic dreams and holds promise of riches around the corner. John Woo and Wong Kar- Wai took their first steps to international recognition here, and Deepa Mehta calls Toronto home. Piers Handling, the festival's director, notes the steady ascent of Asian film. ''It's no surprise to me that cultures that have a strong literary or verbal culture, such as Iran and China, countries under economic or social stress, are making some of the best movies in the world,'' he said.

Jafar Panahi, director of ''Dayereh'' (The Circle), which made its North American debut at the festival, also thinks that the strength of Iranian film is rooted in an ancient storytelling culture: ''We are thousands of years old, like China; we ruled once,'' he said. ''Things have changed and will change again. Ours is a cinema of humanity that people all over the world can recognize. It stands out from the mountain of commercial cinema.''

''The Circle'' won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, an astonishing coup for a movie made without stars, special effects, sex or violence. Panahi, 40, born in Mianeh to a working-class family, meted out his words carefully. For him, success abroad is an uncertain blessing; the film has yet to be released in Iran.

''In Venice, for the first time, the critics and the jury agreed,'' he said. ''Toronto has responsive audiences, and I got emotional and thoughtful reactions. It's a film that takes a while to digest.''

''The Circle,'' which took three years to make, is about seven women released from prison only to find themselves confined by the world outside. ''In fact, they have left one prison to go into a bigger prison,'' the director said. ''You don't know what they were in jail for, it doesn't matter. What matters is they try to escape, to enlarge their circle. It's not just a film about women; it's human to want to expand - that's how we improve socially, scientifically and emotionally, that's how men go to the moon.''

Shot on the streets of Teheran, in crowded markets and bus stations, without such frills as Steadicams and extras, and sometimes without permits, making the movie was a difficult odyssey. Unlike his previous ''The White Balloon,'' which focused on a little girl, the innocents in ''The Circle'' are oppressed women, a subject rife with taboos. In Panahi's movie, a single woman in Iran today cannot travel unaccompanied or without permission from a male relative. She cannot smoke a cigarette in public. The characters in the film, desperate to break away from domineering fathers, brothers or husbands who have taken second wives in their absence, are ready to lie, to abort, to abandon their children, to resort to prostitution. Each woman has her moment on screen, but you never know where she comes from or what happens to her when she vanishes. An

nspoken camaraderie unites the women and their stories.

The film opens in a maternity ward and ends back in jail. ''The idea came from a news item I read about a woman who killed herself and her two little girls,'' Panahi said. ''Some stories affect you so deeply, you want to make a movie.''

He wrote a script, but admits that he was also inspired by his actresses - mostly nonprofessionals - to improvise at times. ''I was with my wife in a park when I saw a woman who was the exact image of a character in my head. I invited her to pass a screen test and hired her on the spot.'' Nargess Mamizadeh plays Nargess, a teenager with bruised eyes, determined to rejoin her village.

Although Panahi was an assistant to Abbas Kiarostami on ''Through the Olive Trees'' and Kiarostami wrote the screenplay for ''The White Balloon,'' their paths have since diverged. Kiarostami delves into the mysteries of almost empty villages and landscapes, while Panahi trains his eye on the harsh urban scene, reported in documentary detail. ''I enjoyed working with Kiarostami, as I enjoyed working with other directors - each has his own style of filmmaking,'' he says.

Panahi feels he can express himself most fully and reach people through directing. He studied at Teheran's College of Cinema and Television. ''I fell in love with each of the great directors and studied their styles to see how they could be translated,'' he said. ''I liked studying Hitchcock to see if he made any mistakes.'' He does not like to dwell on his problems in making ''The Circle.'' ''Now the film is born, '' he says, ''we don't want to think of painful things - they belong to the past.'' During the shooting, rumors spread that the film had touched on sensitive subjects and might run into censorship.

''Perhaps this is not the usual Iranian film with metaphors,'' said Hengameh Panahi (no relation to the director), the head of international sales for ''The Circle.'' ''But Jafar has not made a political film, that's not his job. An artist creates a piece of art - he makes a movie just like any other director. Critical or social implications come out of the context. What counts is that he got permission to make the film and to take it out of the country.''

''As Jafar portrays it in the film, everything is forbidden, therefore, everything is allowed,'' she added. ''It depends on how creative you are. Like the young girl who isn't allowed to buy a bus ticket, but finds a way. And this is why the country is so creative, because nothing is allowed, and it's up to you to find your way, to make it possible.''

The director, who has four sisters, is proud of the strength of his characters, women ''unafraid of persisting in getting what they want.'' There is another, unseen character whose name is called out in the opening scene in the maternity ward, and evoked again, in the final shot, bringing the film full circle. ''She is significant: Her name is Solmaz Gholami, and she has just given birth to an unwanted baby girl in the first scene. Her in-laws will be furious, for they expected a boy.'' Solmaz is named after Panahi's daughter. ''I'll never forget the day she was born,'' he said. ''It was 12 years ago and I was at the university defending my thesis. When I heard that my baby girl was born - I already had a son - I ran all the way to the hospital.''

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