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Middle Eastern films, particularly those of Iran,
had been screened abroad for years, in all their
variety, but the most highly acclaimed ones, by
directors like Abbas Kiarostami ("Where Is the
Friend's Home"), Mohsen Makhmalbaf ("Close-up") and
Majid Majidi ("Children of Heaven"), tended more
toward the poetic than the overtly political.
This trend appears to be changing among younger
directors if the FIFF opening film, Reza Azamian's
"A Border for Life," is any indication. A drama
about the Iran-Iraq war and shot in Iran, it is not
the propaganda one might expect, but an antiwar film
in which the humanity of both sides is emphasized.
An Iraqi soldier, crippled by a bomb blast, is
trying to escape the front lines when he encounters
a blinded Iranian soldier with the same objective.
To survive, they have no choice but to help each
other.
The acting is overwrought and the message
over-obvious, but the film relates to the current
situation in which Shiite communities in Iran and
Iraq are finding common ground, for reasons
religious and political.
The festival's most openly advocatory film, however,
was Jano Rosebiani's "Jiyan," which depicts the
aftermath of the 1988 biochemical weapon attack on
the Kurdish town of Halabja by the forces of former
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Rosebiani, a
Kurdish-American, shot the film in 2002 in Kurdish
Iraq (or as the Kurds call it, Kurdistan) when
Saddam was still in power and he had to smuggle his
footage and equipment out of the country. "Otherwise
we might not have had a film," Rosebiani said.
And he might not be in a Fukuoka hotel room to talk
about it.
Using local actors and extras, Rosebiani re-enacted
the Halabja attack, in which nearly 5,000 died
almost instantly, but the film's most shocking
scenes are of real survivors in a real hospital,
many disfigured and barely clinging to life. "[The
survivors] told me that the ones who died quickly
were lucky," he said. "They are dying little by
little. . . . They haven't seen one happy moment."
His heroine, Jiyan (Pisheng Berzinci), is one such
survivor, a girl with a scarred face, who suffers
from flashbacks of the attack, in which she lost her
parents. She becomes attached to Diyari (Kurdo
Galali), a Kurdish-American man who has come to
build an orphanage in the village.
The story is a simple one of Diyari's deepening
relationships with the people of the town, including
Jiyan, her wily orphaned cousin Sherko (Coman
Hawrami), a war-traumatized man who plays the flute
all day on his rooftop and three marriable sisters
who look on Diyari as a sort of movie star (though
one eventually marries her poetry-spouting village
lover). There is an ever-present sadness in these
lives, as well as a barely suppressed horror, but
there is also love, jealousy, envy -- and even
touches of slapstick comedy.
Although Rosebiani had to struggle for years to get
his film made ("Hardly anyone had the Kurds on their
agenda," he reminisced. "It just wasn't sexy."), he
has, since the fall of Saddam, become in demand,
taking "Jiyan" to festivals around the world and
winning several prizes.
"Even people who were against the war have come up
to me after screenings to say 'Thank you for making
us understand,' " he said. In reference to the
current war in Iraq he said, "I think it's changed a
few minds."
The fortunes of Kurdistan have also changed
dramatically. No longer subject to Hussein's
oppression, protected by their own militias and the
U.S. military, the Kurds are finally their own
masters. "Kurdistan has a bright future," says
Rosebiani, citing a September business expo in the
Kurdish capital of Erbil, in which multinationals
like Hewlett-Packard, Canon and GE exhibited
products and services. He also mentioned ambitious
plans to build a mega-mall complete with a multiplex
theater and, inevitably, a McDonald's. "It's like
Jordan was a decade ago -- ready to boom," the
director says.
His own future includes two more films based on the
Kurdish experience, but he adds that he would like
to make American films as well. And though he is
dedicated to "showing the Kurdish people's spirit in
film," he urges them to "forget about revenge --
instead we should focus on progress and
advancement."
But the thousands that were killed in Halabja, as
Rosebiani so vividly shows in "Jiyan," will never be
part of this brave new world. "Saddam created this
tragedy," he said. "The Kurdish New Year is on March
31. He attacked on March 16, to destroy the
celebration. On the 31st the Kurds built fires to
celebrate anyway. They couldn't give it up."
www.japantimes.co.jp
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