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An
interview with Bahman Ghobadi, director of Half Moon |
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An interview with Bahman Ghobadi, director
of Half Moon 26.9.2006
By David Walsh
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“If I only want to say what the government wants
me to, then I have to be a government employee, not
a filmmaker”
26 September 2006
David Walsh and Joanne Laurier spoke to
Iranian-Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi at the
Toronto film festival
David Walsh: It seems to me the presence of
death is everywhere in this new film.
Bahman Ghobadi:
I never live in the present. I’m always thinking
about the next 10 years or 20 years of my life.
I’m just afraid. But the only time I’m not scared is
when I make films. In my life so far, I’ve
experienced so many different kinds of death.
Private death, and death as the result of political
events, of repression. The deaths of my family
members. Death in our culture has a magical concept.
And at the moment I can see the strength of the
Middle Eastern culture. Every day I’m waiting for
death and I’m very anxious.
DW: I wonder if artists are especially afraid
of death, and art is a way of freezing time, of
keeping something alive?
Ghobadi: I agree
with that. As an independent filmmaker, I also want
to look at it in a different light. As an
independent filmmaker, I want my film to be seen in
the right way. But also when I come to a big
festival like Toronto and Cannes and other
festivals, I can see the death of independent
filmmaking at these festivals. And I’m quite afraid
of that. I usually think and ask myself, what should
we do? But I also make a lot of points to the
audience and try to draw them in. There is a type of
death for the audience, if independent cinema dies,
that I’m afraid of. And I think if this film does
not get the right distribution, the film will be
worse than death, for me. |
Kurdish Director Bahman Ghubadi
Photo : Internet |
I live cinema, I breathe cinema, all my life is
about cinema. And I haven’t really enjoyed my life.
And I don’t even enjoy filmmaking. Now I feel that
I’m an addict of filmmaking. Maybe that is why I’m
afraid of death. Maybe I torture myself and have a
lot of hardship.
DW: With the increased aggressivity of the
United States, is the internal situation of Iran
changing? Does the government impose more censorship
as the US threatens war?
Ghobadi:
Obviously, the problems are related to one another.
Since the election of the new president [Ahmadinejad],
everything is changing and they have started to
seize all the satellite dishes in Iran. It’s in this
situation that three days ago my film was banned. I
never expected that. And now they are accusing me of
being a Kurdish separatist.
DW: Is it because of the scenes of the brutal
Iranian police?
Ghobadi: The
police, because females are singing in my film, but
mostly because of the map that’s seen [with
“Kurdistan” on it].
DW: The woman in your film is hiding because
presumably she could not sing in public.
Ghobadi: In
Iran, women are not allowed to sing in public. My
film is about that. I censored myself and I cut a
lot of scenes that I thought the ministry would not
have liked. But now that they banned the film, I’m
disappointed with myself. I live in a country where
we are not allowed to show musical instruments on
television.
I made this film for the 250th anniversary of
Mozart’s birth. And I live in a society in which
women are not allowed to sing publicly. And I could
not even show one-third of what I wanted to show.
Just because I’m afraid of censorship. And now I’m
saying: Why didn’t I do it? I should have shown
everything.
DW: The scene of the banned women is an
extraordinary moment. The film refers in passing to
the fall of Saddam Hussein, there is a reference to
the Americans “shooting at anything that moves.” And
of course there’s a reference to the Turkish
military, there’s the Iranian police. All these
forces are shown to be brutal and oppressive. It’s a
sensitive question. There is also the presence of
the Kurdish administration in Kurdistan (northern
Iraq),
which in my opinion is a puppet of the US.
Ghobadi: I don’t
want to talk about this because of the situation the
Kurdish people are in right now.
DW: What’s the relationship between art and
music and a very difficult political situation?
Ghobadi:
Everything is related to everything else. All
aspects of our lives. From daily living to the
instruments that the artists get. And to the trauma
that I have in my head. I have never been so afraid
of going back to Iran as I am right now. And I don’t
know what will happen tomorrow. If they are going to
bomb Iran or not.
Instead of thinking about my next film, I’m thinking
about how I can get enough food for my mother. We
are all waiting for something to happen. The
Iran-Iraq war went on for eight years. In those
eight years we fell behind more than 80 years. And
we can easily envision a more disastrous time. I’m
thinking about these things and how I can save my
family.
DW: You realize today is five years since
9/11?
Ghobadi: That
was the worst day of my life. The day that I saw
that on the news, I was in the capital of Kurdistan
in Iran. I was waiting for the United States to nuke
Iran and Iraq at the time. I was afraid for almost
two weeks.
DW: Obviously, the US has launched wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and both have been disasters.
But precisely because they’ve been disasters,
they’re planning some kind of new attack on Iran.
What do think would be the consequences if the US
dropped bombs on Iran?
Ghobadi: It’s
too awful. I can’t think about it.
DW: Why is there a ban on your film, and is
there any way to get it reversed?
Ghobadi: I
called the Minister of Culture personally last week
and asked him please not to seize or ban the film.
Just take out what you want, I said. But then he
said, even if you take out 20 minutes of it, it
won’t be helpful because it’s the “soul” of your
film that is about Kurdish separatism. But I said,
it’s my baby. It’s not about separatism. I’m
Iranian. I don’t want even this much separatism from
the motherland. But do I have the right to talk
about the problems that face our society?
If I only want to say what the government wants me
to, then I have to be a government employee, not a
filmmaker. We are filmmakers. It’s my job to film
everywhere I want to. The government is not a
filmmaker. Our job is to ask difficult questions,
the most difficult.
DW: And that’s what I think is the strength
of your filmmaking, it consistently asks the most
difficult and painful questions. The heart of the
film is neither separatism nor anti-separatism. The
heart of the film is a feel for humanity and a
hostility to oppression in all forms.
Ghobadi: I
cannot stop. I have to make my next film in Tehran.
Even if it is made underground. Because I am afraid
of death, I have six projects in mind. Before I die
I want to have 20 films under my belt.
I’ll be in Toronto every year from now on, not every
two years.
We have to fight for the rights of female artists.
This is the truth of our life. This is reality. It’s
about self- expression, it’s about soul. People in
Iran are suffocating. There is little freedom.
wsws org
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