By Azadeh Farahmand
Daily Bruin Contributor
It is perilous to be an artist or intellectual in Iran,
outspoken about one’s critically political and social
sensibilities.
For Tahmineh Milani, making films about the contemporary plight
of Iranian women and publicly challenging the authority of the
theocratic state have brought about both thrills and
terror.Â
And Milani’s arrest late last summer by Tehran’s
Revolutionary Court brought her to a wide national audience.
Milani will be in the UCLA James Bridges Theater on Friday
afternoon to speak to the public after a free screening of her film
“Two Women” at 3 p.m.
Milani’s arrest produced a wave of alarm beyond the
Iranian borders, a call for urgent action by Amnesty International,
and a declaration of solidarity signed by over 1,500 people from
around the world, among them Francis Ford Coppola, Marina
Goldovskaya, Hanif Kureishi, Ang Lee, Chris Marker and Oliver
Stone.
Milani’s latest film, “The Hidden Half”
(2001), which opened in the Laemmle Music Hall last month, was a
pretext for her arrest on the account that she had used the medium
of art to portray leftist activists in a favorable
light. Ironically, like all domestically produced films in
Iran, “The Hidden Half” had already undergone state
censorship and approval for both its production and release.
“When we heard that she was in L.A. and that she was
interested in coming to UCLA, we wanted to do everything we could
to express our solidarity, to have her come here, show her film and
speak about her experience,”said Cheng-Sim Lim, programmer
for the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
The UCLA Film and Television Archive, which has co-organized the
upcoming event on Friday, has been an avid supporter of Iranian
programs in the past few years. Iranian film series have
consistently been one of the most popular and well-attended film
series annually planned by the Archive since 1990. The next
Iranian film retrospective at UCLA’s James Bridges Theatre is
scheduled for January 2002.
Milani, who was released on $25,000 bail, still faces an
impending trial when she returns to Iran. In “Two
Women,” Roya, a city girl, and Fereshteh, from a less
privileged family from the provinces, are two schoolmates in Tehran
University in the volatile months of the 1979
revolution. Following primarily the story of Fereshteh,
“Two Women” chronicles her hopeless struggles against
the patriarchal family and social structures that place her in a
strikingly disadvantaged position compared to her former
schoolmate.Â
Latifeh Hagigi, lecturer in Iranian studies, considers it a
privilege to be in UCLA, where the community has the opportunity to
see films from Iran and occasionally meet the filmmakers.
For her students, both Iranians and non-Iranians, these films
provide a window to Iran’s history and culture.
“Recently, I had a field trip with my class to see
“˜The Hidden Half,'” said Hagigi. “This film
was of particular interest to the girls in the class because it
deals with women issues.”
“The Hidden Half” portrays a middle aged woman
(Fereshteh) coming out to her husband of seventeen years about her
past political activism and her romantic relationship with an older
man (Roozbeh) prior to her marriage. The story is told through
flashbacks as her husband, a judge who is sent off from Tehran to
hear the plea of a female prisoner in Shiraz, reads her
diary.Â
“The Hidden Half” has drawn conflicting reactions
from viewers. The film’s feminist standpoint is cited since
it privileges a woman’s point of view, it accounts for their
experiences, and it evokes a relationship between Fereshteh and the
prisoner, making the latter the symbol of young and aspiring
educated women during the revolution.Â
“Now in their middle ages, and 20 years later, not only
have [these women’s] aspiration not been met, but they have
been imprisoned by their society,” Lim said.Â
However, for Partow Nooriala, a Los Angeles based Iranian poet
and critic, the film poses a problem despite some of its feminist
sensibilities.Â
“Depicting a judge taking a long trip to hear the plea of
a woman facing possible execution,” said Nooriala, “is
an ironic endorsement of a regime in which women are stoned to
death or buried alive for having extra-marital affairs.”
Regardless of how Milani’s films are viewed, her films
have enhanced debates about feminism and social change.
“The issue is not whether one embraces or denounces
Milani’s filmmaking,” said Lim. “The issue
is freedom of expression, and that is where we stand — for
artists’ freedom.”Â
FILM: “Two Women” will be screened
at James Bridges Theater at 3 p.m. today. Milani will be in
attendance to talk about her experience.