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Zooming in on commoners
Controversial yet a legend, that is filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. He talks to Mandira Nayar about his philosophy of making films...
Mohsen Makhmalbaf claims that he had never seen a movie till he made one in 1982. But the man who never sat in a dark hall to watch the images on the screen is now using the "mirror'' of cinema to show pictures and start a conversation with people beyond his own country.
One of the most controversial Iranian filmmakers, Makhmalbaf's movies might not be openly watched in his own country, but he is a legend in contemporary world cinema. "I was in jail for four and a half year when I was 17. I was against the fascists, but soon realised that the people who were in prison for protesting were fascists too because they had one culture. I came out and decided to make movies,'' he says.
In the country to shoot his latest film "Scream of the Ants'', he looks the part of an eccentric director, dressed in all black with his hair dishevelled. From his tribute to 100 years of cinema in "Salaam Cinema'' to his hard-hitting "Kandhar'', the movie that brought to the world the situation in Afghanistan when it had literally fallen off the information map, Makhmalbaf believes that cinema has a bigger purpose.
"Cinema is a mirror that we use to show ourselves. If it has to be used to start a conversation with other cultures, it has to reflect the soul of the country. People watching Bollywood would think that India has people dancing and singing all the time. The movie should give people some education so that they can change something in their life,'' he says.
A filmmaker who prefers to find his talent on the road, he hardly ever uses professional actors. Choosing to focus his camera on ordinary people with a "good soul'' who have never been trained or been on a movie set, Makhmalbaf has managed to make films that are not easy to forget, but also managed to give his "actors'' a new avenue to explore and remember.
While he found plenty of talent in India to understand what he wanted them to do despite the language barrier, he found the biggest obstacle he had to overcome was bureaucracy. "It was my dream for the past 15 years to make a film in India. I love India. But the bureaucracy is the enemy of the country. I have made 17 feature films before, but I have collected the biggest pile of papers asking for permission in this one. I think India is perfect to shoot a movie in, if I could make the whole film in one room,'' he says with a smile.
Blurring boundaries on the screen, his movies are about a world that exists in a realm between reality of the actor and the story that he is trying to tell. "The story is not always important, sometimes it tells you something very simple. But you are creating some kind of universe with images,'' he asserts. Not content with just touching people through his cinema, he takes his job as a director very seriously. His movie "Afghan Alphabets'' about young Afghan children living in Iran as refugees without any schools finally reached its audience and the government let the children study for a year. "These were little children and they were not being allowed to study as they did not have the papers. When I first went to Herat to make a film, I saw the situation and was shocked. There were people dying. But this was before September 11 and people did not know what was happening, so I made `Kandhar' to inform people,'' he says. While he did not direct "Osama'' the first film to come out of Afghanistan after the post-Taliban, Marina, the girl in "Osama'', who was identified begging on the street, found that her life changed after the film -- she was invited by American President George Bush for tea.
The presidential invitation apart, Makhmalbaf had ensured that she never had to return to the streets again.
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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