Working Towards A Greater Ideal Of Truth...
I have written about 30 books till today in addition to my 20 films I didn’t go to university or I didn’t even finish my high school because of the bad financial situation at home. Instead I started working since the age of 12. I did almost 13 different jobs from working in the bazaar, in magazines and so on. Around that time, I got interested in politics and became a political activist after seeing so much of life and conditions in my country. Influenced by the ideals of Che Guevara, my friends and I wanted to change the system and bring in the revolution. In one such activity, I decided to attack a police man and while disarming him, I ended up stabbing him. Luckily the injury was not fatal. But I ended up in jail. Later on I made ‘A Moment of Innocence’ which is based on this incident and my reflections on the same at a later age. I was 17 when I went to jail. I was imprisoned for about 5 years and I spent those years thinking about many issues concerning my society and the way in which we where trying to change the system. Slowly I realised that with all due respects to Che Guevara, I found Gandhi a bigger person and non violence seemed a better way to bring about the change I was seeking in my society. When I came out of the prison I changed my position from political to cultural. I believed and still believe that the problems of Iranian society are not political and can’t be solved by a change in government or a change in policy. The problems are cultural and can only be solved by changing something in peoples’ minds, in their way of thinking. The Iranian society believes there is only one way of life, one language, one power and one truth. This belief leads to fascism. So when I came out of prison I started writing stories, novels, articles and later on started making films. Then came the revolution and many of my friends who were in prison with me became Presidents and Prime ministers. My friends created the revolution and I created Samira. I was 23 when Samira was born and I stayed focused on my work in the cultural area. Our way of film making is very open in nature. Many times we work without a complete script. When you have a complete script it means you have a question and an answer. But if you have only an outline it is something like finding the answer for your question. And we let the wind blow into our script, then you see the reality coming in by itself in the script. Even when we choose our actors, we don’t go around looking for someone we created sitting in our house. We find characters and allow them to bring in their life and their experiences into the film. Some times it is their own dialogues and reactions that they use in the film. This is to get something that is as close to reality, which is very integral to the kind of work we do. Many times the main character in our films doesn’t even know the story till we finish shooting the film. They discover the story day by day and they grow along with the story. If they know everything from the beginning their performance becomes artificial. I don’t make films to give people a message nor even to show them reality. I want to show different perspectives of reality because I believe there is nothing like truth. Truth is not just one-sided, there may be another side to the truth. I try to show my audience a different side of truth so they can become more democratic-minded. There is a saying in Iran, Truth is a mirror in the hands of God, broken. And all of us have got a piece of it. We think what we have in our hand is the truth. No! Every one has a piece of truth. May be you can say I prefer this piece which I have in my hand, but you can’t say that is the only truth. When you think there is only one truth, there is no democracy, no conversation. To me cinema is a conversation. In this century one of the most important issues we face will be the influence of satellite television. They let us know things which they think we should know and they don’t let us see things which they don’t want us to think about. They didn’t want us to know about Afghanistan before September 11. After September 11 they told us to pay attention to Afghanistan. But after one year they told us to stop, now it is time for you to see Iraq, now after some time they will tell us stop, we will show you another truth. We have to start thinking freely for a better world. It is not easy. The wind is too strong in these times in which we are living. It is blowing from all sides, but if we think for ourselves, if we think deeply, we will become rooted and will be able to stand on our own feet. So that no wind can take us away.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 52 years old, is an Iranian film director, writer, editor, and producer. He is currently the president of the Asian Film Academy and has recently served as the official spokesman of Iranian candidate for president Mir-Hossein Moussavi’s campaign abroad.