I work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and last night was the second week of our film club’s summer series. The night air cooled with a comfortable breeze and the screening was held outdoors in a small amphitheatre with a simple setup comprised of a video projector, a projection screen, and the ubiquitous popcorn machine.
The film screened was Under the Skin of the City (2001), a powerful Iranian feature by Rakhshan Bani-Eternad about a working class family and its travails in contemporary Tehran, which only recently acquired theatrical distribution in the US. Like many films of the New Iranian Cinema of the past decade (see Godfrey Cheshire’s recent summary for Newsweek), it draws heavily upon neorealist aesthetics (actual locations, uninflected camerawork, straightforward performances, an attention to everyday realities) to address socially relevant issues. Bani-Eternad is currently one of many prominent female directors working in Iran, a fact which might surprise Westerners who think of Iran solely in terms of patriarchal censorship, and her film places a strong emphasis on the plight of Iranian women. It was voted Best Film by Iranian critics the year of its release.
The movie exhibits highly competent dramaturgy, but it also provides a vision of Tehran I haven’t come across before: pizza parlors and Sony ads, corporate tycoons and drug-running. It addresses the current political tide by setting its story during the parliamentary elections of 1998 and depicts a city caught between tradition and reform, poverty and international commerce, despair and hope. Abbas (Mohammad Reza Foroutan) is a young man hoping to work abroad to offer his tired parents and pre-college siblings a better future, but he finds that social advancement requires risk-taking that doesn’t offer any security and could undermine all they have already achieved.
After the film, some members of the Iranian club at Caltech offered watermelon, pastries, and frozen refreshments, and conversations bubbled with commentary on the film as well as many personal introductions. Given the commercially-restrained and consumer-oriented model of film culture Hollywood actively promotes, it was exciting to experience film as a free, communal event for a change. Film clubs may have risen to prominence at many American universities during the ’60s, but the video age has often separated, isolated, and relegated audiences to their own living rooms. As a child of the ’70s, I find that I increasingly cherish any opportunity to rediscover the cinema as a genuine social experience. The screening last night delivered that in full.