By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
TIFF11: Seven Minutes From Not-Jafar Panahi’s THIS IS NOT A FILM
Cinema Scope’s Mark Peranson says This Is Not A Film was just about the only Cannes entry worthy of being called “cinema.” “The work feels completely effortless, but my money says it’s an elaborate sound and image construction: though it claims to be a day in the life of Panahi, [Mojtaba] Mirtahmasb explained in interviews that the film was shot over four days. The only conceivable excuse the festival had for placing Panahi’s film in a Special Screening slot—instead of, say, in Un Certain Regard alongside Rasoulof’s more conventionally filmic Good Bye (which won a prize for mise en scène)—is that they didn’t actually see it before announcing the line-up. Seeing as the film was smuggled out of Iran on a USB stick hidden in a cake, this is a quite plausible scenario. This Is Not a Film proves that even if a political entity tries to take the power of filmmaking—or film festivalling—away from a director, there’s nothing that can be done if that filmmaker possesses creativity, dedication, skill, and intelligence… Panahi is a filmmaker whose internal exile is a result of a 20-year government ban from travel and filmmaking; he can’t leave Iran, and spent a long period under house arrest. Though he’s presently free to travel within his country’s borders, all of This Is Not a Film takes place in his apartment as he awaits news of his appeal, doing daily tasks like preparing breakfast, speaking to his attorney and supporters (such as director Rakshan Bani-Etemad) on his iPhone, watching the Japanese tsunami on television… Over the course of the not-a-film, Panahi’s main company, besides the video camera—he is reluctant to turn it on or touch it himself, as a way of ensuring he does not break the ban on “filmmaking”—is Igi, his daughter’s rather large iguana, whose roaming throughout the apartment, creeping up Panahi’s body and ending up on the walls behind the bookshelves, serves as a deliciously ironic parallel to Panahi’s own mental and physical state… Eventually Mirtahmasb shows up, claiming to be making “a behind-the-scenes film about Iranian directors not making films,” and the real film within the not-a-film begins.” [Much more at the link.]