Jafar Panahi (Persian: جعفر پناهی , born July 11, 1960 in Mianeh, Iran) is an internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker and is one of the most influential filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave movement. He has gained recognition from film theorists and critics worldwide and received numerous awards including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.[1]
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Biography
Jafar Panahi was ten years old when he wrote his first book, which subsequently won first prize in a literary competition. At the same age, he became familiar with film making. He shot films on 8mm film, acting in one and assisting in the making of another. Later, he took up photography. During his military service, Panahi served in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-90) and made a documentary about the war during this period. After studying film directing at the College of Cinema and Television in Tehran,[2] Panahi made several films for Iranian television and was the assistant director of Abbas Kiarostami's film Through the Olive Trees (1994). Since that time, he has directed several films and won numerous awards in international film festivals. Panahi's first feature film came in 1995, entitled White Balloon. This film won a Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His second feature film, The Mirror, received the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival. His most notable offering to date has been The Circle (2000), which criticized the treatment of women under Iran's Islamist regime. Jafar Panahi won the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival for The Circle, which was named FIPRESCI’s Film of the Year, and appeared on Top 10 lists of critics worldwide.[3]. Panahi also directed Crimson Gold in 2003, which brought him the Un Certain Regard Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival. It went on to win a number of best film awards and opened to excellent critical response. Panahi's Offside (the story of girls who disguise themselves as boys to be able to watch a football match) was nominated for competition in the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, where he was awarded with the prestigious Silver Bear and the Jury Grand Prix, 2006.
Style
Panahi's style is often described as an Iranian form of neorealism. Jake Wilson describes his films as connected by a "tension between documentary immediacy and a set of strictly defined formal parameters" in addition to "overtly expressed anger at the restrictions that Iranian society imposes".[4] His film Offside is so ensconced in the reality that it was actually filmed in part during the event it dramatizes – the Iran-Bahrain qualifying match for the 2006 World Cup.[5]
Where Panahi differs from his fellow realist filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami is in the explicitness of his social critique. Stephen Teo writes that
- "Panahi's films redefine the humanitarian themes of contemporary Iranian cinema, firstly, by treating the problems of women in modern Iran, and secondly, by depicting human characters as "non-specific persons" - more like figures who nevertheless remain full-blooded characters, holding on to the viewer's attention and gripping the senses. Like the best Iranian directors who have won acclaim on the world stage, Panahi evokes humanitarianism in an unsentimental, realistic fashion, without necessarily overriding political and social messages. In essence, this has come to define the particular aesthetic of Iranian cinema. So powerful is this sensibility that we seem to have no other mode of looking at Iranian cinema other than to equate it with a universal concept of humanitarianism."[6]
Panahi says that his style can be described as "humanitarian events interpreted in a poetic and artistic way". He says "In a world where films are made with millions of dollars, we made a film about a little girl who wants to buy a fish for less than a dollar (in The White Balloon) - this is what we're trying to show."[7] In an interview with Anthony Kaufman, Panahi said: "I was very conscious of not trying to play with people's emotions; we were not trying to create tear-jerking scenes. So it engages people's intellectual side. But this is with assistance from the emotional aspect and a combination of the two."[8]
Filmography
- The Wounded Heads (Yarali Bashlar, 1988)
- Kish (1991)
- The Friend (Doust, 1992)
- The Last Exam (Akharin Emtehan, 1992)
- The White Balloon (Badkonake Sefid, 1995)
- Ardekoul (1997)
- The Mirror (Ayneh, 1997)
- The Circle (Dayereh, 2000)
- Crimson Gold (Talaye Sorkh, 2003)
- Offside (2006)
Awards and honors
Jafar Panahi has won numerous awards up to now. Here are a few representatives:
- HIVOS Cinema Unlimited Award (2007)
- Podo Award, at Valdivia Film Festival (2007), for his life-time artistic accomplishments.
- Silver Bear, Berlin Film Festival, 2006.
- Prix du Jury - Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival, 2003.
- Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival, 2000.
- Golden Leopard, Locarno International Film Festival, 1997.
- Prix de la Camera d'Or, Cannes Film Festival, 1995.
Notes
- ^ 'Awards for Jafar Panahi', at the IMDB
- ^ Interview at Senses of Cinema
- ^ [1]
- ^ "A mirror under the veil - and inside the stadium", The Age, September 26, 2006
- ^ [2]
- ^ "The Case of Jafar Panahi" at Sense of Cinema, June, 2001
- ^ "The Case of Jafar Panahi" at Sense of Cinema, June, 2001
- ^ The Dark Balloon; Jafar Panahi's Vicious "Circle", at IndieWire2001 4 December, 2001
Readings
- Hamid Dabashi, Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema, Mage Publishers (May 15, 2007) ISBN 093421185X
See also
External links
 Cinema of Iran |
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Films A-Z • Chronology of films • Films by year: Pre 1960 • 1960s • 1970s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s |
