I can say that for me censorship didn't affect my work
before of after the revolution. But this is not true of
filmmakers who naturally can speak about their own experience.
But to me what they refer to now as censorship in Iran
should mostly be considered religious restrictions.
Censorship normally happens when there are no set rules.
Some people may decide to eliminate scenes from movies.
But right now, we do know that there are rules such as women
may not appear without a headscarf, not even
with a loose-fitting one.
Also, there are strict rules about touching.
Generally speaking, I can't say that we don't censor ourselves.
But I can say that we find out about the rules pretty quickly
and then we are able to adjust ourselves to the circumstances
and make our films.
I've really made the movies that I've wanted to make up to now.
I haven't made any of them simply because I wanted
to circumvent the codes, and turn a banal story into a movie.
Overall, I don't pick subjects involving husbands and wives
in their apartment or room.
Because when you make a movie you have to believe
the story yourself. We put a series of lies together
to reach a higher truth.
For example, to show the truth of a family,
we don't have to use a real family.
We may get the husband from somewhere, the wife
from somewhere else, borrow a child and rent an apartment.
But the combination of all these elements should give us
an exact definition of the family.
And the definition is quite clear to all of us.
It's a unit in which people have a relationship
of total privacy and security with one another.
A child would not have any designs on the mother
and the husband has no problems with his wife's hair.
But what if I looked through my viewfinder
and realize that this is not a real family.
They don't have any real relationship to each other.
We work so hard to say that despite all those "lies"
we try to demonstrate a concept, the concept of a family.
So I won't be able to define a family when I realize
that I can't show it the way I've lived it.
I remember that my father could see my mother's hair.
As a child I never had a problem caressing my grandmother's hair.
So this is a family that I don't know,
and since I don't know it, I won't touch it.
By that I mean to say that I have automatically avoided
thinking about relationships between men and women
within households. Maybe this is why I unconsciously
keep going to the villages to make films.
The problem of censorship has always existed.
Especially when I'm outside of Iran, usually the first
or second question asked has to do with censorship.
In the West, when I'm asked about censorship in Iran, I get offended.
They think we are some Third World country with some sort of
of incredible censorship and we work under terrible conditions.
But when I think about it, I realize that we've always had
to face the problem of censorship not just as filmmakers,
but even as citizens of Iran. We've always had censorship.
It starts in our families when we can't speak our minds
because our parents decide what's right and wrong for us.
In the schools, there is even harsher discipline -
all sorts of educational censorship.
And that continues until it finds its place in our professions-
the filmmaker's profession, for example.
So in my mind, censorship is not something
that bothers us terribly, because we found our ways to counter it.
In fact, the whole nation has learned how to deal with it,
and we, as filmmakers, like everyone else in their profession
have learned how to circumvent any imposing force
and somehow manage. This is a reality.
Especially in our case, our cinema is a director's medium.
And the more a filmmaker comes under pressure due
to the nature of his work, the more he is forced
to come up with better solutions and find new means of expression.
I have an architect friend who tells me that some of the lots
he has built on over the last 20 years have been crooked.
Whenever anyone asks him what buildings he has designed,
he cites one of those as an example, because
they were nonstandard and thus they forced him to come up
with creative solutions to make something out of them.
That's how he managed to do something new in the field.
With respect to films or art in general, it's true that art is born
of difficult or unfavorable circumstances for the artist.
I say this very cautiously, especially outside of Iran,
because I think that I might be justifying restrictions
or saying that censorship is not a problem.
People might think that I say those things out of fear,
or perhaps because of a favorable attitude towards
my country or government. Also, when I leave the country
I really don't want to hear negative things about it.
I think, even if we have censorship in Iran,
we should deal with it ourselves. As my father used to say,
if your head breaks, it better break in your own hat.
We shouldn't talk about it anywhere else because
there's no advantage in it- nobody can untie our knots
or solve our problems.
For that reason, I never speak about censorship outside of Iran
especially for foreign reporters.
Often I ask them: don't you have your own censorship?
The government censors but also provides financial assistance.
Because of the positive outlook that I have had in recent years
in my personal and professional life, I tend to say that I
for one don't have much of a problem with censorship.
Not that I endorse it, but I simply say to the censors,
you do your job and we'll do ours.
In the final analysis, it's our work that survives.
The festival reception abroad, as far as I can tell,
has meant a kind of endorsement,
and gives us self-confidence.
When you have self-confidence,
you become more daring and try new experiments.
We don't enjoy a lot of support at home.
Whenever a film has deviated a bit from standard conventions,
it has met with the shortsightedness
and limited knowledge of some critics.
These angry critics who normally have a stronger presence
in the media attack the films fiercely.
They have sometimes managed to adversely color
the perceptions of people or even the film producers.
Outside of Iran, they have paid more attention to some
other aspects of the films,
and have given us a bit more self-confidence.
I can't deny that, but I can assure you
that this self-confidence has not made me change
my filmmaking style and techniques to make them
agreeable with Western critics' tastes.
Whenever I make a film, it's the content
that determines the film's style.
I don't have the ability to change anything
to make it more pleasing to the eyes of the West
or critics or festivals.
Each film is made based on its own requirements.
It's not conscious, but now that one can see all my films
as a body of work, it seems like they all talk
about the same things.
Someone once said that every filmmaker basically makes
only one film in his lifetime, but he cuts it down
and offers it in cinematic installments to his audience
over a period of time.
It's difficult to talk about the things that I like
because you see them in my films.
It's easier for me to talk about things that I don't like.
What I don't like, you don't see in my films.
But in all, I don't like to engage in telling stories.
I don't like to arouse the viewer emotionally or give him advice.
I don't like to belittle him or
burden him with a sense of guilt.
Those are the things I don't like in the movies.
I think a good film is one that has a lasting power,
and you start to reconstruct it right after you leave the theater
There are a lot of films that seem to be boring,
but they are decent films. On the other hand,
there are films that nail you to your seat and overwhelm you
to the point that you forget everything,
but you feel cheated later.
These are the films that take you hostage.
I absolutely don't like the films in which the filmmakers
take their viewers hostage and provoke them.
I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater.
I think those films are kind enough to allow you a nice nap
and not leave you disturbed
when you leave the theater.
Some films have made me doze off in the theater,
but the same films have made me stay up at night,
wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on
thinking about them for weeks.
Those are the kind of films I like.
Someone told me that my characters are all abnormal
in one way or another. They all deviate from the norm.
From the child in the movie "The Traveller", to
Mr. Firoozkoohi in " The Report" to Hussein Sabzain in " Close-up"
or Hussein in "Through the Olive Trees" or all of
my characters like Hussein in " The Experience" or the kids
in " The Wedding suit". I realize that,
without really wanting to, I'm drawn to unique people.
Since we can't put every single person in front of our camera,
we have to look for special people or ordinary people
in special circumstances.
What does their being special tell us? It reminds us
we are like them and that's why one person makes a film.
One person acts in it, but it communicates with thousands.
In fact, both the filmmaker and the actor have something
in common with the viewer- That commonly proves that if
the actor for example is abnormal, then all those watching
are also abnormal, because if they didn't have the abnormality
within themselves, how can they recognize it in others?
To talk about the differences between illusion and reality
is such a vast topic that I don't know where to begin.
I can't tell you how I experience those elements
in my work and in my life,
when I discovered what part of me is reality
and what part illusion, or why I've had this game of vacillation
from reality to illusion and back to reality in my ordinary life,
not necessarily as a filmmaker.
I have discovered that this is not limited only to filmmakers
or intellectuals- Everyone is involved. The capability
to dream is the most important human characteristic,
shared not proportionately but enough for each.
Though all of us dream, only one of us can talk about our dreams.
The imagination is one of the most distinct and extraordinary
gifts granted to human beings. We are aware of our other senses,
such as sight, taste and hearing, and we are grateful for them.
But we don't seem to know what immense possibilities
are open to us through the imagination.
What is the function of dreaming? Where did it come from?
Why do we have the ability to dream? And why must we dream?
If it doesn't have a function in our life,
then what is the reason for it? I finally found a reason.
When do we resort to dreaming? At times when we are unhappy
with our circumstances. And how extraordinary is it that no
dictatorship in the world can control it?
No system of inquisition can control one's fantasies.
They can throw you in jail, but you still have the ability
to live your sentence outside the prison without anyone
holding you there. Through the imagination, you can pass over
the insurmountable walls without leaving any trace of yourself,
and you can always go back. Now the question is,
once out, why go back? That has to do with the credibility
of reality-you have to go back
and see what your reality is.
In fact, through dreaming, you have the opportunity to tolerate
some of the unchangeable hardships of life.
You get out, you dream, you are
refreshed and you go back.
It's like being in a stuffy room and opening a window.
You let the air come in and then you breathe.
In my mind, our dreams are windows in our lives
and the significance of cinema is in its similarity to this window.
Tell the cameraman that, since violence will never leave
the American film, an important thing Tarantino has done
is to find a way to at least make fun of violence,
and that brings down the tension of violence.
Early on, I had no interest in making films for children.
I began to make children's films due to my employment
at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of
Children and Young Adults.
I began my career making commercials.
If I were still making them,
you would've asked me about my interest in commercials.
As I was making films for children,
I gradually discovered them.
Over 20 years of working with children
I realized how nice and easygoing they are,
and their viewpoints are often more accurate and
more interesting than those of adults.
Children are like the sages we read about in books.
They live like them. They are extremely opportunistic
in a good sense.
And that's what I admire about them.
Although I don't make films for or about children anymore,
I think I have been affected by my years
of working with them.
My films have a kind of childlike playfulness about them.
They reflect a very simple and
almost childish philosophy of life.
I try to look at the world and life
from a child's point of view.