International
Portraying the Afghan tragedy
By Gautaman Bhaskaran
TOKYO JAN 15. Cinema has the magnetism to shake and stir a society, and the Iranian director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, did precisely this with his latest,``Kandahar''.
Now being screened in Tokyo, ``Kandahar'' was made before the Taliban fell, and the film unspools a string of images which haunts and disturbs a viewer. The movie may be a simple story of a Canada-based Afghan woman journalist desperately trying to enter her country after a call from her sister, who says she is ready to kill herself. An American doctor, pretending to be a local with a fake beard, helps the journalist along the way.
But, of course, beyond the story Makhmalbaf creates powerful metaphors: the ``burkha'' is shown as a prison, the artificial leg as a will to live a free life, and the eclipsed moon as a sign of intellectual poverty.
The Iranian auteur's work created a storm, both before and after the September 13 tragedy. Recently in Tokyo, to promote his film, Makhmalbaf lashed out at the U.S. He told the press that what Afghanistan needed today were books -- not bombs -- to educate a largely illiterate population which had suffered two decades of war, starvation, destruction and death.
"I wish books had been raining from the skies for the past four months instead of bombs", he said in an obvious criticism of the continuing American air raids in Afghanistan. An outspoken advocate of peace, Makhmalbaf said that no social change was possible without a cultural shift. No cultural shift was possible without education. ``An average Afghan lives to be 38, and most never learn to read''.
In a country where 2.5 million have died in the past 20 years of war, social enlightenment could hardly be expected to come without education. He said that 90 per cent of the women were still wearing the``burkha''-- which came to represent the Taliban tyranny -- despite a change in government.
If Makhmalbaf's statements caused a sensation in Japan, known for its blind allegiance to the U.S., his movie has led to a shocking revelation.
According to Press reports here, the actor who plays the American doctor in ``Kandahar", Hassan Tantai, is ``an assassin who killed an Iranian dissident in Washington in 1980 and then fled to Iran". It is said that Tantai is actually Daoud Salahuddin, born David Belfiel Makhmalbaf said that he often chose his actors from crowded streets and barren deserts, and would not know if Tantai and Salahuddin were one and the same.
``I never ask those who act in my movies what they have done before, nor do I follow what they do after I finish shooting. 'Kandahar' was no exception", the director said.
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