"From 7 in the morning to 11 at night, I was reading. I don't think one can find any other time in one's life to be left alone so much to read in peace like that." -- Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Mohsen Ostadali Makhmalbaf (, born May 29, 1957) is an Iranian film director, writer, editor, and producer. He is currently the president of the Asian Film Academy. Makhmalbaf to lead Asian Film Academy
Makhmalbaf's films have been widely presented in international film festivals in the past ten years. The multi-award-winning director, belongs to the new wave movement of Iranian cinema. Time magazine selected Makhmalbaf's 2001 film, Kandahar, as one of top 100 films of all time. In 2006, he was a member of the Jury at the Venice film festival.
Makhmalbaf left Iran in 2005 shortly after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and now lives in Paris. As of June 12, 2009, and following the events of the 2009 Iranian presidential election, Mohsen Makhmalbaf has claimed that he has been appointed the official spokesman of Mir-Hossein Moussavi's campaign abroad.
"A problem was the lack of cooperation of the Afghan community itself. The women, though living in Iran, were under cover and not willing to participate in the film, and none of the ethnic groups were willing to work together or be together.""Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity.""Because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves.""But also, there are no films being made about Afghanistan.""Do you know that every day, 10 people in Afghanistan are injured by landmines? It will continue for the next 50 years, because the country has the largest number of landmines in the world.""Five years ago, Samira did not want to continue in the regular school system in Iran. To help her with her education, I set up a home school. It wasn't just for my family, it was open to other friends.""From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it.""I myself had to grow a longer beard and Afghan clothes. I was in danger of being kidnapped by smugglers, though I didn't know it at the time.""I wanted to be left alone to live my life, so it was very easy for people to pretend that they were me.""I was in jail four and a half years. When I came out, I continued the same struggle against injustice, but instead of using weapons, I began to use art and cinema.""I'm not playing myself. It's a symbolic situation, where I want to introduce a fascist behind the table. I couldn't have had anybody else do that; for it to be successful, I had to do it myself.""I've heard about brothers making films, but I've never heard about whole families making films like this. We didn't intend to do it; it wasn't something that we planned - it just gradually happened.""If I make two films in a year, they'll be different. This is my style - I can't have just one way.""In Afghanistan, this is the problem, because everybody holds a piece of that mirror, and they all look at it and claim that they hold the entire truth.""In many ways, it is very real, because I sat there for 9 days, and it was constantly happening, and that was the 9 days of making the film. But you can't say that it's 100% true, because there are places where I've been intrusive and interfered.""Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.""The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.""The question in their minds was, why did the outside world, and particularly the Western world, produce all these landmines, and send them to Afghanistan? This business must be stopped. It's a dirty business to produce such a horrible device.""The style depends on the subject.""There's an 800 kilometer border between Iran and Afghanistan.""Usually people like to categorise artists. With my films, I categorise people: if I know which one of my movies you like, I can tell which kind of a person you are.""When I came out, and for many years afterwards, it had become a habit for me to sit and read and read and read, like an obsession. I would take 20 books, and not come out until I'd finished them. It took me a while to change that habit.""When we began filming, these people had legs, but as we were filming, they had been injured and they were brought to the hospital to have their legs amputated, and that's where we found them and asked them to come and be part of the film."
Makhmalbaf was born in Tehran on May 29, 1957. He began to support his single mother at the age of 8 and by the time he turned 17, he had worked as bellboy, plains worker and anything else he could find in the 13 jobs he went through. A youngster in the southern districts of Tehran, Mohsen formed an under-ground Islamic militia group when he was 15 and by the time he was 17, he was shot and arrested while attempting to disarm a policeman. Expecting to remain in prison for much longer, he was released from prison shortly after the revolution in 1979. The 4½-year incarceration helped him to educate himself in various fields and reflect on life and Iranian society. This intellectual renaissance led him to distance himself from politics and in favor of literature and the arts, especially cinema. He came to believe that Iranian society suffers more from cultural poverty than anything else.
Makhmalbaf became a writer and filmmaker in post-revolutionary Iran. His literary activities included research into the arts, novels, short stories and screenplays, some of them translated to English, French, Italian, Arabic, Urdu, Kurdish, Turkish, Korean, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, and Japanese. He wrote and directed 18 feature films and 6 short films, as well as writing screenplays and editing films for various other Iranian filmmakers. His films screened more than 100 times at international film festivals throughout the world, and earned many awards. In 1996 he temporarily abandoned his filmmaking career in order to teach. He formed the Makhmalbaf Film House in which he taught film to a select group of pupils including his own three children. He is currently conducting research for his upcoming film after several years of cinematic silence. His research for the movie Kandahar included traveling secretly to Afghanistan during the Taliban rule, where he witnessed the chaotic situation of the country, becoming so disturbed that, after the completion of the film, he took charge of executing 80 projects in a 2 year period on education and hygiene within Afghanistan as well as improving the living conditions of Afghan refugees in Iran. Many of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s works have been censored and neglected in Iran. :: MAKHMALBAF FILM HOUSE :: Persons Section :: Mohsen
His daughter Samira has also directed a movie in Afghanistan, entitled At Five in the Afternoon.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf is a major figure in Iranian cinema. His films have explored the relationship between the individual and a larger social and political environment. As a result, his work serves as an extended commentary on the historical progression of the Iranian state and its people. Makhmalbaf focuses on several genres, from realist films to fantasy and surrealism, from minimalism to large frescos of everyday life, with a predilection (common to Iranian directors) for the themes of childhood and cinema. La Biennale di Venezia
In 1981 he wrote the screenplay for Towjeeh directed by Manuchehr Haghaniparast. In 1982 he wrote the screenplay for Marg Deegari directed by Mohamad Reza Honarmand. He made his first film Tobeh Nosuh in 1983. Boycott is a 1985 film by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, set in pre-revolutionary Iran. The movie tells the story of a young man named Valeh (Majid Majidi) who is sentenced to death for his communist tendencies. It is widely believed that the movie is based on Makhmalbaf’s own experiences. Mohsen Makhmalbaf creates a spare and deeply affecting portrait of human despair, exploitation, and resilience in The Cyclist (1987). Mohsen Makhmalbaf The movie is about Nasim, a poor Afghan refugee in Iran, who is in desperate need of money for his ailing wife. Finally Nasim agrees to ride a bicycle in a small circle for one week straight in return for the money he needs to pay his wife’s medical bills. Time of Love (1991) is Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s ninth feature film and the first film of what he calls his "third period". It is a romantic trilogy that offers three variations of the same story.
Makhmalbaf directed Gabbeh in 1996. The film follows the nomadic Ghashghai people, whose bright, bold carpets tell stories. The main yarn features a young woman who loves a mysterious stranger, but is forbidden to marry him. Makhmalbaf attempts to follow the carpet idea by making his film dreamily romantic and non-realistic. Events seem to leap around in time and space, much like a dream. Combustible Celluloid film review - Gabbeh (1996), Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Shaghayegh Djodat, Hossein Moharami, dvd review Kandahar (2001) is a fictional odyssey inspired by a true story. It is Makhmalbaf's look at Afghanistan before Sept. 11, as the Taliban's laws strip women of civil rights and hope, and a Western-cultured Afghan woman returns to prevent her sister's suicide during the last eclipse of the 20th century. Haunting 'Kandahar' a stark, surreal odyssey
Makhmalbaf has also taught cinema for years in his film school. His family members who studied in his school have been very successful in their career. Marzieh Meshkini, his wife, gained thirteen international prizes for her film, The Day I Became a Woman, and his daughter Samira received the jury's prize at the Cannes film festival in 2000. His younger daughter Hana directed her first film Joy of Madness in 2003. In 2000 Boston University awarded Makhmalbaf its Special Prize. Makhmalbaf also founded a non-governmental organization for enabling Afghan children to go to school in Iran; by means of changes in Iranian laws due to his campaigns, he succeeded in sending tens of thousands of Afghan children to schools in Iran. He has also published 27 books, many of which have already been translated in more than ten languages. Today he lives with his family in Kabul, where he is helping to build schools and hospitals. He has also assisted an Afghan director to produce a movie.
Persian cinema in Afghanistan is slowly on the rise, after a long period of silence. Before the September 11 attacks, Makhmalbaf attracted global attention to Afghanistan with his celebrated movie, Kandahar. Kandahar was an attempt to tell the world about a forgotten country. Later on, Yassamin Maleknasr, Abolfazl Jalili, Samira Makhmalbaf and Siddiq Barmak made significant contributions to Persian cinema in Afghanistan. Siddiq Barmak is also director of the Afghan Children Education Movement (ACEM), an association that promotes literacy, culture and the arts, founded by Makhmalbaf. The school trains actors and directors for the emerging Afghan cinema. In Tajikistan, Makhmalbaf is playing the same role as he played in the reconstruction of the cinema of post-Taliban Afghanistan. 1st Didar Film Festival, the first Film festival in Tajikistan, was held in 2004.
Hamid Dabashi, Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and Future. (Chapter on Makhmalbaf). Verso, 2001.
Hamid Dabashi, Like Light from the Heart of Darkness. Sakuhinsha, Japan, 2004.
Hamid Dabashi, Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema: (Chapter XI: Mohsen Makhmalbaf: A Moment of Innocence. pp. 325—368). Mage Publishers, 2007. ISBN 093421185X.
Hamid Dabashi, Makhmalbaf at Large: The Making of a Rebel Filmmaker. I. B. Tauris, 2007. [http://www.ibtauris.com/display.asp?K=9781845115326&aub=Hamid%20Dabashi&m=1&dc=2
