by Sandra Schäfer
I began collaborating with cultural producers in Kabul and Tehran in 2002, on projects dealing with gender representation and the political and social changes that have taken place since 1979. This was preceded by a study of Iranian cinema, pursued as a member of a group of students at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe. We intended to respond to the highly questionable propositions made by Samuel Huntington in Clash of Civilizations as well as the debates ensuing after September 11th by dealing with the medium of film. Iranian films by Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and others had become popular through the film festivals Cannes and Locarno starting in the 1980s. Despite political restrictions, these directors succeeded, each in their own way, in addressing topical social issues within Iran. In addition to art house films, we also examined works of younger filmmakers, some of whom lived outside of Iran. Impressed by these films and how they visualize contradictions in Tehran, a metropolis of millions, I developed the idea for a script on the changes this city has undergone since the revolution in 1979. In November 2002, I flew to Tehran for the first time to do research there, accompanied by the Iranian-Swiss filmmaker Sonia Shafie. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an important person for my research, happened to be not in Tehran but filming in Kabul. We spontaneously accepted the invitation to visit him in the Afghan capital and booked a flight from Tehran. He was assisting the Afghan filmmaker Siddiq Barmak with the coordination of some of the larger scenes in Barmak’s Osama, the first Afghan feature film produced after the fall of the Taliban regime.
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We drove directly to the shooting location. A reenactment of a demonstration of women against the Taliban regime was being filmed. More than 1,000 women had gathered to participate as extras. Nobody had reckoned with such a huge number. Demonstrating was now being rehearsed and the production assistant urged the extras to recall their experiences of the recent Taliban past. I used a video camera to document the making of this scene.
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Back in Berlin, the filmmaker Elfe Brandenburger and I edited the short film The Making of a Demonstration from my documentary material. The film focuses on the necessary processes that make scenes in a feature film convincing: the rehearsal of the lay actresses, the repetition of individual scenes, preparing the props, the waiting – and, in the end, paying the protagonists. The film showed in art venues and festivals. Paradoxically, The Making of a Demonstration was understood by some as a traditional “making of” – a documentation of how Siddiq Barmak directed Osama– and was included as an extra on the German DVD version of Osama. Due to misunderstandings in this context about who directed Osama,we decided to re-edit our film…
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