Cinema presents 'The Veil and the Screen: Iranian Women on Film' in March

As Islamic culture and history take center stage in world events, Cornell Cinema presents a series of films in March about the lives of women in Iran.

In March Cornell Cinema presents four new films about the lives of Iranian women, including the controversial "The Circle," which will be shown March 8, 10 and 12 in Willard Straight Theatre.

"The Veil and the Screen: Iranian Women on Film" begins Friday, March 1, with the Ithaca premiere of "The Day I Became a Woman" at 7:15 p.m. in the Willard Straight Theatre, and with additional screenings on March 3 and 5. Admission is $5 general/$4 for students and seniors. A full listing is available at http://cinema.cornell.edu , and listings will appear in the Chronicle calendar.

Iranian cinema has never had greater international prominence than it does right now. Recent films have swept festivals and competitions, and filmmakers are testing not only the limits of the medium -- creating some of the most visually and structurally innovative features being made -- but also the limits of what can be shown about the Islamic republic. Village Voice critic Godfrey Cheshire has referred to the current crop of Iranian films and filmmakers as the "Khatami wave," catalyzed by the 1997 election of reformist president Mohammed Khatami as well as director Abbas Kiarostami's win for best picture at that year's Cannes Film Festival. The international success of Kiarostami and director Mohsen Makhmalbaf showed the range of Iranian cinema. Kiarostami's subtle aesthetic experiments and Makhmalbaf's charged political critiques opened up new possibilities for the next generation of filmmakers.

But progressives in both politics and culture face greater resistance than ever from the country's hardliners, who raise barriers in the form of censorship and criminal charges. Women have been the subject of the most daring releases, and Cornell Cinema presents four films that bring their lives out from behind the veil and onto the screen.

In Iran's shifting political atmosphere, women's rights and experiences have been contested ground, and the resulting films range from bleak portraits of women whose very survival is threatened in Iran to more hopeful (but still cautious) stories that hint at greater freedom. Makhmalbaf has taken years off from making films to help his female family members launch their own filmmaking careers. "The Day I Became a Woman," the debut feature by Makhmalbaf's wife Marziyeh Meshkini, offers three vignettes of Iranian womanhood, from childhood through old age, and it became the first Iranian film to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Jafar Panahi's "The Circle," which will be screened March 8, 10 and 12, also has been a festival hit, although some critics have accused the director of overdramatizing the condition of lower-class Iranian women.

"Daughters of the Sun," (March 22 and 26) directed by Mariam Shahriar, also has inspired controversy in both its homeland and abroad. Some have called it "the Iranian 'Boys Don't Cry'" and "Iran's first lesbian film," but neither phrase suggests the complexity of the economic and social conditions Shahriar depicts. The series also includes a collaboration between British documentary maker Kim Longinotto and Iranian filmmaker Ziba Mir-Hosseini. In "Runaway" (March 7 and 9), they follow five Iranian girls who take to the streets rather than stay in homes dominated by tyrannical fathers and brothers. With their courage and strength, these girls suggest that the future of Iran may hold extraordinary change.

The series is co-sponsored with the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Iranian Students Organization.