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By G. Roger Denson
Shirin Neshat: Artist of the Decade
12/30/2010 08:36 pm ET Updated Dec 06, 2017
Women are known to have been active participants in the first mosques founded by Mohammad, and the
prophet instructed his followers that men and women are equal before God. Yet women in many Muslim
societies are separated from men not just in the mosque but in all places public while being denied many of the
legal rights of men. With Islam’s relationship to women under increasing scrutiny today by both progressive
Muslims and the non-Muslim world, Shirin Neshat’s art depicting Islamic women’s collective strength and
resilience in the face of misogyny and despotism reminds us that though the differences between Islamic and
modern societies appear on the surface to break down to matters of faith, the deeper, truly exacerbating fault
lines carve out the extent to which our cultures impose the male legislation of women and render the divide of
gender inviolable.
Shirin Neshat, “Fervor,” 1999, © Shirin Neshat
Pronouncements made by critics like “Artist of the Year,” and especially “Artist of the Decade,” have always
left me feeling a little bit as if I’d just witnessed a fraudulent transaction, one I should report but resign to keep
silent on. That I now find myself making just such a proclamation about artist and film director Shirin Neshat as
Artist of the Decade is a matter of the degree to which world events have more than met the artist in making her
art chronically relevant to an increasingly global culture. By “chronically” relevant, I mean that her work
responds to the ideological war being waged between Islam and the secular world over matters of gender,
religion, and democracy. It’s Neshat’s navigation through the ongoing convergences and collisions of values in
the formation of global culture that separates her from her peers despite there being more artists than ever
impacting the international markets and discourse with issues and imagery relevant to world affairs. Quite
simply, I chose Shirin Neshat because more than any other artist I can call to mind, the impact of her work far
transcends the realms of art in reflecting the most vital and far-reaching struggle to assert human rights.
Shirin Neshat, “Veiled Women in Three Arches” (from the series “Women of Allah”), 1999, © Shirin Neshat
At the beginning of the decade, Neshat had already been separated from her Iranian homeland for more than 20
years — since the Revolution of the Ayatollahs in 1979. Were she known only by the Women of Allah series
she produced between 1994-1998 — the stark photographs of Iranian women in chadors, some brandishing
guns, others with skin covered by Persian script that few people outside Iran can read — she would still be an
internationally renowned artist despite her early work’s want of nuance. The images from this period are
provocative, mysterious, politically iconic, and when taken out of context can easily lead Islamophobes and
Islamophiles alike to interpretations of terror and its promotion. In fact, series like Women of Allah are
allegorical to the deep-rooted resilience and determination of Iranian women confronted with Sharia law,
particularly with regard to their curtailment under hijab, which in the Qur’anic sense refers to both the veil
required for women’s modesty and the partitioning, or outright segregation, of women from men in the mosque
and other public places.
Shirin Neshat, “Rebellious Silence,” 1994, © Shirin Neshat
With four short films that Neshat completed between 1998 and 2000, but which Westerners by and large would
not see until well within this decade, Neshat’s art took a more expansive, if more subtle and thoughtful, course
of image-activism, one making an unmistakably Islamic-feminist mark on Westerners whose prior acquaintance
to Iranian and Islamic art was either nonexistent or confined to the miniature paintings of past centuries.
Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999), Soliloquy (1999), and Fervor (2000), were originally installed in art galleries
as dual-channel, if opposing, video projections representing gender differences and roleplaying codified by
Iranian interpretations of Sharia law and the implementation of hijab. But beneath the traditions of Islam surged
a current of women’s resilience quite distinct in its history, yet which Westerners by and large knew nothing
about, thanks to the myopic political interests of Western media. That Neshat singly broke through this cultural
embargo can largely be attributed to her exacting iconography and graphic formal organization of visual gender
codes that heighten the tension acted out between Iranian men and women in their separate activities of ritual,
preaching, socialization, even in what behavior renders them social outcasts — all projected onto two separate,
gender-specific screens, each with its own camera techniques employed to underscore the codification of malefemale differentiation and alienation at work.
Shirin Neshat, “Fervor,” 1999, © Shirin Neshat
Neshat’s work drew my attention between 1999 and 2001 for its graphic extrapolation and singular enactment
of the “homosocial divide” that I’d only just become acquainted with by reading the feminist literary and social
critic Eve Kosofky Sedgwick. That’s “homosocial“ — a term designating the cultural and geopolitical halving
and socialization of humankind drawn along lines of sexuality and gender that is based not on reproductive
functions alone (as was for millennia assumed by most world traditions), but as well by presumed non-sexual,
yet no less compelling, same-sex attractions (familial, platonic, mentorial) cementing the alliances which
constrict power and privilege according to a culture’s dominant XY (male) or XX (female) chromosome
preference. In the context of Islamic Iran, and specifically of Iranian hijab, I suddenly saw Neshat’s work
asserting that behind the veils, screens, and doors that hide women from authority, and which obscures
understanding in the West, Iranian women possess a resilience, strength, and determination that is greatly
facilitated by a discreet yet vital network of women’s homosocieties that operates not only despite religious and
political constraints placed on Iranian women, but in ways unforeseen by men because of the imposition of
hijab.
Shirin Neshat, “Rapture,” 1999, © Shirin Neshat
By the year 2000, it was clear that Neshat was providing the West’s first compelling and indigenous look at
hijab in art since the painting of Persian miniatures. As her work after 1998 grew increasingly nuanced and
expansive in the social issues it chronicled, Neshat’s art also could be seen tracing the divide not just between
men and women, but the divides separating Islam from the West, Sharia law from feminism, even Iranian
feminism from Western feminism. Along with the exports of such Iranian filmmakers as Abbas Kiarostami and
Jafar Panahi, Neshat’s art counted among the few significant representations of Iran, the Middle East, Islam,
and the women touched by all these institutions impacting World consciousness. Western viewers, curators,
critics, and collectors responded as they rarely do to such highly politicized art. At first it may have been
because Neshat’s work appeared to confirm the imagery we gleaned from the media of women under hijab. But
on closer examination the work turned out to be revelatory of an entire invisible history of women’s
homosocialization under Iranian Islam specifically and, judging from the reports of various Islamic feminists
reaching the West, indicative of women of Islam in general. In the largest sense, Neshat provides Westerners a
rare glimpse at the complexities of women’s homosocialization as it played out in pre-modern cultures and
which for centuries remained obscured by the art historical depictions of women’s enclaves made by male
Islamic artists. (See the accompanying slideshow at the end of this article featuring historical Islamic miniatures
signifying women’s homosocialization under hijab.)
Shirin Neshat, “Passage,” 2001, cibachrome print from the film of the same title, © Shirin Neshat
Even if 9/11 hadn’t made Islam the central focus of the world at the beginning of the decade, even if Iran’s
Green Revolution protests following the 2009 Iranian presidential election against the disputed victory of
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and in support of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi hadn’t
disrupted life in major cities of Iran, or if the shooting death of the young woman protestor Neda Agha-Soltan
hadn’t focused the ire of audiences around the world against the governing administration and mullahs,
Neshat’s work would be potently moving both emotionally and as political activism. Few artists manage to
draw interest simultaneously from the citizens of two cultures so exceedingly attached to their
misunderstandings of each other so compellingly, especially with the prospect of war hovering above and
around them so ominously. The fact that others from her country try and are imprisoned for it — and I refer
now specifically to Jafar Panahi and Muhamed Rasoulof, two Iranian film directors sentenced earlier this month
to six-year prison sentences after being convicted of “propaganda against the state,” makes Neshat’s
contribution all the more urgent. For Neshat presents a picture more accurately representative of Iranian and
Islamic diversity and dissent against state and religious despotism—a picture voiding the stereotypes of antidemocratic, anti-feminist, and pro-terrorist sensibilities branding Iranian and Islamic citizens in the eyes of the
non-Islamic world.
Shirin Neshat, “Passage,” 2001, cibachrome print from the film of the same title, © Shirin Neshat
It’s hardly surprising that Neshat made an important impact on Western feminism at the very time that
international feminists were grappling with the criticism of non-Western feminists over Western misinformation
and chauvinism. Many Western feminists started out misunderstanding, and in some senses still misunderstand,
hijab only in terms of its repression of women’s activities and dress. Neshat’s work counters the Western
media’s culturocentrism while at the same time trying to ease the relgiocentrism of Islam in her attempts to
signify the resourcefulness of Islamic women who turn the constraints of hijab to their advantage. She does so
by representing the Iranian women who take advantage of the freedom from male sexual objectification and the
anonymous passage among men the chador affords them. By now, it’s been widely publicized that many
Muslim women have expressed apprehension about the prospect of being denied the option — the versatility —
of choosing between Western clothing and the chador for different functions. Perhaps because I’m a lapsed
Catholic who was taught by nuns, and as an adult have interviewed women who prefer the convent and vow of
chastity, I’ve learned something of the utility and defense that something like a veil, habit of dress, and separate
habitation, if not outright cloistering, affords women who wish not to be sexually objectified by commercial and
sexual interests. In a trend running counter to the Western secular stereotypes, many Muslim women attribute
their achievements and high career rankings to being freed of sexual objectification on the job by hijab. But in
the West, Neshat’s iconography remained the sole photographic and cinematic testimony to this reality of
Islamic feminism.
Shirin Neshat, “Passage,” 2001, cibachrome print from the film of the same title, © Shirin Neshat
The many Western viewers who missed this aspect of Neshat’s work can hardly be blamed. Ordinarily, when
viewing the art of historic and far cultures, we lack an eye for the codes and obscure regional histories relayed
within the art — codes and histories that people indigenous to the time and culture would immediately
recognize. The obscuration of women’s history is particularly steep in Islamic art, largely because most of the
art was made by men, is about men, and thereby is dictated by the same customs of hijab that kept women out
of view of men. It only follows that the discreet histories of women’s Islamic homosocieties that fostered, and
still foster, women’s resourcefulness and resilience in the face of authoritarianism—or even the sheer
enjoyment of women with each other’s company—was rarely depicted. But historic examples do exist. (The
slideshow below includes a few of the significant exceptions known to Western audiences keen on Islamic
miniature painting.) And they are being produced under Islam today — in Islamic cinema, for instance —
where we find the resourcefulness and resilience that shape women’s homosocieties under religious and
authoritarian rule informing the various narrative films being made (and banned) in Iran (Jafar Panahi’s The
Circle, 2000), Afghanistan (Siddiq Barmak’s Osama, 2003), and the Arab states (Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The
Stoning of Soraya M., 2009) alternately depict the support and struggles within the historically tight-knit
homosocieties of women in Islamic nations. But while these films (all by men) portray women’s resilience as
proceeding from their abject status, Shirin Neshat distinguishes her photographs and films from such depictions
by putting stress not on the abjection of Muslim women, but on the strength that emanates from the women’s
own discreet and inner homosocial identification and socialization. We can see this because Neshat enables us
to see through the chadors and dividing walls keeping Iranian women and men apart so to gain sight of the
hidden power that emanates from women banding together to contend with men buttressed socially by the
formidable writ of Sharia law. No doubt because she is the rare woman among these artists, she sees and
portrays women who are, in the emotional sense, literally without men despite and because of being surrounded
and dominated by them.
Shirin Neshat, “Pari,” 2008, © Shirin Neshat
It’s a sexual and gender iconography that impresses the homosocial divide graphically onto the minds of her
viewers while conveying a message about Muslim women that transcends all cultural barriers, including the
misinformation generated with post-9/11 cultural polarization. Neshat reminds us that though the differences
between Islamic and modern societies appear on the surface to break down to matters of faith, the deeper, truly
exacerbating fault lines carve out the extent to which our cultures impose the male legislation of women and
render the divide of gender inviolable. To the modern and secular eye, the Sharia customs of women’s hijab, the
public veiling and screening off of women in the mosque or in public assemblies, is perceived as severe and
medieval, while to the fundamentalist Muslim the exposure of women outside Islam is vulgar, exploitative, and
sinful. It is within the very center of this intersection of the cultural, religious, and political legislations of
gender codification and the clashes of cultural difference that Neshat interjects her work. We see the Muslim,
secular, democratic, despotic, male and female divides operative most starkly in the films Turbulent and Fervor,
whereby we find Neshat covers her female performers in chadors and erects partitions to keep the public
assemblies of men and women from acquiring sight of one another even as we are provided hints at the surging
desire on both sides of the gender divide struggling to break free of sexual repression. But we are also provided
glimpses of the kind of activist and defiant spirit that lies in wait of opportunity behind the chadors, screens, and
disengagement of the sexes. It is in the film Rapture that we watch desire transform into action as the internal
spaces of constraint are shown by the artists to also be the private spaces that allow individualism to take hold.
It is an individualism that we see freeing the minds of women from narrow ideologies imposed on them as they
gather in the exterior, open spaces of isolated terrain removed from male authorial view. And as the collective
grows we watch women congeal as a homosocial collective in response to the Sharia imposed on them since the
1979 Iranian Revolution. In this sense it is Sharia that Neshat implies impels women to seek out the sea, where
they then disembark in a boat without apparent motive or destination.
Shirin Neshat, “Women Without Men,” 2009, © Shirin Neshat
In Passage (2001), we find a more nuanced if also more mystical vision of women discreetly collaborating to
achieve a common end. On screen we witness a ritualistic unity at work as the women move through a desert of
obvious symbolic isolation whereby they are enabled to break free from the constraints imposed on them by
men — however transiently and however isolated from Iranian society such outbreaks mark them. It matters
little that the actions the segregated men and women performed in Neshat’s films and photographs are
ritualistically ambiguous, prone to portentous signification and spectacle, or appear poetically obscure, even
absurd (men marching herd-like through a desert; women forming a huddle on their knees to dig a hole in the
desert with their bare hands as they become encircled by fire). The message that is central is the determination
and solidarity forged in homosocialization — in the desire (whether asexual or sexual) to enjoy the
companionship and collective productivity of one’s own sex.
Shirin Neshat, “Women Without Men,” 2009, © Shirin Neshat
Of course, the portrayal of the inner workings of women’s segregated socialization can only be conveyed
openly within societies whose female homosocial orders have loosened their male restraints. Neshat, after all,
like the expatriate Indian feminist filmmaker Deepa Mehta, lives and works in North America. But then
expatriate artists have long taken advantage of their new democractic status to provide Westerners views of the
complexities of their native lands, which in the case of Neshat and Mehta pertain to women’s homosocialization
in nations that artificially extend pre-modern patriarchies into our modern era. They include women’s enclaves
that for centuries remained hidden behind the art historical depictions of women made by male artists —
enclaves that except for the religious orders have become depreciated in their cultural and commercial
subsumption today, if not made near-extinct in the West. The glimpses provided by Neshat and Mehta at
women’s pre-modern enclaves are valuable not just for their depictions of the historic social orders within
which women exercised some measure of autonomy and power without men. In their revelation to the
unknowing public Neshat and Mehta in some sense perpetuate the solidarity that women forged to hold up
under the constraints and which account for the longevity of the women’s pre-modern enclaves into the modern
era. It is also the reason why women artists like Neshat and Mehta turn their gaze back on the male homosocial
art that historically neglected the strengths of women’s homosocial unity despite the veiling and segregation
imposed on them. Ultimately women artists like Neshat and Mehta sift through the history of male domination
to find the significations of women’s strength, resilience, and clandestine dissent.
Shirin Neshat, “Women Without Men”, 2009, © Shirin Neshat
In large part the ambiguities of difference — between men and women, between Islam and democracy, between
Western and Iranian feminists — that remained dormant in Neshat’s earlier work find their expression in her
2009 film Women Without Men, which won her The Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion (best director) award.
It’s in Women Without Men that we clearly see women’s lives are imperiled only when they remove themselves
from the enclaves of women’s homosociety. Although the ambiguities within the film are far from reconciled
with any feminist or democratic ideology, in reality such reconciliation evades the dynamics of gender, history,
and cultural difference still in play today. It is this non-resolution that impels Neshat in the making of Women
Without Men to resort to the narrative style of magical realism — for there is no realism that can “make sense”
of the absurdities of religious and state tyranny. In fact, in comparison with Neshat’s earlier photography and
films, Women Without Men softens the edges of the gender divide by representing women living in prerevolutionary Iran without the chador. Of course, Neshat’s softer gaze is also the result of the narrative style
inspired by the Women Without Men novel by Shahrnush Parsipur (Zanan Bedun-e Mardan in Farsi). It’s a
narrative mode not generally well suited to politicized dramas unless it’s wielded by masters like Gabriel Garcia
Marquez or Isabel Allende. But already, with only one feature-length narrative film behind her, Neshat has
proved herself to be a master at visualizing the seemingly mystical (but wholly political) bonds of women
forged behind the closed doors of hijab. Whereas her film Passage was a more consistent exercise of the
“magic” in magical realism, Women Without Men is a superior production in allowing us more identifiable and
realistic portals through which we enter the prescient psyches of the women. Once we enter, we no longer see
Neshat’s women as portentous mystics or arcane caricatures — the one limiting signification of Passage — but
as people with ambiguous interpretations of and relationships to the formidable and worldly equations of power
they face. In other words, they resemble people we know and can sympathize with for seeing what motivates
them as human beings. Women Without Men is all about motives, specifically the motives that propel three
women who are anything but without men yet who learn that they are better off when they strive to be without
them, and as a result of seeking a new reality fatefully meet up.
Shirin Neshat, “Women Without Men,” 2009, © Shirin Neshat
As in all her work, Neshat uses film’s iconographic power to mitigate the differences between the West and
Islam, however wishful her efforts appear. In Neshat’s earlier films, Iranian feminism is portrayed as being
starkly different from Western feminism without showing us why except for connoting feminism as the effect of
women being forced to submit to the governing mullahs — the effect of the extreme pressure placed on women
by severe and misogynistic interpretations of religion. Only with the making of Women Without Men are nonMuslim viewers, and Westerners in particular, able to properly read Neshat’s earlier work in retrospect. Which
really means that non-Muslims are also provided the historical backdrop they require to understand how Iranian
women are engaged in a discreet feminism—that resembling what in the West may be thought of as analogous
to an earlier, 20th-century brand of women’s enculturation that by necessity still conflated empowerment to
some degree of domesticity and male domination.
Shirin Neshat, “Women Without Men,” 2009, © Shirin Neshat
Throughout the film’s three intersecting narratives of women seeking meaning beyond men and their
governance, we watch Western parallels and influences enacted onscreen that both Western women and men
can identify with. This is only natural, given that it was the West which impacted upon the Pahlavi shahs to
relax hijab. It is the reason that Shirin’s first employment of a period-specific script provides non-Muslims with
the history we require to understand the tensions of a generation of Iranian women who remember the secular
Iran. It never would have been difficult to understand if we in the West hadn’t forgotten the ways in which we
forged our own resilience and strength under the constraints of religious and monarchal despotism. Each
generation requires reminding of the tensions that gave rise to our modern-day freedoms; reminding that
women’s politicization is the unintended byproduct of women being confined to their own homosocial orders
for centuries. It is, after all, homosocialization that provided, and often still provides, women a respite from
male sexual objectification and the irrepressible urge within men for their own male homosocialization.
Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that Neshat’s depiction of distinct male and female homosocieties
should be the single most important motif to mitigate the differences between Islam and modernity.
Homosocialization is one of the true universal proclivities to transcend cultural and linguistic difference. After
all, homosocialization courses through and organizes every tribe, nation, and civilization in history, be it
patriarchal or matriarchal. All of which reflects on Neshat’s departures from her usual subject of Iranian
women, which we see in her 2002 series Tooba, a reference to the feminine Tree of Paradise cited in the Qur’an
but which Neshat shot in Oaxaca, Mexico, and her most recent series, Games of Desire, which references the
Laotian customs and signage of courtship among elderly men and women.
Shirin Neshat, two images from the “Tooba” (the feminine Tree of Paradise) series, 2002, © Shirin Neshat
Shirin Neshat, “Couple 2,” from the “Games of Desire Series,” 2009, © Shirin Neshat
For a look at women and hijab in historic Islamic art, see the slideshow below.
Follow G. Roger Denson on Facebook and Twitter.
Read other posts by G. Roger Denson on Huffington Post in the archive.
PHOTO GALLERY
Depictions of Islamic Women in Historic Islamic Miniature Paintings and Illuminations.
Part of HuffPost News. ©2019 Verizon Media. All rights reserved.
SUNDANCE FEATURES
Saturday, January 23, 2010
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN'S SHIRIN NESHAT |
By Livia Bloom
UNTITLED (WOMEN OF ALLAH). PHOTO COURTESY OF GLADSTONE GALLERY,
NEW YORK.
"It’s very flattering to be interviewed by a film magazine as opposed to an art publication," said Shirin Neshat.
"I am very flattered anybody would think it’s worth talking to me." Widely-acknowledged as one of the most
influential contemporary Middle-Eastern artists (and apparently one of the most modest), Neshat and her work
are staples of museums and galleries around the world, while remaining relatively little-known in film circles.
That changed this year when she burst onto the independent international film stage with her first feature film,
Women Without Men. The narratives of four women in 1953 Iran are interwoven in the film, which was seven
years in the making. Each character comes from a different background and social class; one by one they are
drawn together in a mysterious, isolated garden outside of the city where they find solace, comfort, and family
in one another, at least for a little while. Women Without Men won the Silver Lion for Neshat as Best Director
at this year's Venice Film Festival, and will make its American debut at Sundance this January.
Forbidden to return to Iran, the country of her birth, Neshat studied at Berkeley and now lives in New York.
Her multinational background is mirrored in the film: here, Casablanca stands in for Tehran (where she is not
permitted to film); the producers hail from Europe, and, like the director, the actors are primarily Iranian
emigrés. Dream logic and juxtaposition order Neshat's video installations and photography, and this is also true
of Women Without Men. Based on a slim, brilliant 1989 novella of the same name, the film's tone differs from
that of the book. They are companion pieces, like versions of the same song by different bands. Although both
employ many of the same characters and surreal, magical story elements, the spare, unsentimental prose of the
book, which is frequently interspersed with single lines of thought or dialogue, is very different from the
serious, lush, and highly-stylized aesthetic that defines Neshat's film. The evolution of her intense, ritualistic
imagery can be traced back through previous work. Women of Allah, an arresting series of photographic
portraits of women in black chadors holding guns, swords, and flowers--including Neshat herself--featured
detailed Persian calligraphy filling in positive and negative photographic spaces. In 1996, Neshat turned her
attention to video. Shooting on 35mm film that was then transferred to video, she has created 18 single and
two-channel digital installations, many using dual or opposing projection. The pieces have names like Rapture
(1999), Passage (2001), and Turbulent (1998), the latter a split screen singing competition between a man and
a woman that transgresses against Iranian custom that prohibits women from singing in front of an audience of
mixed genders. The piece won the International Award at the Venice Biennale International Golden Lion.
TURBULENT. PHOTO BY LARRY BARNS, COURTESY OF
GLADSTONE GALLERY, NEW YORK.
Women Without Men began its public life as a series of individual video pieces named after its main characters:
Mahdokht (2004), Zarin (2005), Munis (2008), Faezah (2008), and Farokh Legha (2008). The videos were
shown in darkened gallery rooms that alternated with brightly-lit spaces displaying large-format photographic
still images. Landscapes featuring oceans, cities, gardens, streets and homes were depicted vividly along with
the gazing, searching, characters who are simultaneously archetypal, symbolic, and individual. The characters
evoked questions of desire, beauty, history, and ambition with their staring eyes and detailed settings, props,
and costumes. For the artist, the pieces are emotional touchstones, visual bridges between motifs from Neshat's
homeland and America, her adoptive home. The perfect places to explore them are the movie theater and — of
course — the film magazine.
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN DIRECTOR SHIRIN NESHAT.
Shirin Neshat: It’s so strange to finally wake up at your own house after much traveling—sometimes I wake
up I don’t know what country I am in or what time it is. (Laughs) This morning I woke up and was in a state of
zombie.
Filmmaker: Oh no!
Neshat: It’s so nice to wake up with your own apartment. I didn’t even leave much today. I’ve lived in so
many horrible places that it feels good to finally be here. I think I paid my dues in New York. I’ve lived in
every possible corner that was filthy or loud! [Laughs]
Filmmaker: Really? Your apartment here in Soho is just lovely... What was your worst New York apartment?
Neshat: I remember living in the East Village, several different locations, but once above a punk rock
nightclub, and they were just always driving me crazy. That was on Avenue A and Second Street. Then I lived
on Avenue B and 12th Street, where there were a lot of people up all night. Then I lived in Chinatown, on East
Broadway. It was really—it’s dirty, like the hallway hadn’t been swept for like 10 years. And we had a
methadone clinic next door. So getting out of the house with a baby and a stroller, and there were heroin
addicts next door, and they were spitting—it was just disgusting. And then I lived in Brooklyn. And then I
lived on Elizabeth Street and then in NoHo. Those were really nice, but temporary... And finally here.
Filmmaker: And now you’re home. Themes of home and family arise throughout the film; your female
protagonists even seem to create a family of their own.
Neshat: Yes, a community. Their garden was meant to be a place of exile; a place that these women could
escape to, away from their problems; a place to be temporarily at peace. A shelter, a place of security, a new
beginning, a second chance — these ideas are very poignant for a lot of us who are displaced from Iran. When
I was young, 17, I left my family and never completely had a family ever again. Every seven years or so I have
moved to a whole new beginning, a whole new situation [where I] try to feel a sense of security. But I’ve been
a nomad. I hope it doesn’t change again, but it seems I regularly move from place to place in a big way, make
new relationships and communities, and then move on again. The idea of nomadic feeling, always looking for
an idea of security, is very personal.
SPEECHLESS. PHOTO COURTESY OF GLADSTONE GALLERY, NEW YORK.
Filmmaker: Is it a surprise, if not a contradiction, to say that in exile, you have found a home?
Neshat: How can you go about creating a new safe, secure or comfortable environment? First thing that
happens, you surround yourself by Iranian people. But I’m not really a typical Iranian either; I was so young
when I left that I’m very international; so for me, it’s really about balancing inside and outside of the Iranian
community. To this day, I feel disjointed going in and out of the Western community and the Iranian
community. I try to belong to both, but I always feel slightly an outsider and I believe that for me, as for a lot
of artists, subjects that are very important to them peek their way into their narratives, characters and concepts.
Filmmaker: How did you find the book that you adapted into this film? I look forward to reading it.
Neshat: It’s a very small one; you can read it in two, three hours. Though I don’t know if I should tell you to
read the book. Which book have you ever read that has translated into film that you’ve liked? [Laughs] When I
decided finally to think about making a feature film, I looked for the right story. It's actually just what I’m
doing now, for another film, which is really exciting. I was recommended a lot of books — like I am now —
and scripts and stories to get inspired, and having worked with women’s poetry and having a feminist edge, a
lot of people gave me novels to read by women. Shahrnoush Parsipour is one of the most important woman
writers of modern literature from Iran, and I knew her writing as a young kid, a long time ago.
Hamid Dabashi, a friend and scholar at Columbia University, handed me the Farsi version of Women Without
Men and said, “You should really read this.” All Shahrnoush’s literature is surrealistic, magic realism. She has
this incredible imagination, and her writing is unlike other literature that I’ve read. It’s really Iranian, rooted in
Persian poetry, mysticism, religion, politics and historical events in Iran. Yet at the same time, she has one foot
in universal, ephemeral, timeless, existential, and philosophical issues. I realized that it was the right story for
me because in my work, I’ve asked deep personal, philosophical questions as a person and as a woman. I've
also engaged with larger issues that are above and beyond me, too.
Shahrnoush invented these characters according to some of her own mad ideas, and then I took them and I
shaped them according to mine. This novel is set in the city of Tehran in the 1950s. It begins with very
important historical events in the city, and then we come to the orchard, a completely different space. In my
other work, these paradoxical elements were also really strong. Of course, I knew how difficult it was going to
be to re-adapt a story that involves five protagonists and much historical material. But these were my initial
and fundamental attractions: the book’s political and poetic properties.
Filmmaker: What spoke to you about the four central women characters?
Neshat: I think that the writer did a great job of choosing very interesting, diverse characters — socioeconomically diverse as well as diverse in the type of dilemmas they have as women. Shahrnoush and I talked
a lot about what childhood is like and how deep psychological issues of the body can be. As a first time feature
director, it was interesting to think about how to develop their characters and think of them cinematically.
For example, Munis is interested in activism, social justice, issues that are larger than her personal needs and
her own narcissistic life. Like her, part of me always wants to be involved in activism; really, really wants to
get very angry; and wants to do something for others.
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN.
With Zarin, it’s a question of her obsession with the body and her feelings of shame. [In response to external]
stigmas, taboos, and judgments, the woman self-punishes. I’ve always had problems with my body and so in a
way, I’ve always embodied this. I physically get ill at times when I feel a lot of pressure, and have faced issues
of anorexia, thinness, and the need to be desirable.
Even Farrokhlagha, the middle-aged character in her 50s, is thinking still about vanity and wanting to be
beautiful and desirable, wanting to start over again and be a pioneer. This is something that I think is common
in most cultures, though perhaps it is particularly [powerful] in my culture. Women hit 50 — it’s over, you
know? In some ways, I embody her dilemma. They’re narcissistic things, yet very human. It’s really
undeniable that all of us want to beat aging and be desirable and admired forever…and that it’s just not
possible. [Laughs]
With Faezeh, the part I like and identify with most is this question of the security of tradition and traditional
life; the security of wanting a simple life that involves raising a family and having a husband. That’s something
I’ve never really had, you know. Everything for me has been kind of bohemian.
Filmmaker: Did you shoot primarily on location, or did you also use sets?
Neshat: We shot everything on location, just a little bit of the green screen, where we had to do when she had
to fall. In Berlin we did that. But everything was shot in Morocco. We really didn’t have any money to do any
sets elsewhere.
Filmmaker: Your 2007 New Yorker profile mentioned that you didn’t own a camera. You had your videos
shot on 35mm and then transferred to video.
Neshat: Yes; I never even studied photography. I’ve always worked with a still photographer, or here, a
cinematographer. I did not make the film alone. [Art is often] about finding ways of collaborating with people
who can help, and in all the areas that you’re weak, to build more meat. I think the most important thing to
mention is the collaborative part of this process. Shoja [Azari, my collaborator] and I worked forever on all the
video installations we have done. When I chose to make this film, we co-wrote the script. Shoja has spent as
much time on this project as I have and has shaped so much in the scenes. From the directing to the postproduction, he’s been involved in every part of it, and has also helped me make this move from arts to film. I
want to see that Shoja take the credit as much as me, because very often people see me. Now, he himself is
about to shoot. His turn is coming now. He’s just turning his script into a film that I think he’s hoping to shoot
in February. I’m supposed to be not in the driver’s seat, but in the passenger’s seat, to help him.
For me, [photography and cinematography] are about framing. Everything is carefully framed. In the feature
film, everything was carefully framed and discussed in advance, almost drawn. We worked with a great
Austrian cinematographer, Martin Gschlacht, who was unbelievably involved in the process. The brains of this
project were Shoja, me and Martin. Every single shot was dissected both in terms of the dramatic process of
the acting and also in terms of the framing. Later, he was very involved in the color correction with me. For
me, the lighting is very important, and he’s a master of lighting.
With the bathhouse, for instance I really, really wanted a shot in a space that was a very high ceiling, like a
dome from which we could pan down. I wanted to capture the bigness of the space. But to light such a space is
really difficult. One earlier cinematographer said it was impossible. It was going to be completely sad to lose
the space if you couldn’t light it, you know. I explained to him what I want, and the relationship of Zarin to
these people. Martin said, “I can do it.”
I think my very favorite shot of the film is when Zarin is on the ground, on the floor, and she’s completely
nude and she’s just sitting like this, this naked body. Do you remember when the boy is looking at her? When
we had these little boys there, it just seemed incredibly poignant to have this moment; it’s like a loss of
innocence. She was so out of it. But for a little boy, to be confronted with a nude body in this condition is just
devastating. I thought that was a very important shot.
Filmmaker: How would you describe her condition?
Neshat: She’s anorexic. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. And that’s the actress — the point was not just that
she was bleeding, but she was just bones. She was no longer an object of desire but an object of pain. For this
little boy to see a naked body — because the other women more or less were covered — but to see it in this
condition, it’s pretty early to be exposed to such a torturous figure. When Zarin goes to the mosque and all the
men are down, or when she’s floating in the water, these things were treated like still photographs. With
Martin, we discussed the images very often like that.
But because of the script, we also had to think about how we were going to edit. We had a continuity person,
which was new for me. Now I had to think about in relation to the other, next shot and next shot and next shot.
In the art installations anything could go, and then later you’ll deal with it in the editing room. But here, no.
You cannot go from A to C without going to B, and point of view is important, and this and that. This was an
incredible lesson. We could approach it somewhat artistically, but we always had to keep in mind the story
development.
Filmmaker: Was it a process that you enjoyed, being in a new place and learning so much so quickly, or was
it frustrating?
Neshat: It’s always really exciting to learn a new language. You’re seduced by education, and ask yourself,
“Could I be good at this? Could I really?” It tests your ability to tell the story using very different logic. It’s
very flattering to be interviewed by a film magazine as opposed to an art publication, you know. Also, as an
artist, I tend to repeat things, and when you get good at something, it really takes a lot to stop repeating
yourself. I kept wanting to write on my photographs, for instance, and when I made videos I kept thinking of
double projecting. Yet sometimes you just have to boldly go against your own patterns. It can be liberating to
suddenly find you’ve reinvented yourself.
This is the most exciting part of cinema for me: I’m just a beginner, yet it’s such a complete form that I don’t
have to drop all my tools. I don’t have to stop thinking photographically. I don’t have to stop thinking about a
choreographic way of telling a story. I can keep all of it, it’s just that now I have to tell a story and I have to
keep my audience for a very different time span. The attention span of a person in a movie theater for 90
minutes, it’s really different than a 10-minute video. It’s a challenge that I love.
Shoja was asking me yesterday if I would want to continue with magic realism [in film], and I thought, “No, I
don’t think so.” Most of my past work has been surrealistic one way or another, but I think it’s the strangeness
more than surrealism itself that I need to keep and maintain.
Filmmaker: Could you talk about the shot where characters go through the wall and follows the little stream
that goes through the rushes? It’s beautiful, and haunts me in kind of an Alice in Wonderland way, the entrance
to a secret land.
Neshat: It’s also very sexual, like you’re entering a hole. That hole became a bridge between reality and
magic, between the world of the orchard and the external world of 1953. Time had stopped. When
Farrokhlagha and Faezeh and Zarin came in, they felt foreboding but were attracted to the garden. Faezeh was
terrified.
I found it poignant to think that beyond this wall there is a mysterious world that doesn’t belong to anywhere
else, and that once you’re there you can be so safe. It’s a very allegorical idea. There’s no mist outside, but as
soon as you go in, it’s full of mist. This is why we also made it silent with just natural sounds because we
thought even the garden had a voice of its own. When each woman comes in, there’s a repetition of a certain
type of birds or a certain type of sounds and you say, “Ah! This must be the same place.”
Also, the pacing of the film became slower once we got there, and the camera was much slower in panning
around the trees. It was gentler, like the place had its own logic. It was haunting but also beautiful, and very
different than when you were in the city and there was more action, it was more real, and it was faster. The
other thing was that geographically, it was not consistent. There was a desert, and then there was this lush
green. It was like the garden had no walls once they entered. So again, we were really playing with these
paradoxical spaces; like heaven or like hell, but nothing that belonged to the earth. Maybe it was when Munis
died, that was life after death; or maybe this is a place where all the women are dead. Until the army of guests
comes in to the garden, which is like a rape. When Farrokhlagha decides to open it up to the people, things
start crumbling down. The garden is betrayed by being opened to the outsiders, you know.
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN.
When the film was first shown, immediately some people accused me, saying, “She’s just making these images
because they’re so controversial and sensational; she’s sensationalizing violence.” The Iranian people did this
also; as much as they liked it, because it looked somehow interesting to them, they were always kind of
endorsing but also criticizing. When I really think about this film — this is a very important thing to add to this
interview — it’s really kind of a manifestation of classic Persian literature into visual imagery. A lot of
metaphors that are really rooted in our mystical tradition of literature are very subversive, poetic, existential,
and philosophical.
As Iranians, we think these things are understood by everyone, but they really are not, you know. For Iranian
people, for instance, the garden is the most important metaphor; in Persian painting, literature, and poetry, it’s
a place of spiritual transcendence, a place of freedom. A lot of information gets lost when even the style of the
film, its poetic nature, can be so alien to the Westerners that it may be read as too melodramatic, or not
contemporary enough. But at the same time, the conceptual approach of the film — because I have been
educated here — could put off other people who are non-Western and don’t understand this kind of
construction of stories.
Filmmaker: How did you approach the detailed re-creation of a specific time period?
Neshat: The novel takes place in the summer 1953, a very interesting time. What happened politically in Iran
then is not discussed very often anymore, and is often overlooked now that we’re talking about Iranian and
American tension. Most Westerners still think of Iran during post-Iranian Revolution era, when Iran had
become a completely different type of society. I wanted to show Iran when it had a different look, and remind
us Iranians what we were like as a community, as a society.
Politically speaking, the United States and the British had everything to do with the overthrow of the
democratic government and Prime Minister Mossadegh. This paved the path for the Islamic Revolution. Had it
not been for that coup, his overthrow, and the return of the Shah, we would not have had a slow breakdown.
Antagonism toward the West, particularly America, developed during this time. When the Shah came back as a
dictator and began to kill a lot of people, people hated him and eventually embraced Islam as the next authentic
ideology, an anti-West. We often get categorized as this fanatic and barbaric people, but if you look at the
history, actually the U.S. was quite barbaric in the way that they intervened in another country’s affairs.
In this film, as you saw, history is not really treated in a documentary or didactic way, but the film does try to
point toward the feeling of betrayal and defeat that people felt — and this is something that happened again
this year. We were not able to access Iran in any way, and we were limited to working in Morocco — this was
a real issue. It was a very international project — sometimes this was an asset and sometimes a problem. Shoja
and I have been going across the Atlantic god knows how often; physically and emotionally it was really a test
of my endurance. Yet it was very interesting for us to look in that time and see how people looked, how people
dressed, and how the Muslims and the Westernerized people coexisted. It was just like a very interesting
tapestry, a complex and diverse society, though now it’s homogeneous because of this regime. We went out
there researching the architecture, the costume, the hair, and the different political and cultural communities
that existed. It was fascinating.
For example, when we looked at the images of Tehran in the 1950s, it’s all these Art Deco buildings and
looked like the beginning of modernity. If you look at Russia, or Casablanca, as we did, we started to pinpoint
some of the buildings that really [resemble those in] the books of old Tehran.
From Iran, we found books. Footage usually came from the BBC. The political images from the coup d’etat
came from a documentary made, ironically, by BBC, which basically glorified the coup as if Mossadegh was
an evil man and had been overthrown. But if you looked at an intellectual, artistic community, like the world of
the older woman, Farrokhlagha, you see her friends and the café and all these artists. You see the kind of
discussions they would have; they’re very well-read of both Western authors and local Iranian authors. You see
that they’re well dressed, and they also talk about politics. Then, you also have the fanatics, backwards and
oppressive and religious in their way of thinking. Then, you have pro-Shah people like Sadri, the husband of
Farrokhlagha, who were not really intellectual but lovers of monarchy leadership. Then, you have the
communists, the white-shirted people. In our research, we read a lot of books with historical explanations
about the coup. You get a different explanation from each camp.
Shoja and I interviewed ex-communists who had fled Iran for Berlin after the Shah came back. We also talked
to the people who were pro-Mossadegh and pro-Shah to get an idea of what that was like. It’s very, very
interesting, the dynamics of that time. You might like the great book All the Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer;
it’s like a thriller that describes the chain of events that led to the coup. We did our best to become informed
about the historical, political, and cultural life of that time. Then, we had to fictionalize everything, to make
sure we are close as possible to the truth but within fiction, not documentary.
We also had a limited budget. Really we worked under 4 million Euros, so we had that in mind. We had the
street protests, with a massive amount of cast where we blocked off city streets. We had to go to the orchard
and have a whole thing there. The four women each had a very different lifestyle—they had to dress a certain
way; live in a certain kind of location. For example, since Zarin was a prostitute, we studied the brothels at that
time. There was a city for prostitutes; all during the monarchy, people could actually go to that city.
Or, for another example, we also had to look at the traditional architecture of Iran where the middle class lived,
like Faezeh and Munis. It’s Persian architecture the way that they each have a little pool.
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN.
Filmmaker: In the courtyard?
Neshat: Yes, so we actually built the little pools. It wasn’t like that. All the flowers, all the landscaping was by
us. It was as close as we could get to Tehran in the ’50s. At locations like the bathhouse, which for me, is very
important, we built all of that. It was actually a public bathhouse, but the pool you see was created by us. The
dome was there, but the space was empty.
It was a public bathhouse in Marrakech. We dressed it to be like a Turkish-Iranian bath. I think we did a great
job, but even if it doesn’t seem exactly like Iran, I think the fact that it was nomadically done added flavor. It’s
the license of an artist who’s herself in a kind of exile. I could be making a film that it’s Iranian, but it looks
Cuba and Morocco and In the Mood for Love. This is a very global time. I have often used of color that was
not necessarily authentically Iranian, but as an artist I took the liberty. It is like symbolic of what the time was
like.
Filmmaker: I recognized several scenes, images and costumes from your video installations and photography
in the film.
Neshat: Yes, we basically used the same footage. To dress Farrokhlagha and Faezeh and Munis, for me, was
really difficult. It was out of my element. I had to really think about their personalities, their time, and the
actresses, and really dissected the characters. With the dress for Faezeh, it was about her innocence. When I
saw that dress, it just radiated that kind of girlishness. With Munis, we were talking about a more boyish,
nerdish girl; the kind who studies a lot, but is not really pretty to look at. She is always like proper, like a little
doll with her haircut and those little shoes. [Laughs] It was intentionally designed for characterizing who she
is. With Zarin, though beautiful, she was so skinny it was hard to make her really desirable.
We worked a lot with secondhand clothes, you know — except with Farrokhlagha, who was the most elegant.
Our costume designer’s from Austria, and he did actually make the clothes for Farrokhlagha. But the worst
thing happened was that we originally had an actress from Iran who was supposed to play the role. She came,
he measured her, we made all the dresses, and then she couldn’t play in the film! Suddenly we had to make this
dress work for the next actress. That person had gained some weight since I had last seen her, so it was like,
“How are we going to fit?” Do you remember that gray dress with white polka dots? It was bursting, actually!
Yet in a way, the fact that she was a little bit voluptuous and heavy, I really felt it was good.
Almost everything didn’t fit her. The costume designer had to leave and we still didn’t have a dress for the
party in the orchard. They had brought a whole trunk of clothes to Morocco from Austria, and here I was with
her going through all the dresses. We were panicking because the shot of the party was the next day and we
still hadn’t found a dress for the main hostess of the party! Luckily we found that dress at last. A lot of it was
well planned, a lot of it was improvised, you know.
Filmmaker: It’s a wonderful scene, and one in which clothing adds so much. How do you balance planning
and improvisation in your artwork?
Neshat: Here, the planning and organization were intense. We started this project in 2003, and then the script
wasn’t finalized until 2007. Then we shot the film in eight weeks, and edited for two years. We spent a lot of
time of going back and forth about the script, preproduction, production, and postproduction. The video
installations were also very well organized, but they were small projects. They were maximum 10 days of
shooting and a much smaller crew. Here, we had like 60, 80 people in all different departments, plus a casting
agent. I never have had a big costume department or hair and makeup; usually I have one person who is like all
that. But this was kind of an epic period film. A producer was German, and the co-production office was
French and Austrian and mainly German. The music and even the actual shooting of it — there were so many
people involved. Shoja and I spent about four months in Morocco and broke down the script into a shot list.
Everything was really organized.
Filmmaker: Has your previous work been more intuitive?
Neshat: This time we had a script that had to be approved by the producers, and they had to get funding based
on that, which was different. Also, I’ve worked only a little with professional actors, so this was really very
different. But in the past we always storyboarded everything. When you storyboard, and especially if there’s
not so much dialogue and continuity, there is a lot of flexibility. You can come to the editing and put the
puzzle together all different ways.
In the editing, we just threw away the script and completely restructured the film. All the main shots were
there, but it wasn’t really working the way we had written it. This is why also it took us a long time: we gave
ourselves the liberty of reorganizing the film in the editing room. It’s a plot-oriented film, and there was
always this risk of being either overly conventional and narrative, or overly aesthetic and not narrative enough.
We dissected the balance between the visual imagery and the story, and I tried to make the best balance in my
judgment. Yet I knew that this story itself would never allow a completely conventional narrative. It is a
strange story, and so it is a strange film — you cannot make it an un-strange film. It’s impossible. That’s
exactly why I chose it.
When I think about all my past works, in photography and video, there’s always something strange about them,
and that strangeness is what I like. That strangeness makes many people not like it because they don’t relate to
it; while some people like it because of that quality. But then the question: how do you come in and out of the
magic elements in the story? We were so afraid of making a film that was like Halloween or something — like
when the woman comes out of the grave or the faceless thing. We didn’t have the Hollywood money to make
these perfect special effects. From the beginning we decided that we’d do the Buñuel style: first you see it, then
you don’t see it. When you come to magic, it’s not like you savor it and dwell on it. Instead, you’re telling a
very realistic story and suddenly someone comes out of the grave. This balance between the art and cinema,
narrative versus non-narrative, strange versus non-strange, and reality versus surrealism is fundamental to the
way that this story tries to tell itself.
We knew this was a very difficult story to make, to sell... (Laughs) and to become popular because it really is a
demanding film for people. We tried to put in beautiful music, beautiful images, beautiful colors, and humor,
but what they get out of the film is just like an artwork. It’s a very conceptual art piece. It was an experiment,
an experiment that has a lot of flaws because it was an ambitious experiment, you know. It tried to be
philosophical, historical and political. It tried to be poetic, realistic, and magical. It dealt with individual
women and the whole community of Iranians, all looking for freedom and change. The audience had to try to
get layers of meaning and symbolism and metaphor. How to do fairness and follow four protagonists
simultaneously, not making one more important than the other, and give the country of Iran almost like it’s
another character, a fifth woman? Everybody said, “Are you sure for the first film you want to make you want
to be this ambitious? Historical periods, four characters, magic realism—you’re aiming for disaster.” But I
loved the story so much, you know. You give it the best, and you accept its own logic.
Filmmaker: I love the music, and wonder if you would discuss its place in the movie?
Neshat: The [Ryûichi] Sakamoto music and the Persian music that people were singing? I wish Sakamoto
could hear you because, to be honest, we had a lot more music, but we at some point felt that that was a bit
dangerous. You know how sometimes music can be kind of manipulative of the story, of your emotions? We
felt that less is more; that the music should add to the emotions of the film but not really take total control. So
we brought a lot of silence.
Ryûichi Sakamoto and I met a few years ago. We always wanted to work together, and we were looking for the
right project. I’ve always loved his work; like when I heard the music for The Last Emperor (1987) and The
Little Buddha (1993). He’s also so diverse in the way he does things, and I love the way he incorporates
indigenous music of the countries where the films are shot with his own music. He has brought Indian music
into his own music, and in The Sheltering Sky (1990) he brought Arabic music into his own. This film tries to
be universal and timeless and Iranian, so he incorporated some of the Persian music into his. At the end credits,
he incorporated the beautiful santour music from Persia with his own. I feel like the amount of music that’s
there really works, and when it comes, it’s really powerful.
Filmmaker: You mentioned that you had a limited budget for what you wanted to do. Did that encourage you
and your team to be creative in ways you wouldn’t otherwise have been?
Neshat: We struggled a lot financially. In many ways, this was a very humbling experience. We’ve never
worked with huge budgets, but in this case it was very difficult to raise the money. This project was a labor of
love for anyone who worked on it; everyone worked unbelievably hard and didn’t get paid enough. Many
times, the project would have been at risk if it didn’t get enough money. But somehow we pulled it together.
When I think about this project I think about struggle and I think about being a student. I think about how hard
we worked and how grateful we are that we finished it and had some acknowledgment.
We've gotten rejected by funders; and once, when we were about to go into production and were already on
location, a funder backed out — there were numerous times where there was very great risk and good enough
reason for the project to dissolve, but we didn’t give up. It was also very hard for the producers, who had never
worked on a period film like this or with Iranians like us — and in a language they don’t understand! It was
challenging in every single dimension. There was nothing that didn’t not go wrong. [Laughs]
When you've devoted yourself, you make it work somehow. Yet when we went to Venice and we felt so
irrelevant in this big festival. We were saying, “At least we were in competition. Goodbye!” We got in the
airplane and came to [the] Toronto [International Film Festival] with Shahrnoush. We arrived at night, slept,
had the screening at noon, and then as soon as we got out, like 2 o’clock, the phone rang from Venice, from
Marco Müller, asking us to come back immediately [to accept the Silver Lion award for Best Director and the
UNICEF Award]. [Laughs] We were actually there less than 24 hours! But it was so exciting.
Filmmaker: Speaking of producers, Barbara Gladstone has been your gallerist for many years, is that right?
Neshat: Yes. Barbara has basically been the producer of the video installations. She was in this one just for a
small amount, because I made those video installations [with some overlapping material]. But for the feature
film she was not really involved in any direct way. The difference, I think, between an art gallery dealer and a
producer is that with Barbara, she doesn’t even usually ask, “What is your idea?” Of course, [the means for my
video installations are] very limited. It’s not a huge amount of money — maybe $100,000 or $200,000
maximum. But I wouldn’t even write anything down. I would say, “I’m going to make a project,” and normally
I would prepare a budget, and she would give me what I needed.
She trusted you and hoped that you would do something good — both artistically and that she could sell. I
really admire that element of risk that came from the gallery as funder. The difference with the producers was
that they absolutely needed a good script. No funder would fund it based on anybody’s name. It was also much
more of a collaboration; producers had to contractually approve the script and the final edit. Maybe because it
was also my first-time film, they were very careful about what’s going to come out of this. Although most of
the money doesn’t come directly from them, they had to report to funders, and these are relationships that they
have to maintain, so it just cannot be a disaster. At the same time, they are taking a risk by working with me,
which I really respect, because I have no record of this.
When we worked on the script, we had to meet endlessly with the producers. I worked with a script consultant
in Berlin — I literally moved to Berlin for part of this process —to really make sure that they were happy with
what we were doing. When we shot the film, they did a lot of test screenings everywhere in Europe to get
feedback and make sure that things were being addressed. But at some point toward the end, I felt that I really
needed to have them back out a little. I mean, okay, it’s my first film, but at the same time there was a danger
that there were too many cooks involved, and that this film would suffer from that. So I asked them to let me
take the command of the way that I think it should be as a work by me. And so they backed out.
At the end, what is out there is really a projection of what I wanted as well as really listening to people and
their criticisms. Shoja, of course, was a major, part of the construction of the story and this whole development
in the editing process. We always had differences, but I think it was good. He tried to challenge me from the
cinematic point of view. I also always tried not to forget the artistic point of view while still taking that leap.
You’re much more free in the art world. But at the same time, you have a limited audience. The video becomes
a commodity, so it cannot get distributed. You hope that it will have exhibitions, and the collectors — if
anybody buys it — could share it with the public. But very often it’s almost impossible to even have it on the
Internet.
With film, it’s an industry, but you’re not as free. You have to deal with the producers, distributors, festivals,
and critics that are going to determine whether people should buy tickets or not. But at the same time, it’s not a
commodity the way artwork is. It’s closer to the general public. This is one of the main reasons of my
attraction to cinema. I love going to the movies, and I love the fact that I could make a film that could be
visited by the average public as opposed to just exclusive art-world people. I respect them a lot, but I wanted to
see if I could expand the audience.
On that note, I am still a strong believer that it’s possible to bring art closer to the people, and that you don’t
always have to draw this line. Why can’t the general audience also see films layered and loaded with
symbolism and meaning, that are beautiful, entertaining, have good music, and are a bit challenging? At the
same time, there can be a narrative to follow and think about after they leave. Even Iranian people who are not
really used to independent films could possibly relate to this film. They see their own history as well as the
music and culture of their country, and they follow the story. I think this is the direction I want to go. How can
you blur the boundary between visual art and the language of cinema, yet have it accessible to the general
public?
Filmmaker: The film reminds me, in some ways, not only of Buñuel's films but also of Maya Deren’s work.
Neshat: Oh yes; I love her work. It’s like a dream, her work. I was thinking of her yesterday — that when she
made those works at that time, it must have been so difficult for people to relate to. Shahrnoush Parsipour
explains her interest in magic realism by saying that so many hours a day you are sleeping, and so many hours
you are awake, so your dreams are just as valid as the time you are awake. Why are we in denial of our
dreams? With Maya Deren — oh my God, it’s to die for.
Filmmaker: I love her circularity, which seems relevant to Women Without Men. Also, watching your film, I
was reminded at times of the films of Matthew Barney (also represented by the Gladstone Gallery), which
make and reinforce their own mythology. Places become significant through elements of repetition, and the art
that is ultimately sold is an artifact of the production of its making. Is that related to what you are doing here?
Neshat: It is, and that is also the way I think of his work. It has its own sense of mythology that you may enter
it or not, and just enjoy the sheer beauty and enigma of what he creates. Sometimes it can be frustrating, but
that’s the degree that he chose to go to. I chose to go less than that. For me it was the question of being
between Julian Schnabel, Steve McQueen, and Matthew Barney. Not as conventional as Julian Schnabel,
which is pretty much a straight feature film, or Steve McQueen (as they both have made fantastic films). With
Matthew Barney, it’s dense to the point where it’s difficult to follow the narrative and sometimes you make up
your own narrative. I really didn’t want to be that enigmatic; that’s his choice, and this is my choice. As my
first exercise, I also didn’t want to make a film that was not me, or that departed [from my work] to the degree
that people won’t recognize my own signature. Could I transport my visual vocabulary, the way I use
choreography, and the way I use the camera into a narrative film? It was about the fusion of cinematic
language and my art. I was also worried about the question of making an extended video installation, and I
didn’t want that.
Some of the other characters were very worldly and down-to-earth, yet each is a myth on their own. Munis, for
instance, is this very magical person and becomes this symbol of the Iranian struggle for democracy. She
becomes like Jeanne d’Arc; she becomes the notion of sacrifice. Zarin herself is a type of sacrifice; she’s very
saintly, very sacred, and she in a way reminds us of Mary Magdalene with Jesus Christ at the garden. There are
all these kind of things playing underneath — some people might get them, some people won’t, but they were
in our minds. Whether it’s my photographs, or the videos, or this film, they’re asking for trouble, because of
the blending of East and West languages and approaches.
Filmmaker: Do you see yourself as a troublemaker?
Neshat: I think that there’s no real hope for it to be completely understood by one or the other. There will be
always loss in translation. I would call this an accented cinema; it’s accented for the Iranians and it’s accented
for the Westerners. It’s the same as I am sitting here, I’m dressed with this from here, and this from there, and
this from Laos... [Laughs] We are like this kind of multi-influenced pollution of all these influences that it’s
not so easy to pinpoint. In a way I wish I was just Schnabel. [Laughs] I was just like from one culture. But it’s
impossible, because I’m really caught in between the two, and sometimes they’re a mismatch. The central style
of the film, the energy of the film, is this meeting of the ancient and new, the East and West.
Filmmaker: Well, I’m glad that you’re not Schnabel. One is probably enough. [Laughs]
Neshat: Although he makes really good films. Do you see this film, Women Without Men, with an audience in
this country? We did pretty well in Europe, but the producer, who is European, thinks that in the U.S. there is
no appreciation for this kind of work. I know some people also really hate it. This was the most ambitious
thing I’ve ever done, but I have to say that I found it satisfying. We managed to finish it, but there were many,
many times that I just wasn’t sure if it was really ever going to come out into the world. Now that it’s starting
to get some reaction, I understand that the reaction is very mixed, and remind myself that that’s always been
the case with anything I did. Every time you finish a project, there comes a time when you read criticism. You
get really discouraged or you feel like a lot of insecurity, and then you realize that that’s exactly what has been
happening all along, and you’re still there.
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9:00 AM
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