Films with: Banī Iʻtimād, Rakhshān

Bānū-yi Urdībihisht The May lady /

A successful documentary filmmaker lives with her teenage son. Her family life is beset with problems, which become more complicated when she meets a man. At the same time, she is making a film on exemplary mothers. Finishing the film would seem to provide answers for her personal life.

DVD 3007

Iran une revolution cinematographique /

Traces the development of the Iranian film industry, which has always been closely intertwined with the country's tumultuous political history, chronicling how Iranian films reflected contemporaneous society and often presaged social change. It shows how mainstream commercial cinema served as a propaganda tool for both the monarchy and the fundamentalist religious regime, recounts the sporadic efforts of some filmmakers to reveal grimmer social realties, and the struggles against censorship and traditional cinematic formulas by such pioneers as Bahram Beyzai and Sohrab Shahid Saless and pre- and post-Islamic revolutionary 'new wave' filmmakers.

DVD 4855

Ruz-egar-e ma Our times-- /

Documenting events surrounding the 2001 Iranian presidential election, director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad works with two groups of women, one old and one young, to contrast divergent political attitudes across the generation gap. At one end of this spectrum is the director's daughter and a group of her friends who form a committee to support the incumbent, President Khatami. On the other end is a group of forty-eight older women running for office on a reform party ticket, despite being thrown off the ballot by an all-male government. The two stories are linked by the story of Arezoo Bayat and her daughter who are simply trying to scratch out a living amid the headier issue of the elections.

DVD 4243