Renowned Iranian director-screenwriter and a passionate feminist, Tahmineh Milani, is every inch a fighter for women’s rights in a country wary of them. Her beliefs, to which she clings ferociously, landed her in jail long before other filmmakers (Mohammad Nourizad, Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof) suffered the same fate for speaking their minds. Just run through the titles of her films — Children of Divorce, The Hidden Half, The Unwanted Woman, Ceasefire, Payback, Two Women, Principles — and you see what drives her, where her fight is located. Right where it hurts the authorities. I met Milani recently at the Flying Broom International Women’s Film Festival in Ankara. Gutsy and fearless, with a look of defiance in her flashing black eyes, Milani does not mince words when she speaks. “We are not like Arab women who are now moving towards freedom. We were free. Now we are regressing.”
Milani’s case is not one of a woman reacting to the deprivation of rights. Born in Tabriz in 1960, she studied architecture (she and her husband Mohammad Nikbin have an architectural firm) but shifted to cinema, becoming an assistant at the age of 19 to a big name in the Iranian film world — Masoud Kimiai — for his 1982 film The Red Line (banned today, says Milani, for its political content). Her father, a doctor and a leftist in his day, was jailed under the Shah’s regime. “I had great freedom as a young girl,” she says. “I am close to my family, to my brothers and sisters and of course my husband and daughter. I know I can lead a beautiful, hassle-free life. I have been to the best university, have travelled extensively. But I feel strongly for women, and I have tried to make films for them.”
Her parents, however, stopped her initially from entering the film world which, in those years, was loaded with sex and violence. Which is why she opted for architecture. And soon, she noticed the similarities: “Colour, light, shadow, perspective, budget…I continue to work with my husband. Currently we are designing metro stations….And we do all the housework together!”
Most of Milani’s films (several of them are national and international award winners) lay bare the raw deal that women get in Iran. They are about social, psychological, economic oppressions, and how her protagonists confront or overcome them. She also deals with the 1979 Revolution. She got into the regime’s crosshairs early in her career. In What Else is New? (1992) she shows how a girl has the power to change her family simply by talking to herself. It caused consternation among the conservatives who accused her of fomenting a revolt against the prevailing system.
Kakadu (1996), a science fiction story on the environment for young people, continues to be banned because Milani dared to show an 8 year-old without a scarf. Two Women (2000), also an award-winner and the film that brought her into the limelight, is about the quest of a woman for her identity in a hidebound patriarchal society. The Fifth Reaction (2003), too dwells on the struggle against patriarchy. “It’s about how a woman is in custody of her father-in-law and her brother-in-law. I am not fighting Islam but certain things may have been good in an earlier age but they don’t work for me now.”
In her award-winning film The Hidden Half (2001), a woman tells her government official husband of the affair she had with a much older man when she was a student. The film is as much on the turbulent times under the Shah just prior to the Revolution as it is about the post-Revolution repression, and it treats counter-revolutionaries with sympathy. The uproar was huge. “I didn’t know I would be jailed. I had the requisite permission from the culture ministry. They came for me when my husband was at work. They destroyed everything in my house. I spent four days in solitary and four in the general ward. Until President Khatami intervened.”
The prison was an eye-opener. “I really touch people,” she says, “I understand why women do what they do. I made many friends in prison, even among the guards. I had to keep returning to the court for years.” “What were the charges?” I asked her. “There were four: I was anti-God; I worked with leftist and Communists; my films were unpatriotic; I was anti the Islamic Republic,” – crimes that carried the death penalty. Sleep deserted her, especially when the authorities hurled taunts and jibes: your husband loves you but he will forget you, he will marry another beautiful woman, and so on…
Her arrest provoked a storm of protest worldwide. A galaxy of famous names — Oliver Stone, Robert Redford, Steven Spielberg, Claude Lelouch, Claude Chabrol, Costa Gavras as well as actors and actresses — came out in support. In Tehran, crowds staged a sit-in till she was freed.
Her daring film Payback, screened in Ankara, has four female criminals from different social backgrounds, all linked by unsettling experiences in their lives, and all looking for revenge. “This film is a review of social damages…it’s about why women become criminals.” It created yet another stir, and religious groups at the ministry wanted cuts. “But we know how to navigate and negotiate,” Milani says with a smile. “Let Tahmineh go, they finally said, or she will bother us.”
With fourteen films under her belt, Milani’s struggle goes on. She has no intellectual pretensions. “Intellectuals don’t need me.” Her sights are set on the middle-class. She casts famous actors, writes a strong story. “I want my films to be seen. I don’t believe in cinema for cinema’s sake. I use cinema as a weapon to move society. I have much to say, and cinema helps.”
“I know we will have freedom soon. We didn’t really know what freedom was under the Shah. It’s not about wearing mini skirts. What we had earlier was not freedom. But now we know what kind of freedom we want. I want people to be free to talk, think, express themselves.”