Page 590 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

World C nema |

Journey to Kandahar
At a time when Afghanistan was still a distant Cold War memory, vaguely remembered as
a battlefield where the United States backed Mujehadeen who fought to expel Soviets forces,
Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf made Kandahar. The name and the place would be-
come unforgettable to the English speaking West, especially the United States, after 9/11. It
was certainly the only one of Makhmalbaf’s 17 highly acclaimed feature films to be screened
at the White House, a rarity for a subtitled art-house film. But Mohsen Makhmalbaf was not
motivated by the politics when he made the film, but rather by humanitarian concerns of
long historical genesis.
In 1997, 28-year-old Afghan expatriate Niloufar Pazira, contacted Makhmalbaf after she
received an alarming letter from a friend who had both legs blown off by a landmine there.
Makhmalbaf decided to cast Pazira as the star of a fictional film, but one based on extensive
research into UN documentation, and his own clandestine visit to Afghanistan. In Kandahar,
after deplaning from a Red Cross helicopter, Pazira dons a burkha and begins a grueling trek
across the desert through minefields and Taliban-controlled territory.
Kandahar would make Time magazine’s list of the 10 best films for 2001, win the Ecu-
menical Prize of the Jury at Cannes, be screened in at least 40 countries, and outperform
Moulin Rouge when released in France and Italy. The film might have been able to exert
international pressure for improved conditions in Afghanistan, but after six years of the war
on terror that killed thousands of Afghan civilians, because of corruption, warlords, and the
resurgence of the Taliban, the conditions depicted in Makhmalbaf’s film have not improved.

approach to discussing international art-house films is found in a book of inter-
views by writer Liza Béar, who talked to many first-time directors from around
the world. Such writing helps illuminate the filmmaking process and the shared
partnerships that develop among actors, directors, crews, and producers.

souTh aFriCa
Twenty years passed between the time Shawn Slovo witnessed the events
in Johannesburg in 1963 and the moment she started writing the script for
A World Apart, an autobiographical film told from the perspective of a 13-year-
old girl who tries to make sense of apartheid and the hushed, secretive world
of her activist parents. The daughter of Ruth First, played by Barbara Hershey,
the film depicts one of the most repressive moments in South Africa when the
ANC and the Communist Party were outlawed and their members exiled. As
a child, Slovo was forced to share her parent’s love with their struggle for justice
and equality and her mother’s death in 1982 left their relationship unresolved.
In this film, the writer struggled to create a work of fiction from childhood
memories.
Directed by Chris Menges, A World Apart was shot in Zimbabwe with a cast
that included many first-time actors. Menges’ interest in Slovo’s screenplay
stemmed from his experiences with apartheid while shooting a program in