Women Without Men

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Women Without Men
Original title Zanan bedun-e mardan
Country of production Germany , Austria , France
original language Persian
Publishing year 2009
length 95 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director Shirin Neshat
script Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari
production Susanne Marian (Essential Filmproduktion),
Martin Gschlacht ( coop 99 ),
Philippe Bober (Parisienne de Production)
music Ryuichi Sakamoto
camera Martin Gschlacht
cut George Cragg , Jay Rabinowitz , Julia Wiedwald , Patrick Lambertz , Christof Schertenleib , Sam Neave
occupation

Women Without Men ( Persian زنان بدون مردان/ Zanān bedun-e mardān) is the first feature film by Iranian-born photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat from 2009. The drama is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Shahrnush Parsipur and tells of the fate of several Iranian women at the time of the military coup in 1953 .

The film premiered in competition at the 66th Venice Film Festival . The cinema release in German-speaking countries followed on July 1, 2010.

action

The film begins with the fall of Munis ( Shabnam Tolouei ), one of the four main actresses, from the roof of the house where she lives with her brother. She sees suicide as the only way out of a life under the control of her devout brother or whatever man he marries her to. A flashback follows, a few hours or days back, when, as is so often the case, she sits in front of the radio in a room of the house and watches the news broadcasts. The place is Iran's capital Tehran in 1953. The democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh , who nationalized Iran's oil reserves in order to lead the country out of the influence of Western powers, is coming under increasing pressure. British warships block Iranian oil tankers from leaving port. Munis' brother storms into the room, orders her to turn off the device and to prepare for a man who might want to marry her, for which she should be grateful at almost 30 years of age. She ignores him, whereupon he tears the cable from the radio and threatens to break her legs if she dares to leave the house.

At the same time elsewhere in the city, the young prostitute Tsarina ( Orsi Tóth ) is urged by the operator of the brothel, played by the author of the book, Shahrnush Parsipur, to be available to one man after another. She endures it listlessly, sadly and increasingly disgusted. While a new customer runs his hand over her arms and face, she looks out of the window, completely absent inwardly. When she turns her head to look at him there is no face, no eyes, no mouth, just an anonymous, indefinable, as if overgrown area. Horrified, she jumps up, throws on a dress and a chador , and storms out of the brothel. She wanders the streets, stumbles through a mosque and finally goes to a bathhouse . For the time being without taking off the bath towel like the other women, she begins to wash. The rubbing with the washcloth becomes more and more intense until she kneels naked on the floor and rubs herself bloodily, as if to rub off her soiled skin.

Elsewhere in Tehran, the educated and art-loving Fakhri ( Arita Shahrzad ) attends the awarding of a high honor to her long-time husband, an army general. On the fringes of the subsequent reception, she meets a childhood friend who had lived in the West for a long time and is flattered by his gallant manners. It reminds her of her youth when she was known for her beautiful singing voice and poetry. Afterwards, alone at home with her husband, there is an argument because she can no longer bear the tightness and is disgusted by his suggestion that he has the right to look for young lovers because she is slowly getting old. Later she meets with her old friend in a restaurant and he introduces her to the dinner party, a group of intellectuals and artists. She made the decision to leave her husband and retire to an estate a little outside the city.

Meanwhile, Munis receives a visit from her friend Faezeh ( Pegah Ferydoni ) at her brother's house . While Munis wants to talk about the political developments, all Faezeh's thoughts belong only to her friend's brother, because he is about to marry another woman. She wished he had chosen her. He offers to accompany her home after the prayer, as the streets are unsafe because of the political demonstrations. When the two leave the house, they find the motionless body of Munis, who has thrown herself from the roof. He carries his sister into the house, lays her on the floor in the courtyard and reproaches her for how she could bring such shame on him. Then he buries them in the earth of the garden.

In the meantime, Tsarina has left the bathhouse and seems to be wandering the streets aimlessly. On a dusty country road between equally dry fields, she safely leaves the city with the chaos of traffic and the demonstrations and, following a stream, finally reaches a stone wall. She slips in through a gap, leaving the chador outside, and enters a garden densely overgrown with trees, bushes and undergrowth where birds are singing.

Faezeh, just as desperate about the death of her friend as about the wedding plans of her secretly desired brother, goes to an old woman who makes a talisman for her, which she puts a spell on. Buried in the man's garden, he should see to it that Faezeh's wishes come true. She sneaks back to his house, where the wedding preparations are already being made. Unnoticed, she sets out to bury the talisman near the place where her friend is buried. Then she suddenly hears their voice, which she calls and moans because she cannot breathe. Startled, she sets out to dig up Munis. She actually opens her eyes, gets up, takes a few steps and steps into the garden's water basin. A little later the two of them leave the house together and go into town. Munis enters a cafe and sits down in front of a radio to listen to the news. Faezeh tries to stop them, since such restaurants are exclusively for men, and stays outside. She goes away. Two men from the café follow her. When Munis finds her again later, her friend crouches crying and desperate in a doorway. The men raped her. Together they set off and Munis leads Faezeh to the very garden outside the city where the Tsarina has already taken refuge. She herself returns to Tehran, where she joins a group of communist activists who stand up against Western intervention and for the policies of Mossadegh. So she herself becomes part of the demonstration trains.

The garden belongs to the property that Fakhri bought to retire there. During a walk she finds Tsarina, who is floating on her back as if lifeless in a pond. With the help of the old gardener, who, as he explains, has lived there for as long as he can remember, she brings the young woman into the house and nurses her back to health. While Zarin is resting, Fakhri settles down and sings the old songs of her youth. Attracted by this, Faezeh comes into the house and she too is welcomed by the lady of the house.

Meanwhile, the military coup, supported by the British secret service MI6 and the American CIA , is taking place in the city. Mossadegh is overthrown and the new government, based on the military, takes power. Munis witnesses when a friend from her group stabs a young soldier to death during a raid on the run. Shaken, she mourns the senseless death of the young man.

In the evening, Fakhri holds a party on her new property to which she invites all of her friends. Her childhood friend and acquaintances also come, as does his young American fiancée. They talk about philosophy and art, they eat and make music. Politics is only a minor issue, although opposing views collide. But the party is suddenly interrupted when a group of soldiers arrives, who first search the house and then help themselves at the richly set table. The guests stand by in silence until a musician strikes his oud , is asked to play by the commanding officer and starts a song that is widely known in Iran. As a result, the mood is relaxed and the soldiers become part of the festival society. Finally, Fakhri sings a song himself. When she ends and the guests applaud her, she discovers Faezeh in the door to the veranda, who stands there with tears in her eyes. She had been in Zarin's room, who had died moments before. While the hostess goes to the deathbed, Faezeh disappears into the garden. The next morning, Fakhri steps in front of her new house. The guests have left, only the used plates and glasses remind of their presence. In the city, the protesters' resistance was brutally suppressed.

History of origin

Shoja Azari, Shahrnush Parsipur, Shirin Neshat (from left to right, 2010)
Shirin Neshat ( Viennale 2009)
Shoja Azari (Viennale 2009)

The plot is based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Iranian Shahrnush Parsipur , who now lives in the USA. She had chosen the title as an alternative to Ernest Hemingway's 1927 short story collection Men Without Women . In her work, the writer openly deals with questions of cultural and gender oppression, which is why she was sentenced to prison four times in her home country due to political dissent. The novel, which is on the index in Iran, was published in 1998 under the title Women without Men: A Novella in the USA, where Parsipur received praise from the critics for the five juxtaposed stories with fairytale and fabulistic elements. The author herself perceives the technique of linked stories as “a form that allows innovation and continuity to play against each other with equal force” and is often found in Parsipur's work.

The novel was adapted for a play by Diana Bigelow and Jim Stapleton. In the early 2000s, the Iranian-born photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat Parsipur, who lives in New York , took on the work and the five portraits of women. Neshat, the daughter of wealthy parents, left Iran at the age of 17 to study art in the United States. She only returned to her home country temporarily in 1990, but has lived in the West since 1996. The experiences there inspired Neshat for the black and white photo series Women of Allah (1993–1997), which made her internationally known.

The first two color films about the teacher Mahdokht and the child prostitute Zarin were shown from September to December 2005 in Berlin. Last but not least, Neshat liked the magical realism component of the book : “The garden is a place of exile, of escape, it is completely timeless. Almost like a Garden of Eden - a place of innocence and knowledge. The book is also very strong visually, it has poetry. I took everything I liked from the book and recombined it. Basically, I've expanded the political a bit and reduced surrealism and magic a bit. The book is pervaded by productive opposites that attracted me: city-country, history-timelessness, nature-culture - that is very conceptual and is similar to my own work so far, ” says Neshat.

The feature film, which the artist claims to have worked on for six years and which was financed with German, Austrian and French funds, was completed in 2009. The shooting took place in Morocco . It includes only four of the five main female characters in the book. Mahdokht, although parts of her narrative have been transferred to other women, is not part of the story itself. Neshat explains that although she wanted to keep the magical and fantastic elements, the story of Mahdokht, which turns into a tree in the book, but overemphasized this page. For Shoja Azari , who, like Neshat, comes from Iran and lives in exile , it was important to clearly work out the political aspect of the film. It was also about using the film to counter the propaganda of the religious rulers in Iran, who are trying to portray the country as always deeply religiously determined and also to place all revolutionary movements of the past on a clerical foundation. This concern of the filmmakers gained particular topicality through the protests after the Iranian presidential elections in 2009 , which coincided with the completion of the film. The main concerns of Neshats and Azaris, as they explain, were on the one hand to show the secular, educated and, despite all striving for self-determination, also cosmopolitan side of Iranian society, which has been suppressed since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. On the other hand, the stereotypical image of Iran should be counteracted in the West, where the country has often been viewed and portrayed as the clerical state of the mullahs, especially since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , which does not do justice to the complexity of Iranian society.

They dedicated their film to the Iranian victims of democratic uprisings over the past hundred years. The credits to all those who were involved can also be read in the credits, "from the constitutional revolution in 1906 to the Green Movement of 2009 "

reception

The film premiered on September 9, 2009 at the 66th Venice Film Festival , where Women Without Men was a German entry in the competition for the Golden Lion . The majority of the German trade press praised Neshat's feature film debut for the visual worlds it showed and it was one of the favorites for the main prize. “The fascination of the film ... arises from the calmness with which the director illuminates facial and desert landscapes; with which she even arranges street battles so beautifully, as if her heroes were all sleepwalkers, who walk on predetermined paths ” , says Wolfgang Höbel ( Spiegel Online ). Peter Zander ( Die Welt ) referred to the Islamic Revolution in 1979 : “The resistance against it is now being shown just at a time when men and women in Iran are again taking to the streets for democracy for the first time. Here, too, the great history is experienced entirely from the perspective of four individuals. ” Anke Westphal ( Berliner Morgenpost ) saw the same reference, but more critically : “ In the film, dream-like scenes alternate with protest scenes. The constant aesthetic break is definitely irritating, but not always convincing because the conceptual context is then too simple. Neshat is talking about the omens of the Islamic revolution of 1979. Your wives are victims - well, they were probably so in Iran in the summer of 1953, ” said Westphal.

Felicitas Kleiner from film-dienst emphasized the impressive portraits condensed from the visual worlds, but criticized that for Neshat's film "less would have been more" . “The processing of the political circumstances in 1953 and the sketching of the various restrictions that women in Iranian society are exposed to and that have inscribed themselves in their body images threaten to get in each other's way dramaturgically; In view of the number of conflict areas dealt with, a lot has to remain just a hint and surface, ” says Kleiner. The Austrian Standard was shown by the camera Martin Gschlachts impressed-reviewed Neshat's work as a director but as indecisive film "occupying between stylized features cinema ... and humanistic conscience cinema no compelling own position." The images of women were "not sufficiently binding in its model character" , the The penetration of the individual and the historical situation is too schematic "for it to become a sustainable construction."

Awards

The team at the Venice Film Festival (2009)

Women Without Men was invited to the 2009 Venice Film Festival , where Neshat competed for the Golden Lion with her film . The film had to admit defeat to the Israeli contribution Lebanon by Samuel Maoz , but was honored with the second most important award, the Silver Lion for best director, as well as the UNICEF Prize and the Premio Mimmo Rotella . In 2011, Katharina Wöppermann was awarded for the best production design and Martin Gschlacht for the best camera in Women Without Men at the Austrian Film Prize.

literature

  • Pārsīʹpūr, Shahrnūsh: Zanān bedūn-e mardān . Toronto: Afra Pub., 2000. - ISBN 9781894256049 (Persian edition)
  • Parsipur, Shahrnush: Women without men: a novella . Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998. - ISBN 9780815605522 (English edition)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Women Without Men . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2010 (PDF; test number: 123 022 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Women Without Men . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ cf. Description of the film ( memento from September 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) at tiff.net (English; accessed September 12, 2009)
  4. ↑ a b c cf. Shahrnush Parsipur . In: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2009 (accessed September 12, 2009)
  5. ↑ a b cf. Walde, Gabriella: Devotion and violence . In: Die Welt , October 27, 2005, edition 251/2005, p. 28
  6. ↑ cf. A conversation with Shirin Neshat: We are one people at faz.net, September 10, 2009
  7. ↑ a b cf. Westphal, Anke: Horror, Fun and Politics Films by Fatih Akin and Shirin Neshat at the 66th Venice Film Festival . In: Berliner Morgenpost , September 11, 2009, issue 212, p. 25
  8. ↑ cf. dpa : Iran's women and Romero's zombies in Venice at zeit.de, September 9, 2009 (accessed on September 12, 2009)
  9. ↑ cf. Höbel, Wolfgang: God's Work and Zombies Contribution to Spiegel Online , September 9, 2009 (accessed September 12, 2009)
  10. ↑ cf. Felicitas Kleiner's Venice Diary (8) ( memento from March 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) at film-dienst.kim-info.de (accessed on September 12, 2009)
  11. ↑ cf. The luxury and persistence . In: Der Standard, September 12, 2009, p. 26
  12. ↑ cf. Official Awards ( Memento of April 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) at labiennale.org, September 12, 2009 (accessed on September 12, 2009)
  13. ↑ cf. Top awards for productions funded by NRW at the Venice Film Festival at filmstiftung.de, September 12, 2009 (accessed on September 13, 2009)