February 26-March 3, 2004
movies
Making History
 Hidden in plain sight: Marina Golbahari takes refuge as a boy to escape Taliban repression in Osama.  |
|
With Osama, Siddiq Barmak tries to rebuild Afghanistan's past.
interview: siddiq barmak
Under the five-year rule of the Taliban, from 1996 to 2001, it was not only forbidden to make films in Afghanistan, but to watch them; in their last year in power, the Taliban succeeded in destroying two-thirds of Afghan Film’s 3,000-film archive. (The staff saved the remaining third by hiding the prints in a back room.) It may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the Taliban’s other atrocities, but for Siddiq Barmak, the former head of Afghan Film whose Osama opens this week, the destruction and banning of films is of a piece with the Taliban’s other repressions. "Every totalitarian regime, especially when it’s based on ideological concepts -- for example Communist, or Christian, or Islamic -- they all want to erase something," he said during last year’s Toronto Film Festival. "The Taliban destroyed Buddhas because they wanted to cut these links with the past, to say, "You learn anew. You have to listen to us. We are your prophets. We are your leaders.’ Of course they want to cut the past, because then people can lose their identities. If they have no identity, they must accept the new identity."
By Barmak's estimate, Osama is only the 43rd Afghan film of any length, and it's been promoted as the first feature to be shot in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban (though that prize may go to Samira Makhmalbaf's At Five in the Afternoon). It has never been easy to make an Afghan film. A small national film lab was constructed with U.S. assistance in 1968, but the country's tumultuous political history has, of course, had an impact on its film industry as well. "Every political change has a bad effect on the film industry," Barmak says. The Soviets stepped up production -- Barmak himself attended film school in Moscow -- but content was dictated by central committee, and when Barmak returned to Kabul, he allied himself with the rebels, serving as an aide to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the charismatic mujaheddin leader who was killed two days before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Under the Taliban, filmmaking in Afghanistan, always difficult, became impossible. "They banned everything," Barmak says. "They closed the doors of the film institute, burned films in front of theaters, changed some cinemas into stores or madrasas [religious schools]." Barmak was held captive for two weeks by the Taliban, who were convinced his 8 mm projector was a radio for contacting rebels in the north, and in 1999, he moved to Pakistan, where he found work with the Afghan Education Project and as an actor in BBC radio dramas.
After 11 years without making films in Afghanistan, Barmak finally got the chance to make his first feature, with financing secured by the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who has adopted rebuilding the Afghan film industry as something of a personal mission. (Makhmalbaf's Kandehar, set in but not filmed in Afghanistan, drew early attention to the plight of displaced Afghans, and he provided financing for his daughter Samira's film as well.) Despite its provocative title, Osama has nothing overtly to do with the al-Qaeda leader. Instead, like Majid Majidi's Baran, it is the story of a girl who poses as a boy to escape the repressions of fundementalist Islamic society. Shot in a sentimental neo-realist style, the film suffers at times from a blunt, unrefined approach, but it is also a heartfelt portrait of a country yearning to be free.
In choosing the period of Taliban rule as the setting for his tale, Barmak quite deliberately set out to reverse the Taliban's erasures, to create a filmed history where none exists. "I thought it was very important to say something about the past, to make a sense that everybody has to remember," Barmak says. "Now I think it's really important to show this film everywhere, because everybody in the world has to feel our pain. To say, "OK, what happened in Afghanistan? Who was this Taliban? Who was al-Qaeda? Who was Osama?'" Barmak knows the film's title will cause confusion, but he sees it as a way of keeping history alive. "Of course, people wanted to forget about this bad name, but I think sometimes it's better to not forget, but be able to forgive."
The Afghans, Barmak points out, are not the only ones who need to remember. Though the U.S. government still maintains a military presence in Afghanistan, promises to help rebuild the country have been ignored as the United States' attention has migrated to Iraq and domestic concerns. With the same plainspoken passion that animates Osama, Barmak says, "I would like to say something with the film: Don't forget Afghanistan and its people, and please do something for these wonderful, kind people, who have been the victims of terror and horror in the world. We won't touch now who was behind all these things, who was involved in this dirty little game in the region, but I would like to invite all people to give something, to make a new action against all this terror and horror, against all tragedies, totalitarian regimes, who can make this horror."
-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there
