Bahari’s insights into real-life Iran

I am at the Renoir cinema in London’s Bloomsbury. My friend and colleague, the Iranian cameraman/director Maziar Bahari, has produced three films and we are there to discuss them: Of Men and Motorcycles, Behind the Wheel of Life, and My City, Pizza.

They are each a delightful insight into real-life Iran. The obsession for pizza (and the similarity with pizza obsession the world over) and a woman’s sense of liberation late at night behind the wheel of a car, were the highlights for me. The films are not certificated for Iran, but will be shown at film festivals all over the country. The authorities know this and, in the main, tolerate it.

What amazes me about the evening is that the cinema is absolutely packed – 400 people of every conceivable ethnicity, and brilliant, probing questions after. Once again one divines that extraordinary chaos that is Iran, the fast-flowing lifeblood of a nation of brilliant people who exist and thrive despite the endless strangeness of so unusual a governmental structure.

Watch Mahiar Bazari’s film Witness: Online Ayatollah on YouTube.

Iran has a thriving blogosphere. For a list of blogs on Iran, click here.