Shirin Neshat: telling Muslim women’s stories on film
Ms Neshat, who has been exiled from Iran since her teens, says the battle she is fighting is far from won.
“We had reached a high sense of euphoria, of the transformation that would bring us democracy and hope. Now we’ve got to a situation of despair and disappointment,” she says.
“But what we hear in the western media is completely different to what you hear on the streets of all these countries. I think we’re still passing through a very interesting and critical place that does not really depend on street demonstrations but more on internal affairs that are going on underneath.”
It is this focus on mental revolt – the surreal and mystical reactions of people to conditions of stress – that pervades Ms Neshat’s last big film, Women Without Men. Set during the CIA-backed coup in Iran, in 1953, it was made during the 2009 revolt against the theft of the election there:
‘The best way to appeal to people’
“It was the story of a few women. It was a very mystical, poetic film so it was able to navigate between somewhere between art and politics which I think, at the moment of crisis, is the best way to appeal to people.”
Though not shown officially in Iran, it was seen on Youtube – and by large numbers of people in the underground. Now, with the election of Hassan Rouhani, the self-styled moderate as president, things are changing. Rouhani invited Iranian exiles in the USA to return – so did he invite Ms Neshat?
“I haven’t got that invitation yet,” she says. “There is a lot of hope in Iran. People were literally paralysed by the Ahmadinajad regime, who took us back so many years.
“Many countries now are battling with issues in the Middle East, but we in Iran seem to have a glimpse of transformation and hope – and like many other Iranian citizens I wish for a return.”
Ms Neshat’s current project is a movie about the Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum – whose voice soared over Egyptian cities during the Nasser period.
Looking through the archive she’s using, it is striking how many of the women in the street scenes then have heads uncovered, and are wearing western clothing. So is there a subtext of nostalgia here, among women, for a secular, modernizing orderly state?
A form of reflection
“I don’t think it’s nostalgia. I think it’s important to go back to history – it’s a form of reflection.
“Many of the young Arab people who are demonstrating are not even aware of their part of the history: the revolution, monarchy, British intervention. When it comes to the question of women it’s important for them to understand how once the women were living, and how they are living today.”
Ms Neshat thinks the western “gaze” on Muslim women – both in the Middle East and in Britain – is too focused on the issues surrounding what they wear on their heads:
“In Iran we had no choice and that’s a fundamental flaw. We had to wear it – and I believe we should have a choice. If they don’t choose to, women should not have to. But in Egypt 80 per cent of women are now veiled and they really choose it. It’s not dictated by the government, or even religion – its almost folkloric. It’s what they feel comfortable with.”
How long until a woman like her could return to Iran and wear what she wants, I ask:
Some degree of compromise
“In Iran my feeling is the Islamic regime is going to be there to stay for a long time.
“The Iranian people’s biggest concern is not dress codes, but bigger issues. And as long as some of those things fall into place they will be able to compromise to some degree. But they have bigger agendas: equal rights for women, democracy in all facets of private and public life.”
Ms Neshat is in London to teach a workshop organised by the London Film School. Next month her short film Illusions And Mirrors, commissioned by Dior, premieres. It’s monochrome, silent, and stars Natalie Portman:
“I looked a lot at surrealist film-makers like Man Ray, to Bunuel and came up with a concept that was a big departure for me,” says Ms Neshat.
The excitement around Ms Neshat’s work – alongside that of artists Steve McQueen and Sam Taylor-Johnson who have also moved into film – is driven by the way visual artists are bringing back non-verbal storytelling.
In an age when film schools have been obsessed with the narrative arc, character and precisely scheduled “plot points”, the work of directors prepared to lead with the visual image has been like air from a different planet. Says Ms Neshat:
“Our perspectives and ways of telling the story are entirely different. Our naivety – in the way that we’re not so educated in its history – allows us to find new ways of telling stories appeal to the audience. ”
“For me it’s the power of image: ways that we tell the story that depend less on the language of words.”
Shirin Neshat will be talking to Isaac Julian on Tuesday 22 October at the Barbican as part of London Film School’s Artists’ filmmaking workshop.