Cannes Film Festival
2000
Samira Makhmalbaf, whom draw the attention of most of the people present in the Cannes festival toward herself, set foot in a city in the year 1998, which definitely has been a competition center for a vast group of great people active in the world cinema, when she was 18. Samira attracted the attention of most critics and knowledgeable people with her filmmaking methods. And she made the audience think and now she has become popular in the Cannes Festival.
This fresh girl with 20 years age has brought with her numerous and important points: Surprise, Appreciation and praise and continues her path with growth and pride. A look at the film blackboard would allow us to investigate further. The only professional actress of this movie is “Behnaz Jafari”, whom started her performance in theaters and the rest were non-actors. We have to accept that managing all these non-actors is hard work. And Samira Makhmalbaf has managed to do this very well and with such self-confidence in making this numerous group to act she has managed to score a rare point for the Modern cinema of Iran in between other forms.
And of course the blackboard that we are talking about is not a useless piece of wood and has other meaning-full outputs as well. Sometimes it is a stretcher, sometimes a wall between the relationship of a man and a woman and sometimes in the house. This movie that explains the story of 3 generations is the pitiful fate of the Kurd people regarding struggling with the disasters that has come upon them. And in addition it is a review of the politics of the Iraqi regime towards the Kurds. All people carry the Sizif stone in a way. A mother is carrying her child, the children are carrying the smuggled stuff and the teachers are carrying the blackboards that are symbols of their prophetic mission.
The unmerciful and sorrowful nature has grown to the peaks of the skies, where the shooting of the movie has been as difficult as the daily lives of the people in the movie. In such a place the efforts of the people take place while combining the truth and dreams and the story changes into a myth. The story of people who are after a secure home but run for refuge from the fear of insecurity.
All the scenes of the movie blackboard are filmed in open air and in heights and the result of the work has been magnificent. What comes into your mind after watching the movie blackboard is that the beneath layers of the movie have questioned the policies in a very clever way and have displayed them without any complications. But we cannot introduce blackboard as a totally political movie because of these points. In fact the main contents are about humanity. The teen smuggler who walks through the unmerciful mountains seeking for a piece of bread gains a worthless share in life. And we can see example of such people all over the world, people whom risk is part of their lives.
In a very affectionate scene an old man asks the teacher to read his son’s letter, whom is imprisoned in the Iraq jails, the teacher is surprised and says that the letter is written in Arabic. Despite this he reads false sentences to make the father feel better. Then we find out that actually the letter was written in Kurdish and that the teacher had come there to teach Farsi language. In another scene the teacher asks the child: Are you literate? And the answer is silence as their mothers have told their children not to trust strangers.
The movie blackboard is more professional and more imagery compared to the movie Apple. The number of the media and TV interviews with Samira Makhmalbaf was so much that the film publishing company in France decided to arrange the interviews in the White Tent of Grand Hotel in Crozart Road and the interviews with Samira changed into conferences including 30 or 40 people from the media and press.
