Preoccupied by his own self-absorption, the man invites Hussein in to dine with him and to provide a listening ear. But, when the offending woman calls, the man leaves Hussein to himself who explores the high-rise apartment, takes advantage of its amenities, and eventually winds up on the balcony with a staggering view of the cityscape below. Up here all of Tehran is beneath this rich man who only need give the rest of the world a thought when he desires.
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He refers to a culture and society that he left behind when he emigrated to the U. He not only serves as a beacon of hopeful resistance to other filmmakers in Iran, but also to the repressed voices worldwide who are forced to create art in secret or under oppression. And yet, Offside is no less significant because of it. The film follows six unnamed young women who attempt to sneak into the soccer match between Iran and Bahrain that determined which team would qualify for the World Cup.
Panahi uses this most basic, widespread trait indicative of much of the world — the love of soccer particularly outside the U. Two of the three soldiers are Tehrani imports, boys from rural areas who carry their own assumptions about the city and women in general. With Offside , Panahi paints his most balanced portrait of Tehran yet.
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If The Circle and Crimson Gold threatened to villainize anyone belonging to a privileged class — men, those in authority, the wealthy — in their appropriately despairing tones, then Offside fittingly offers a slight corrective. Panahi presents a society more or less in collective opposition to an oppressive regime. As a chronicler of the everyday lives of his fellow city dwellers, Jafar Panahi has established himself as one of the most exciting, innovative, and politically important filmmakers working today.
The Mirror For his sophomore feature The Mirror , Panahi furthers both his concern for the affairs of small children and his exploration of Iranian society through the microcosm of a few bustling streets in Tehran. The Circle Following the success of The White Balloon and The Mirror , Panahi treaded into deeper political waters for his third feature The Circle — arguably the greatest work of his pre-ban era. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: But Panahi is different; he does in fact display an admirable level of craftsmanship that must belie a considerable amount of planning and setup. You can be sure that the random conversations overheard in the background and on the buses of The Mirror are under his control. Yet the film is still thoroughly immersed in the noisy and intense hustle and bustle of modern Tehran, one of the most intense cities in the world.
This is neo-realism with authorial control, not just random "reality TV".
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The young actress pulls off her costume, looks straight into the camera, and announces that she is not going to continue acting in this movie. The fourth wall has suddenly been shattered. When this happens the cinematography suddenly changes dramatically, too. Immediately, we are subjected to jerky, hand-held shots the camera had been perfectly steady up to this point. The film stock looks grainy, the colour balance of the shots is off, and the shots are no longer framed and in focus.
Now we are shown what a truly ad hoc style of filmmaking really does look like, and the contrast is striking.
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During these hand-held shots, Panahi, himself, is shown with his crew trying to coax Mina back into resuming her role but she refuses. As the film proceeds from here, it once again returns to the carefully crafted filmmaking and tracking shots of before. But this time the subject of that filmmaking is no longer cooperating, and the filmmakers struggle to keep her in view as she wanders down the street, often out of view and sometimes disappearing into random taxis.
Many times Mina is now out-of-view, and all we see are random scenes of traffic congestion as the search for her in the crowd continues. Figures and settings are pushed even further out of context, off kilter, into an indecipherable realm. Perhaps there is something of the modernist poem about Mortimer's paintings, in that they strive towards an impersonal and anonymous authorial voice, by means of their sheer multiplicity of shifting voices and registers. Indeed the very mood of Mortimer's recent works is disquietingly imprecise, in contrast to the lurid violence and abjection of previous pieces in which bombs appear to be exploding or naked people running for cover.
And I've tried — but it's impossible, because it exudes power. You have to suggest the gun in the picture, but you can't see it. I tell him that some of his images, for instance the blurry night-time scene of Enclave , suggest nefarious activities involving anonymous figures — cruising or dogging — and he remarks, amused, that "your interpretation there wasn't my intention.
But I'm very happy you have interpreted it that way. I suppose my intention was to create some kind of nihilistic, possibly violent happening. Mortimer's prominence marks a wider resurgence in figurative painting, which has been out of fashion for several decades. He mentions to me that while he was training at the Slade in the late s, he "was looking for figuration somewhere" — although it was in scant supply and held in low regard.
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Mortimer credits certain under-celebrated teachers at the Slade, Patrick George and Hugh Burr among them, with keeping figurative painting alive, although only now are they finally enjoying a renaissance. In those days, they were "fairly ignored by the establishment. So why the recent efflorescence of figurative painting? It is worth remembering the dominance of pop-conceptualism for want of a better expression in the s, during the febrile genesis of Britart.
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In , the year that Damien Hirst won the Turner prize, it would have been a shameful admission, in many chichi quarters, to express admiration for Lucian Freud and his kind. But in , in the wake of Freud's death, a major survey of his paintings at the National Portrait Gallery and a smaller selection of drawings at Mayfair galley Blain Southern, reflected his return to acclaim. While old grandees such as Freud and David Hockney have been the subjects of major museum exhibitions, a host of younger artists — Mortimer among them, as well as figures such as Nigel Cooke, Jenny Saville and Rachel Howard — are giving fresh impetus to the genre.
Mortimer proposes, perhaps jokingly, that "Maybe it's something to do with a new sort of conservatism".