In film, there are prominent and mostly Western voices. There also are voices that are seldom heard, as well as voices that are never heard at all. Thanks to directors like Marziyeh Meshkini, Iranian women will not fall into that latter category.
In conjunction with the Women's Studies program and the Persian Studies program, the Virginia Film Festival is sponsoring "Women and Iranian Cinema," a program highlighting women's contributions to and portrayals in Iranian cinema. Meshkini's film, "The Day I Became a Woman," will be screened at Vinegar Hill Theatre on Friday at 9:15 p.m. as a part of this program.
Marziyeh Meshkini is the wife of the famous and prolific Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who wrote the screenplay to her feature film debut. "It was like delivering and raising a baby," said Meshkini. "Mohsen delivered, and I raised."
Over the past four years their family has turned into something of a filmmaking legacy. When his daughter Samira dropped out of college because she found it boring and wanted to make films instead, he decided the best way for her to learn would not be in existing Iranian film programs. Instead, he started "Makhmalbaf Film House," where he educated a handful of friends and family (including Meshkini, Samira and his then-8-year-old daughter Hanna). This experience allowed his family and friends to learn about filmmaking and work with each other on film projects. "The Day I Became a Woman" was Meshkini's thesis project.
At this point the reader may be wondering: "Would I be seeing this film at U.Va. if Meshkini were not the wife of a famous filmmaker?" This answer is not simple, since not every Iranian woman with filmmaking aspirations has the country's most esteemed director as a resource.
However, it can be said that "The Day I Became a Woman," which Meshkini made independently of her husband as her thesis film project, is a striking and original debut.
The film consists of three stories, all centering on women at different stages of their lives. The first story is about a young girl named Havva. In traditional Iranian communities, age nine is considered the age at which a girl has to begin covering herself and following the generally strict codes governing female behavior. When Havva's friend Hassan comes to play, her grandmother does not want to let her go, as it is her ninth birthday. Protesting that she was not born until noon, she convinces her grandmother to give her one more hour as a carefree kid before she has to give it all up.
The second story deals with a woman who enters a cycling race against her husband's wishes. The husband and other townspeople try to catch up with her on horseback and convince her to stop, but nothing can seem to deter her. The race is a desperate sequence. As she cycles as fast as she can while only going around and around in laps, she becomes a symbol of her desperate struggle for independence.
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The third section is about an old woman who is on a trip to buy all the things denied to her as a young woman. With the help of a few local boys, she buys a fridge, a bedroom set, a stove, some dishes and some furniture - and promptly sets it up on the beach like an outdoor house. This surreal setup - inexplicably, she finds electricity to work her appliances right there on the beach - allows for a humorous ending to the film.
"The Day I Became a Woman" is imaginatively filmed, but it is not flashy. The key images of the film are repeated several times so that they become motifs. These images, such as the ocean and a sailboat, seem to suggest escape for all of these women.
This film's key strength is its use of humor to present the plight of women in Iran. In the first and third segments, the desperation of these situations is combined with a kind of absurd humor that makes the situation of Iranian women translate easily into any culture.
With her debut, Meshkini creates a film that speaks specifically to the Iranian culture of which she is a part, while also saying something universal about the sacrifices that women worldwide are forced to make. The film, to paraphrase from her own words, is a mirror for her Iranian society and a window into it for the rest of the world.
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