Length: 40 minutes
Category: Documentary
Country: USA
Year of production: 2011
Screened in: 2012 Festival Cinema Invisible
Synopsis
Hamlet’s Green Evolution documents the creation of HamletIRAN, a theatrical initiative bridging the socio-cultural divide between this masterpiece of English language and present day Iran. In this film American director, Liz Richards, recounts staging Hamlet’s characters to represent individuals within the Green Movement, a popular and peaceful demonstration of Iranian people’s struggle for democracy and human rights. The production is staged on a map of Iran with two raised platforms, resembling two cultural civilizations, before and after Islam, each erected upon the bones and sculls of common men. In the center there a live waterway is built connecting Caspian Sea to Persian Golf.
HamletIRAN, directed by Mahmood Karimi Hakak, exhibits a creative brilliance in juxtaposing similarities between the social and political circumstances in Iran today with the events of Shakespeare’s play: Claudius is dubbed as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Polonius, the puppet master pulling all the strings, is cast as Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei; images of Mohammad Mosadegh, democratically elected Prime Minister overthrown by the CIA in 1953, represent Hamlet’s slain father; and Hamlet himself is the archetype persona of Iranian Intellectuals. Gertrude is the motherland who espouses “the this” or “the that” only to protect its children from invaders, Laertes is a leader of the thugs persuaded to revenge rebellion, and Ophelia, the innocence perished, drown in the waterway running north to south as video of the murder of Neda Agha Soltan is projected. At play’s end Horatio, the historian/philosopher, echoes Hamlet’s final words: “Speak this to those who need to see what comes: The days of kings and monarchs now are past. Each vote, each citizen, has my dying voice.”
