Length: 30 minutes
Category: Documentary
Country: Iran
Year of production: 2011
Screened in:
Synopsis
Statement by the director
“Conversation with Revolution” is intended to be a reinterpretation of the footage left to us of the nearly six months ending to the victory of Islamic Revolution of Iran in February 1979. This footage is potentially apt to be reedited and reinterpreted. Otherwise we will be left alone with the official interpretation of state propaganda apparatus. “Conversation with Revolution” is produced in the framework of a television series, and has been once shown in a documentary channel of Iranian state TV. This shows that such an interpretation is also possible even in the present conditions of state television.
This is revisiting Iranian revolution by someone who has been sympathetic to what was going on in the streets and himself participating in general turmoil. And it is also intended to be a revisiting of the concept of revolution in general through images left or those days. And that is a different experience from that of younger filmmakers who have never experienced those days personally.
“Conversation with Revolution” is also intended to be a critique of a simple (or rather simplistic and naive) but impressive and inspiring semioligy of revolutions presented in the first part of the film. The four parts following are in fact a criticism of that first part.
I have studied cinema and written on film, moving image and new and old media extensively in Iranian press. “Conversation with Revolution” is a continuation of that writing endrvour to understand the role of the pictorial representation of great historical events of our time on our lives through the medium of film. This is specially relevant at a time when street demonstration are under way all over the world and we understand them through TV images. It is time to think about the ideological significance of this medium more seriously. This film hopes to be a step in this direction.
