Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword, by Jonathan Rosenbaum
- Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Art and Craft of Interviewing
- I Going Hollywood: Masters of Studio Style
- II Tickets to the Dark Side: Festival Favorites
- 6 Manderlay: Lars von Trier
- 7 20 Angosht (20 Fingers): Mania Akbari
- 8 I Am a Sex Addict: Caveh Zahedi
- 9 Caché (Hidden): Michael Haneke
- III Blows Against the Empire: Indie Godfathers
- IV Edgeplay: Avant-Garde Auteurs
- V Women in Revolt: Artist-Activists
- VI The Canon: Brilliance without Borders
- Contributor Biographies
7 - 20 Angosht (20 Fingers): Mania Akbari
from II - Tickets to the Dark Side: Festival Favorites
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword, by Jonathan Rosenbaum
- Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Art and Craft of Interviewing
- I Going Hollywood: Masters of Studio Style
- II Tickets to the Dark Side: Festival Favorites
- 6 Manderlay: Lars von Trier
- 7 20 Angosht (20 Fingers): Mania Akbari
- 8 I Am a Sex Addict: Caveh Zahedi
- 9 Caché (Hidden): Michael Haneke
- III Blows Against the Empire: Indie Godfathers
- IV Edgeplay: Avant-Garde Auteurs
- V Women in Revolt: Artist-Activists
- VI The Canon: Brilliance without Borders
- Contributor Biographies
Summary
As the lights at Arclight's swanky movie theater go up at the end of Mania Akbari's 20 Fingers at Los Angeles' 2004 AFI Film Festival, a swarthy Iranian gentleman seated more or less center/center stands up and begins the Q&A session with the following in Farsi:
“Khanoomeh Akbari, Haalaa keh shoma een zahmat o keshidid behtar nemibood keh be jaayeh film shoma yek navar soti zabt mikardid va dar cinema na vaghteh maa na vaghteh khodetoon ro haroom mikardin?”
“Ms. Akbari, seeing as you've gone to all this trouble, wouldn't it have been better if instead of a film you'd just made an audio recording of the dialogue? You'd have spared us and not wasted our time or your own on this film.”
And that wasn't all. After he had received a measured answer from the director–she acknowledged there were many forms of cinema, and that a plot-driven drama that might have appealed to him was not the film she was interested in making–her interlocutor stood up again to rail against the film and ask his second question: Why did this film not resemble another film he'd seen and liked much more, Shabeh Yalda, which also dealt with relationships?
There was more to come…
As Akbari (born 1974), an attractive 30-year-old Iranian woman with close-cropped short hair, walked out of the movie theater at the end of this official Q&A, a slightly older Iranian came up weeping and accused her of propagating, “lies and filth” about Iranians and their relationships, “up there on the screen.”
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- Information
- Action! , pp. 113 - 122Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2009