In a remarkable exploration of Iranian cinema’s complex relationship with censorship, UK-based artist and filmmaker Maryam Tafakory has been awarded the prestigious 2024 Film London Jarman award. Her work sheds light on the intricate ways post-revolution Iranian filmmakers navigate strict regulations on physical contact and female representation, using subtle visual metaphors and clever cinematic techniques to convey meaning.
A Journey Through 417 Iranian Films
Tafakory’s journey began in the early days of the pandemic when she set out to watch 417 films made in Iran after the 1979 revolution. As she immersed herself in this vast cinematic archive, a curious pattern emerged—the recurring use of everyday objects, particularly bags, as stand-ins for physical intimacy between characters.
In one striking example from her work Irani Bag, a clip from the 1992 film The Song of Tehran shows a couple holding the same bag strap instead of each other’s hands. “Learning to touch without touching,” Tafakory observes in the piece, highlighting how censorship often has the opposite of its intended effect.
It’s in the prohibition of touch that words, objects and glances conspire; they become mediators, skin prosthetics—and sensual. They remind us that touch is never erased, but fetishized.
Maryam Tafakory
Subverting Censorship Through Creativity
Tafakory’s work, which she describes as “a rage against the archive,” employs a range of inventive techniques—mirroring, inversion, superimposition—to create layered compositions that expose the ways Iranian filmmakers subvert censorship through creative means. In Nazarbazi (2022), she focuses on images of women “whose bodies have been obscured and victimized,” while Mast-del blends fiction and non-fiction to explore a forbidden relationship between two women.
Her latest piece, Razeh-Del, tells the story of Iran’s first women’s newspaper, Zan, published briefly from 1998 to 1999. Using saturated hues and fleeting newspaper clips, the film highlights the erasure of women from both cinema and the press. “Misogyny and the absence of queer narratives are inseparable from the identity of post-revolution Iranian cinema,” Tafakory asserts.
An Escape to Deeper Repression
Growing up in Iran, Tafakory initially saw cinema as “an escape from the police at home, the ones at school, the ones on the streets.” But even in the darkened theater, watchmen would patrol with torches, a reminder that true escape was illusory. She came to realize that films were often “an escape to a deeper form of repression.”
Despite the accolades Iranian cinema has received in the West, Tafakory remains critical of oversimplified readings that fail to capture its complexities. “Iranian cinema is glorified in the West for its allegorical resistance,” she notes, “while at home it faces criticism for its complicity with state repression, acceptance of censorship, and normalization of gendered violence.”
Re-imagining Freedom Through Art
With her Jarman award win, Tafakory’s incisive work is poised to reach a wider audience, inviting viewers to re-examine their assumptions about Iranian cinema and the ways art can challenge oppression. As she reflects on the ongoing Women, Life, Freedom protests in Iran, Tafakory offers a powerful reminder:
Iranian women’s resistance neither began nor ended in 2022. Women, Life, Freedom changed something that cannot be unchanged. We have already imagined a freedom that cinema never dared to.
Maryam Tafakory
Through her “rage against the archive,” Maryam Tafakory’s work not only exposes the hidden dynamics of censorship and resistance in Iranian cinema but also invites us to imagine new possibilities for creative expression and human connection in the face of repression.
