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Iran : 3 Officials movies about Iranian uprising
26.08.2009

Hana Makhmalbaf, the daughter of Mohsen Makhmalbaf who is the Europe’s spokesperson of the Green Movement and of the solidarity day -“Green Day”, will preview at the 66th cinema Mostra of Venise a partly documentary movie that is entitled “Green Days” and that deals with the “demonstrations that shook recently Iran”.



“The film is already in Italy and the young directress is ending the editing and the post-production in a place that is kept secret”and thus she escapes from Iranian censorship, told the festival spokesperson to the AFP. They are trying it on with us : this woman is Iranian and she travels with a passport that is provided by the mullahs as it’s the same case for Satrapi or Kiarostami…

By playing the dissidence act, Tehran wishes to deceive opinion in order to spread its own version of the Iranian people’s uprising : this version pretends that the Iranians who demonstrated from the 15 to the 25 June weren’t hostile to the regime but they supported Mussavi, a member of the bassidj militia and fervent supporter of the Islamic revolution, the Islamic Republic and its constitution.

To make such exploit successful, Hana -or more precisely Henna- Makhmalbaf selected the images : she removed every image of the uprising, the ones we saw on Youtube, and kept only the ones of the 13 and 14 June small demonstrations when Tehran simulated its pro-Mussavi green revolution.

Explanations about such selection | On the 13 June, the regime launched the Green Movement of protest against electoral results. Its initial objective was to offer Obama some Iranian imitation of the made in USA colour revolutions in order to make the American president, who is driven by his own surge of support to the Muslim world’s democrats, bring his support to Mussavi’s supporters in accordance with his Cairo speech. If Obama would have made such gesture, he would have turned illegitimate the elected president and de facto he would have made any future negotiation with him deprived of value. Obama didn’t do such horrendous mistake and Iranian people didn’t play the role the regime gave it into the Green Movement. On the 15 June -48 hours after the movement’s launch- people went massively down the streets : not to protest against Ahmadinejad by supporting the Green Movement but to protest against the regime entirely.

Counter-blast | The regime thus forbade foreign journalists to film or tape such demonstrations in which people chanted Death to the Islamic Republic before the fire order was given during the day. Mussavi wrote a public letter to the Guide to encourage him to crush this counter-revolution. Despite such betrayal, for ten days, Iranians resisted as they were barehanded and dropped by so-called famous dissidents : students who got Delphine Minoui’s favours, reformer journalists with the same profile, feminists from the 1 million signature campaign and of course movie-directors who were awarded a prize at the Cannes festival such as Kiarostami or this Hana Makhmalbaf or even the latest prizewinner of “un certain regard”, Bahman Ghobadi. They all lost their camera as well as the path heading to the street.

On the 25 June, when the regime put this uprising down, it tried to mobilize the street under the green banner but this movement and its leaders’ betrayal made the task impossible. In Tehran, a city with 12 million inhabitants, Mussavi and the Greens didn’t even manage to mobilize 100 people although opponents to the regime mobilized recently dozens of thousand people in this city but also in the province. As a reaction against such affront, the regime decided to erase every trace of this uprising by producing articles that denied the images that were broadcasted on Youtube, slogans, deaths, arrests. In the best case, such disinformation attributed them to the days of 13 and 14 June. Right after articles, here is the cinematographic version of this disinformation that is produced by the same cowards who deserted the street.

As the images of the 13 and 14 June weren’t numerous enough, Henna Makhmalbaf (حنا مخملباف) filled the reel’s out-takes of her Green Days with fictive sequences about female condition in Iran. Actually those sequences were dedicated to fake feminists, the regime’s democratic alibi. The regime rewrites story but it also implies to polish up the image of those cowardly fake opponents. This is a fundamental work. It’s necessary to revive fake opponents in order to revive Mussavi and his Green Movement. Tehran needs this popular pro-nuclear Movement to refuse in the name of people any nuclear compromise.

After “Green Days”, according to the daily paper Etemad which belongs to a high dignitary of the regime, we’ll see appearing another movie of this kind that is presently being produced under the direction of Marjane Satrapi. It’s the second version of Persepolis “that is dedicated to Ahmadinejad’s coup against Mussavi’s democratic election !”

As if by magic, the mullahs’ republic is happening to be the recipient of some democracy ! This is a wonderful trick to take Western opinion away from the true popular discontent in Iran and to make Iranians voice unheard.

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However Tehran’s efforts go further so to be able to erase the uprising. As it is very meticulous, the regime also thought of limiting the evocation, even a diffuse one, of repression in Iran : it sent into European festivals a 6 hours documentary of Mehran Tamaddon that glorifies bassidjis, those militiamen who are hated by people and who put down Iranian uprising. Into this documentary that was saluted as “a committed movie” by a very stupid French journalist, this French-Iranian movie-maker who was financed by the mullahs humanize those militiamen he describes as “delicious”.

This is an operation that the regime could have avoided. But by carrying it out, it did a great favour to its opponents. The announcement of the broadcasting of a movie that glorifies militia gave rise to no forum to Hana Makhmalbaf or Satrapi who pretend to be the spokespersons of repression victims. How easy it is to unmask the regime’s lobbyists... Notice to French journalists, there’s a life away from lobbying.


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The french version of this article :
- Iran : 3 films officiels sur le soulèvement iranien
- (26 AOÛT 2009)

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| Mots Clefs | Institutions : Désinformation et fausses rumeurs |

| Mots Clefs | Resistance : Lobby Cinématographique des mollahs |

| Mots Clefs | Auteurs & Textes : Marjane Satrapi, auteur de Persépolis |

| Mots Clefs | Auteurs & Textes : Journalistes et média Français |