ABSTRACT
On 28 October 2003, after the screening of Deep Breath (2003) at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London, Parviz Shahbazi, the director of the film, appeared on the stage for a Q and A session with the audience who had packed the hall. Responding to a question, the director claimed that if Iraq had a cinema like Iran, it would not have been invaded. This was an extraordinary claim to make, to say the least. Just over six months after the US-led invasion, the situation in Iraq had not yet got out of control and a follow-up attack on Iran, which was the next in line in the ‘axis of evil’, was therefore not out of the question. The filmmaker’s optimism was perhaps built on the idea that Iranian films had humanized the Iranian people to the West. Therefore they would not be seen as the ‘other’ whose country the USA or the UK would invade. He was perhaps assuming that there would be resistance to the idea of war on Iran at least by the general public in the West. Obviously, he was unaware of the small size of foreign film audiences in the West. In addition, the fact that Tony Blair took Britain to the Iraq war in spite of massive public opposition was lost on the director who only visited the West occasionally. Whatever the filmmaker’s logic, what is most significant about his extraordinary assertion is the close connection that he assumed between cinema and politics. He seemed to take it for granted that films could have great political impact. While it would be surprising to assume such a close link between cinema and politics in most places, in Iran it is not strange.
