0 Amnesia
I was born in 1984, in the aftermaths of the Iranian Revolution, which had shifted to the Islamic Revolution without anybody understanding how or when. The Iran-Iraq war was intensifying, the lines for bread and milk growing longer - or so I have been told.
With me in their arms, my parents crossed the border to the Soviet Union, the geographic space which is now the Republic of Azerbaijan. I was barely one year old, my parents weary of the long and dangerous journey over mountains. Happy to be among familiar faces, they were met by leaders from the political party for which they had risked not only their own lives, but that of their families. But the man, who had been a comrade of my father, looked into his eyes and said to the Soviet border guard that he did not know these people, that they weren’t part of the movement. It seemed he suffered from amnesia. So they were sent back across the border to Iran. I don’t remember this either.
1.2 Performative assimilation
In the previous section I introduced the experience of being rejected on the basis of a film idea being perceived as incomprehensible to the Swedish institutions in charge for funding. The roles and the story did not fit a pre-destined box for diasporic or immigrant films. So what are these expectations?
1.4 Liminal Experiences
The middle phase of a rite of passage, the liminal phase, is charactarized by that individuals or groups are in a state of transition between their previous status and their new status (van Gennep 2019). I can be seen as a creative and transformative force but also a period of ambiguity and disorientation (Turner et al 2017). Turner argues that liminality is a crucial aspect of the ritual, because it allows individuals to experience a state of anti-structure, where the norms and social hierarchies are dislocated. Thus, new possibilities for social organization and identity can emerge - a situation that within post-structural discourse theory is explained through the increased contingency of symbols and meaning (Laclau & Mouffe 1985). A liminal position can hence give individuals the discretion to change the meanings and of their social roles and engage in new forms of social interaction - or as Turner puts it, they can break free from constraints (Turner et al 2017). But what happens when this liminal phase never ends?
2.2 Translating Experiences
3.1 Diaspora filmmaker
In 2020 I was going to produce a short film with a director of Afghan origin. The director had arrived to Sweden at a young age and was at the time a student at Stockholm University of the Arts, a bachelors program in Swedish which is difficult to enter. We sent the required documents to receive a small grant for the production. None of us thought about the aspect that the decision-maker might assume that he didn’t know how to speak or work in Swedish. It didn’t cross my mind. Some time after we submitted the application, the case officer called me and told me that they had doubts over the directors ability to work in Swedish. Therefor, they would provide us with technical support. We could borrow cameras and supplies. If his movie turned out OK, this would maybe qualify his for financial support in future applications. I was mind-blown. They assumed, based on his name, that he didn’t know Swedish. When I sent additional material and asked for a written rejection with motivation, the money was granted. What does this memory say about the conditions for us, the immigrant filmmakers, in Sweden?
Result: Navigating the discursive field(s)
In de-colonial ethics, importance is given to the act of centering the periphery, to use positions of privilege in a way that benefits the marginalized positions, even when it is against my own interests (Spivak 2015, Pittaway et al 2010). In this artistic research, I have discussed the subject position of the immigrant filmmaker produced within the context of film production in Sweden. The process of becoming this figure can be dismantled in different practices and questions:
- Owning the narrative
- Self-stereotyping
- Translation of language and experiences
- Collective memory work (and collective acts of forgetting)
My approach to processes of meaning-making is inspired by post-structural discourse theory, emphasizing the contingency of all meaning. Hence, all subject positions constructed within a discursive fields have a space of ambiguity, which provides a possibility to navigate the role in different directions. I may be reduced to the figure of the immigrant filmmaker; a role with limitations in terms of what stories can be told and how. Nevertheless, within this role there is a capacity of maneuver. Any subject depicted as this particular figure still has a subjectivity, a possibility to act in different ways, to stretch the possibilities given, to reproduce or to challenge. Subsequently, if at some point, given a position of privilege through the discursive practices that I have discussed so far, what can be constructive ways forward to re-frame the entire picture? In this final section, I discuss concrete strategies in film production and the outcome of this artistic research in terms of practical strategies.
1.3 What kind of immigrant filmmaker can I be?
In the previous two sections I presented myself as new in the role as “immigrant filmmaker” and how this makes me uncomfortable. So far I have focused on Swedish filmproduction in a historical perspective. In this section, I look further into what productions are actually invested in today, further understand what ideas and themes are made relevant today. Has there been any shift in discourse or is it still the same narratives and voices that are reproduced? I analyzed the Swedish Film Institute list of grants for the years 2020 to 2022 and looked for both documentaries and featured films, both long and short formats, which portrayed immigrants from Iran or the Middle East in broader sense (including Afghanistan, Turkey and the Levant). This search is not to be viewed as a content analysis in terms of methodology, but rather a contextualization for my artistic research. In the following section, I provide quotes from the Imdb and/or the production companies as an introduction, in order to further discuss the themes and narratives in the films.
1.1 Presenting the unimaginable
In order to approach the question of conditions, there are several key subjects that need to be clarified. Who I am - that is to say, what is the subject position that I am identified with in the context of Swedish film production. What are the invisible, unspoken rules and expectations for a person in my position in this field?
Second, what is the context? Where am I and what do I mean by conditions for production? Sweden is a free country, a democracy - unlike my country of origin. Anyone is free to produce whatever work of art they may please. Even controversial acts with questionable ethics and contribution to the field, are supported, encouraged and protected in the name of freedom of speech (no one mentioned, no one forgotten).
What I mean by conditions for production, is both the practical issues such as access to funding, possibilities to create and distribute a film, but even more the underlying normative and ideological claims that define what film projects are interesting, relevant and important. On what grounds is a project approved or rejected in official applications for funding? What ideas are possible to develop and what images of us - of the subject position which I embody and represent - are imaginable to the society in which I produce film?
2.3 Memories of memories of memories
How can I remember Iran before the revolution, when I was born after it? How can anyone remember anything, without distorting the image a little bit every time? With the understanding that all meaning is contingent, all processes of meaning-making open ended, every time we remember, we forget the parts that we don’t remember. We tell the story differently. With time and new memories added to the experience, we see it in new ways, remember it, yet remember a new memory. The same event may be described in different ways, by different generations or depending on the narrator. When we work with collective memories and documentations of history, these perspectives and angles shape the entire story. No one experience is more valid or true than the other. As a narrator, or filmmaker, one can only be attentive to these nuances, to know from which horizons voices speak and be able to identify the silences.
2.1 What part of me is interesting to you?
The second film project that I initiated during my two years at Stockholm University of the Arts had the working title A Weekend in Tehran. My artistic vision with this work was to portray the underground metal scene that grew out of the censorships in Iran during the 1990’s and 00’s. The soundtrack of my own youth. Because everything about this sub-culture was illegalized in Iran, it is only documented in un-official ways. I wanted to make a music documentary. Visually, I was inspired by punk and grunge documentaries such as The Filth and the Fury (2002), Classic Albums: Nevermind (2005) and The Gits (2008) but also feature movies centered around music and bands, such as Singles (1992) and Reality Bites (1994).
3.2 Re-thinking borders
There is an ethical dilemma of representation in all situations where stories are told - especially if minorities are presented in the stories to an audience that generally do not interact with this minority. Any film made about immigrants in Sweden risk becoming the newest manual on how to understand immigrants. When the book, then film trilogy, then series Snabba Cash came, it was often referred to as a factual description of the situation for youth in underprivileged suburbs (Aftonbladet 2022). The same with the series Kalifat, which was frequently discussed as a realist depiction of how recruitment to islamist terrorism is done in Sweden (Expressen 2020). Film is hence not limited to an art form or entertainment, it constitutes our understanding of reality in a much broader sense. Documentary film even more so with its’ claim to truthfulness as a contract with the audience. It not only shapes the collective memory, it can be used as evidence in negotiating the right or true understanding of a historic event or social issue (Nichols 1991). It is thus relevant to reflect on who gets to give their truth, why, and what perspectives are excluded. It is even more relevant, as an ethical point of departure, to reflect on the premises of this production. Who am I to decide what voices to be heard or not? What are my own perspectives and what am I advocating for, if anything at all? What is the purpose of the project? Who needs this story to be documented?
"Any film made about immigrants in Sweden risk becoming the newest manual on how to understand immigrants."
"When we realize that people in other places or positions are “just like us”, this dismantles an idea of difference."
