Previous/Next sections
Introduction
Memory I : Fragmented identities
1.1 Presenting the unimaginable
1.3 What kind of immigrant filmmaker can I be?
Memory II Essentialism in diaspora
2.1 What part of me is intresting for you?
2.3 Memories of memories of memories
Memory III : The Swedish project
3.2 Re-thinking Us and the Others
Results
4 Navigating the discursive field(s)
Hi Babak,
Thank you for your application for development support for the Fragments project, and thank you for the possibility to see the accompanying material. It is in every way important to focus on both Iran and how it is experienced to live in Sweden, separated from ones family and homeland.
But when I see the footage, I'm unsure of the film's shape and direction. I was in the clip watching an older woman talk about the gradual progress with the introduction of the hijab and became curious, it feels as an interesting angle to show how such things happen one small step at a time - and that she can tell it based on a personal experience, combined with images from the streets of Tehran that one recognize, it’s strong.
But when I see the two clips with mother and child with an emotional tone in both image and sound - almost romantic - I find it difficult to see how the two expressions can be connected to one coherent cinematic form, and what the focus will be thematically?
I understand that this is an application for development support, and that answers to my questions can come further along in the creative process – but with many applications it is necessary for me to make a firm priority. Based on the above assessment, this is therefore unfortunately a rejection of your application for development support.
The Swedish Film Institute
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?
I approach these questions through the memory of a rejection - one of many. The application was for development of an idea. Fragments is a short movie in which I use memory work and micro stories to create a coherent narrative on the contemporary history of Iran. It begins with my then five year old son turning to his mother, asking her why we live in Sweden. Why are we here, when the rest of our family is in Iran? The question, like a Pandoras box, leads to new questions and the more my wife tries to answer him, the less she realizes she knows.
We made a road movie where we took the children, five and two years old, to the refugee reception center where my wifes family had first stayed when they arrived to Sweden. She showed the children albums, pictures of herself aged five, playing in the snow and surrounded by other kids. Her parents - the grandparents of our children - together with other refugees, dancing on the beach to celebrate the Persian new year. Everybody looked happy on all the pictures. We stayed in one of the cottages that the Migration Agency had used at that time, maybe even the same house as my wife had lived in for months with her family. The road movie ended with the conclusion that the explanation on why we are here is not something my wife can tell on her own, that it needs the memories of other family members. It was titled Not my story and produced as a small, indy project. I was myself not very pleased with the result, given that I had done everything myself, from filming to editing, sound, color etcetera. It was therefor a positive surprise that a few festivals - none with high status in the field, but still - chose to include it and even grant it a few nominations. No Swedish festivals chose to show it. When we shared the vimeo-link in social media, the reactions among our own network was encouraging enough.
With Not my story as a pilot project, the idea for Fragments was formulated. The question “Why are we here” cannot be answered through a trip to one of the halts of a continuous journey. Why were we there, is the follow-up question by the five-year-old. For every question, a new layer of history and memories need to be approached. Why was there a war? Why was there a revolution? Why was there a dictatorship? Why was there a coup d’état?
All these why’s have a multitude of possible answers. As Derrida describes, all processes of meaning-making are open ended. There is always a possibility to understand a phenomenon in different ways (Derrida 1978). This contingency of meaning can be more or less stable depending on how hegemonic dominant discourses are (Laclau & Mouffe 1985). In the case of Iran, any claim about national history is contested. Every dictatorship has its own propaganda and with a history shaped by coups and revolutions, the “truth” about different events depends on the source, its perspective and ideological affiliations. To present our children with one neutral, objective and factual representation of history would hence be impossible. Therefore, the Fragments project was designed through personal interviews, portraying the lived experience of the grandparents and great-grandmother of our children. Three micro-stories addressing three events in three decades from the point of view of “ordinary” citizens that were neither kings or ministers, nor famous in any other way. What do they remember of those specific days and how do they connect the events to our situation today?
The film contains interviews, archive material, private footage from different stages in the families process of migration. With an essay holding the pieces together, footage from today, the children with their mother, the attempts to explain, the fragments function as three chapters to answer the question “Why are we here?”. But this combination of images was unimaginable for the film consultant at the Swedish Film Institute where I applied for funding to further develop the idea.
I find it difficult to see how the two expressions can be
connected to one coherent cinematic form, and what the focus will be thematically?
This difficulty to see the two expressions connected to one coherent cinematic form can be de-constructed in several ways. One way to understand this is that the two expressions (an older woman describing compulsory hijab in Iran and a younger woman in Sweden with her child) do not naturally relate to one another. This reflects an unwillingness to recognize that these stories do have very palpable connections in terms of how the events in Iran in the 1980’s are very much in the minds and daily lives of second generation migrants who live in Sweden today. That the question my son asked when he was five is a question on the mind of thousands of Swedish children who are the sons and daughters of migrants and that the memories of revolutions and war “elsewhere” are intertwined with identities “here”. The question in this film, or rather to say, my son, embodies a challenge to the border regime that defines us through distinct categories based on national identity. These children are both here and there and for them, the combination of a grandmothers stories from a distant revolution and a mother who tries to soothe the trauma off their shoulders, is not only possible, but a central aspect of their everyday life. When this experience is unimaginable to the consultant, it reflects the lack of representation in the position she occupies and the lack of recognition to the diversity that exists in Sweden. By stating that our experiences are unimaginable, this gatekeeping function not only reproduces a power structure, but further silences our experiences by not allowing them to take form in the field of Swedish film.
Another way to understand this difficulty to see the two expressions can be from the point of view of orientalist expectations on “the migrant other”. What seem to have caught the interest of the consultant is the compulsory hijab-episode of the material I sent to her. This fits a well-established cliché about people from the Middle East (Said 1978). The story about Iran, about patriarchy and religious fundamentalism, makes the consultant “curious” but the rest is not as interesting. The great-grandmother who talks about when she was drinking beer at a restaurant the night of the coup against prime minister Mossadegh, is unmentioned. Perhaps this episode is harder to grasp, because it doesn’t create a distinct subject position for the “Iranian Women” in the film as a victim of oppression, nor does it feed in to the ideas of Nordic Exceptionalism and Sweden as the most gender equal society on earth (Keskinen et al 2009). When the images are difficult to categorize in “here” or “there”, “us and “the others” the consultant seems to see a challenge, while I would argue that this summarizes the very ambition of the project. These speculations bring my attention to the question of diversity and representation in Swedish Film Industry in general.
In 2015, a report released by the Swedish Film Institute showed a representation deficit both in relation to gender and race/ethnicity; white, heterosexual male without disabilities were overrepresented in relation to their number in the Swedish population (=). Following the report, a number of measures were taken in line with ideals of inclusion and diversity. The film institute formulated a strategy for broad representation:
THE FILM INSTITUTE must be an open and inclusive institution, and a just one and rule of law perspective must permeate all activities throughout the organization. The Film Institute strives to promote and maintain a broad representation long-term by harnessing the skills of employees, support applicants and others affected by our mission (Svenska Filminstitutet 2015).
The program was controversial. Newspaper columnists described the ambitions as “putting a wet blanket over culture production” (). From 2017, reports on equality were produced within the institution (Svenska Filminstitutet 2017, 2019/2020) In one of the reports, based on qualitative interviews with 19 filmworkers racialized as minorities in Sweden, all of the participants gave accounts of implicit racist expectations on them to represent “their marginalized group” and to be its voice. In the report, it is argued that such expectations may limit the artistic space for these film workers, as it conditions their presence in the industry (Svenska Filminstitutet 2019/2020 p. 15). The very idea that there is such a fixed position as the ethnically marginalized, which can be presented in particular ways by particular subjects, is essentializing and reproduces Eurocentric discourses (Isac & Mercer 2006). The expectations to produce “authentic” images of “the other” makes it difficult to tell a story that is in essence a deconstruction of the “here” and the “there”, the “us” and the “them”. As filmmaker and literary theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha asks in her essay on interlocking questions of identity and difference:
Furthermore, where should the dividing line between outsider and insider stop? How should it be defined? By skin color, by language, by geography, by nation, or by political affinity? What about those, for example, with hyphenated identities and hybrid realities? (Minh-ha 1997).
However complex this paradox of multiculturality, on the other side of the theoretical spectrum is the paradigm of colorblindness, which can obscure attempts to address experiences of discrimination and exclusion (Lundström & Hübinette 2020). In order to further explore the premises for film production, I will therefor look at existing so called representations of Iranian and/or Middle Eastern subject(s) in the Swedish film industry.
"I find it difficult to see how the two expressions can be
connected to one coherent cinematic form, and what the focus will be thematically?"
-Swedish Film Institute
