A distinction can be made between diaspora filmmakers in general and immigrant filmmakers, where the first can include people born in diaspora and the latter refer to persons who are firmly rooted in experiences in one country, but have access to language and lived experience in the diaspora as well. Artist in this group are often characterized by identifying as bi-cultural and transnational, the artistic plight not centered around the identity issues but rather ideological division of the world (Ghoneim 2014). The challenge for people like me is that we cannot work on the projects that we want in our “normal context” where people share and understand our references. Because of the dictatorship, I would never get through the ministry of censorship. Some years ago I translated a booklet with the writings of the famous Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson. The text is about “the complex picture”, his artistic vision and how he fears that society moves in a direction where everything is simplified and superficial. Written in the 90’s for the Gothenburg Film Festival, the content is not even close to criticism of the Iranian regime. Yet, it has been stuck in limbo, waiting for different permits. First, an image of a medieval painting had to be removed because it showed a woman. Then it was something else. Two years after the planned publishing date, it hasn’t been sent to the printing house yet, and as it seems, it will not proceed.

Working in Iran as an artist is hard due to regulations and the risk of punishment. Not comparable, yet relevant, working in Sweden has it’s own challenges, which are more internal and related to identity and expectations. To suddenly be reduced from being a filmmaker to becoming and immigrant filmmaker is a role shift that, in my case, was both unexpected and unwanted. This new role comes with certain per-conditions, which I have discussed in the previous sections. My ambivalence stems from on one hand, wanting to tell stories related to Iran, but on the other hand, not wanting to design these stories to meet the expectations and needs of a Eurocentric society. Professor in music, Arash Saedinia describes the role of diaspora story telling like this (Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies 2019):

“…growing up, I sensed my absence, on the small screen, on the big screen. I seek out this material. I compile it. With an eye toward sharing it. So that there is a space for us. To know ourselves as meaningful members of this collective. Because a lot the really important work has actually been done in diaspora. About Iran. And our perspective is vitally important. Because the reality of being an outsider everywhere affords that individual, myself, a unique perspective, that I think is generative, and I hope is useful, in doing the work that some of us have chosen to do. And the work that many of us think has to be done. Whether I or anyone else does it.”

This account resonates with me and articulates a perspective that I have been in search for. The role of diaspora is not necessarily to present the story of the diaspora, the story of the immigrant - but also to document and represent stories from and within Iran, because due to the political realities, these stories run the risk of remaining silenced otherwise. With the liminal position of the emigrant/immigrant comes not only an outsider perspective, but also a potential to challenge the dichotomy of inside-outside. Looking to myself, my experiences are made inside Iran, but now I haven’t lived there for so long, I cannot claim to have an inside-perspective. I am both outside and inside at once. With this perpetual liminality, creating film becomes the art of translating experiences.

In the field of sociology, the concept of translation has been discussed as a competence for the cosmopolitan subject (Beck). A competence which involves situating and relativizing ones own lived experiences within alternative visions, and at the same time, the ability to see oneself from the perspective of another. This requires a “boundary transcending imagination” (Beck 2006 p.89). Although the wording makes it sound beautiful, conceptually the idea reinforces the notion of two distinct and different cultures.

When the practice of translation of literature from Arabic to French and vice versa was analyzed, the findings showed that the process of selecting texts for translate as well as the alternations of text during translation, confirmed biased ideas of the “other”. French translators likely choose Arabic texts that confirmed pre-existing representations of Arab alterity and Western values, while Arab translators were likely to select French texts that articulated a sense of difference between the cultures, that could function in contrasting and re-affirming the own culture (Richar 2000). Translation in broad sense can hence both be a tool to reaffirm already existing borders, and to deconstruct them.

To create a complete replica of the original experience that is to be translated, is an impossible task, because semantically and syntactically, languages are not the same. This can be transferred to experiences, spatially, temporally, they will never be reproduced, re-experienced. What is the purpose of the translator in the process of translation? Drawing on critical epistemology and the idea that knowledge, as a reflection of reality, can never be objective, Walter Benjamin wrote in the essay The task of the translator that no translation would be possible if it were to strive for similarity to the original (Benjamin & Rendall 2001). Benjamin stated that the appreciation of the audience in relation to the work of art is not relevant. The art is not made for spectators, rather, it can be considered a mode of self-expression.

Seen in this light, filmmakers do not make films for their audience, hence the receiving side is not to be considered during the production process. The work of art is produced for it’s own existence - not to please an audience! With this perspective, if the film is not made for its audience, it is relevant to ask what the purpose of translating experiences made in Iran to a Swedish context would be. The work of art, expressing whatever memories and experiences, can stand for itself, regardless of the audience, right? However, the position of the immigrant filmmaker has a double role, both as an artist and a translator. While art is produced as a mode of self-expression, translation in its essence is made in order for an audience to access a work that is otherwise inaccessible. There is hence an inherent contradiction in a role that combines the two functions. The translator should, according to Benjamin, not work solely with the audience in mind, because that was not the conditions under which the original work was produced. Consequently, the immigrant filmmaker, however eager to make experiences from of one context accessible to another, should not propel around this objective.  To conclude, Walter Benjamin inspires me to not over-emphasize the translational aspect producing film in diaspora. The work is not about what is said, but about how it is said. A translation of hyper-absurd experiences, merely focusing on the content (the actual experiences) would not become a valuable work of art. This would be understood as focus on the inessential content rather than the task of communicating the story, hence an inferior translation.

My concern has been with translation as a means to communicate about the abstract, absurd experiences, to make them penetrable, or what Ricoeur described as the ontological paradigm of translation (Kearney 2007). This means to transfer understandings - not only meaning - from one language to another. Already communicating with another person in ones native language, entails this work of translating from oneself to the other. The same process is at play when translating between languages and context-bound experiences. Drawing on Ricoeurs analysis, the work of translation is a labor of memory and of mourning. Memory, because all story-telling builds on other stories, experiences, feelings and fantasies. Mourning, because we can only feel for the subject of the story, when it becomes human and grievable to us. In other words, it requires not only openness to the other, but a readiness to diffuse oneself; to reconstruct oneself as an “other”.

 If I aim to tell a story about something I experienced in Iran (or a hypothetical other in Iran), I need to find ways to communicate so that this Iranian Other can find a way inside the hypothetical Swedish audience, for the audience to find the other within themselves. This points to the how of communication, which renders translation as an artistic expression. A successful translation would give the audience a narrative that is both new and familiar, that is at once tangible to memories and experiences, and becomes part of the inner web of stories heard and told (Kearney 2007). Such approach to film-making as an act of translation and story-telling means to historicize and contextualize, to help the audience take off the orientalist glasses and to see the film in a more empathetic way (Amireh 2014). Like my fellow film student who saw herself in the tea-in-nature-scene. To be able to see oneself in the “other” is to deconstruct the very idea of this East-West-dichotomy that unfortunately still dominates much of the institutionalized expectations on immigrant filmmakers. Working from a position where we are painfully aware of the global context and our role in it, immigrant artists can make thematic and technical choices to counteract the hegemony, instead of taking on the role as “good immigrants” and reproducing stereotypes about ourselves (Shukla 2016). The act of translation is thus entangled in post-colonial relation, the hierarchies of concepts and “knowledges” about the “other”. With the liminal position of inside-outside comes an ethical responsibility to not reinforce these structures, but to work with marginalized narratives and to de-hegemonize ideas such as “clash of civilizations”.