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.
Owning the narrative
Everything from Iran is moldy and everyone from there are potential regime agents. With such statements at the back of my head, there are a number of alternative choices to be made. I can go along with this, which has become an almost hegemonic discourse within Iranian diaspora art and culture in Sweden. This would mean to reproduce this perspective in my work, creating characters that fit with existing stereotypes and closing the door to transnational collaborations. Another strategy would be to do my own thing, not allowing this dominant narrative to impact my work. With a zen-mode yogi approach, whatever happens in the outside world can be considered futile debates of no significance. This strategy would argue that art is above and beyond the political conditions discussed here. Such understanding in effect would mean to ignore the privilege given to some and the marginalization of others. Staying oblivious protects the unearned advantage of the privileged (McIntosh 1990). However, disapproving of such conditions is not going to change them. In Sweden, as well as in many other places, we are often taught that injustice in general and racism in particular, can be resolved by educational efforts and change of attitude. We cannot expect to create a system of equal opportunity, if we do not acknowledge the system of dominance. To talk about the political conditions of arts, the ethical dimensions and the discursive dominance of white Swedish perspectives on who I can be or what story I can tell - to break the silence - is hence a key to my artistic freedom. If I find myself in a position where I can shape the narrative, where I can produce film about us, the immigrant others, the Iranians, the Iranian diaspora, how can I unlearn the privilege that comes with this position?
I have argued that the liminal experience of the diasporic filmmaker can provide an opening, not only to access insider-outside perspectives but to deconstruct this very dichotomy. One concrete strategy in productions can thus be to identify dominant narratives and to work against them, by introducing silenced experiences, marginalized voices and alternative visions that do not fit within the pre-existing narrative. Furthermore, as a diasporic filmmaker it becomes important to self-scrutinize, to not take for granted that I know or that my film represent the fullness of any experience.
Self-stereotyping
The Swedish gaze not only loves our misery, it needs it for its own existence. The nordic exceptionalism and the Swedish self-image can only be, as long as it is juxtaposed against “others” that are less democratic, more barbaric, less equal, more patriarchal (Lundström & Hübinette 2011). As a filmmaker and an immigrant, one subject position that can be available is that of the “cultural expert”. This role means to produce film where “others” are reproduces in stereotypical ways. One way of approaching this would be to see film as any product, the production as any type of work. Just like my father went to construction sites, building houses and bridges, I could go to the film set, producing stories about honor killing, gangsters, religious extremism and the suffering of refugees. Like any job, I would receive my pay and the result would not be more or less an extension of my identity than a building, a car, a package of sugar or any other object produced within any other work. With this view, I might as well have remained in the Islamic Republic, producing film about the virtue of modest dressing or something else that I don’t believe in. I didn’t choose to work with film because of my love for the technicalities of the production. I want to tell stories. Hence, I am not keen on any production for the sake of the production. To make film per se is not my interest.
I have committed to an active attempt not self-stereotype, neither in the images I produce about immigrants nor about Iran or Iranians. One of the difficulties with this is that consciously or unconsciously, also my imagination is shaped by the previous configurations, the single stories. One strategy that I learned from the experience of making the short film Stand up Sit down (not mentioned in this artistic research) is that research, to watch other films on similar themes, can create awareness about the clichés. In this case, we wanted to make a film about an activist that was going to stop a deportation. When the film crew consisting of myself as director, the script-writer, producer etc, watched a film on the same theme, the discussion that followed resulted in crucial changes. Instead of a film about how bad deportations are, this became a film about privilege and dilemmas on when to speak up and when to remain silent. Bringing the experience to this discussion on self-stereotypization, a strategy in film productions where the topic relates to any given minority can be such practice of norm-critical dialogue. What image is produced and how does it relate to pre-existing images of this figure? How can the image and the narrative be modified to increase complexities and reduce the cementation of stereotypes?
A second challenge is to create a space for alternative visions, when the condition for my presence in the film industry is self-stereotypization? My mother-in-law, a retired school teacher, always says we as immigrants must work twice as hard to be accepted in any given position in Sweden. This is the experience of many from that generation. I can relate to this experience, although I cannot differentiate this from “ordinary” perfectionism that artists often tend to have. In film, previous generations of immigrant filmmakers tended to create their own networks and platforms to support one and other. On this topic, I have not managed to reach a very firm conclusion or to define a strategy. In theory, it would be fruitful to have a network of other immigrant filmmakers, to share experiences and in order to feel “normal” as a change from the constant experience of exclusion and othering. However, my personal experience has been that while I enjoy working together with fellow immigrant filmmakers, this alone cannot constitute the base of our work-relation. Furthermore, my personal experience is that many second generation Iranians in the field of culture tend to distance themselves from persons like myself. Our interests in terms of stories are also different, because I am more grounded in experiences in Iran after the revolution, while they are more interested in experiences of identity and belonging in a Swedish context and/or nostalgic images of Iran before their migration. While all these perspectives are valid and necessary, I have not experienced situations where the construction of a separate immigrant network has seemed constructive or appealing.
Translation of language and experiences
Experiences from Iran do not necessarily make sense in Sweden, especially if they are not in the shape that fits the institutionalized expectations. Much of the everyday life in Iran after the Islamic revolution is normalized absurdities that don’t even make sense within its own spatial and temporal context. I have argued that the role of the immigrant filmmaker or has a duality of producing art for the sake of the art and of translating experiences from one context to another. In the latter, the process of production has the audience in mind, whereas art is made as a mode of self-expression, the role of the received irrelevant. This contradiction in relation to the receiver is articulated both in the relation of film-maker and audience and in the relation of film-maker and funding institution. I have already made clear the objective to make the hyper-absurdities of the Islamic Republic penetrable for an audience on the “outside”. The question is to what extent this assumed outside perspective should interfere with the artistic process. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, I have concluded that the ambition to make the work accessible to the audience should not be over-emphasized in the process of translation - hence while working on a movie, the discussion over how much the content makes sense or not to a certain audience should not be of concern (Benjamin & Rendall 2021).
My short documentary Fragments relate to historic events in Iran that Iranians are assumed to be familiar with, while they are not included in the Swedish curriculum in history or social science. A strategy that I adopted while working with the narrative in this film, was to resist the urge to explain the events more than the interview subjects did. Such over-explanation would turn the film into a school book, alienating it from its own artistic format.
In A weekend in Tehran, I applied a different strategy in my approach to translating experiences. Although the institutional response was that the film lacked dramaturgy, I consider this the core idea. Drawing on the the bag-theory, the very notion that there must be a hero, action and a clear-cut ending to a story, can be challenged. In this story, the dramaturgy builds on events gathered in a bag, no character being the hero, the ending opening up to a new story about the next generation of rock’n roll kids in Tehran. This way to challenge exceptions on dramaturgy goes beyond the process of translating experiences and address the very idea of what a story can be. As a strategy, it is perhaps not always relevant to apply - sometimes the story about hunting a mammoth should be told, sometimes that of gathering seeds. The important task for the filmmaker is to distinguish which story is relevant to tell with which format and how it changes the whole story depending on what choice that is made.
Collective memory work
I don’t have a formal network of immigrant filmmakers, but I do have two friends here in Stockholm that are Iranian, filmmakers and with the experience of immigration as adults after the 2009 green movement. Routinely, I check my conclusions and experiences with them. Am I becoming bitter? Paranoid? Am I over-sensitive? At some point, they said to me that although they agree that the Swedish gaze demands our misery, I have become overtly positive. Iran in the 50’s is not all drinking beer at café Naderi, just like the 2000’s was not all about dudes playing guitars and growling un-hearable nonsense. By focusing on these everyday experiences of middle class subjects in Tehran, am I oblivious to the political and social realities that fall outside of the scope of these particular narratives? I said to my friends that for sure, one film cannot tell the fullness of a nations experience - no such complete and all-encompassing product can ever exist, because there are always contingencies, all the micro-events and contradictions of life. With one film, a short-movie on 15 minutes, I do not make any such claims. One could argue that I should use these 15 minutes to shed light on something more important. At times I agree. At the moment, I am engaged in a documentary about the situation for women in Iran following the Woman Life Freedom protests. I do see the urgency of human rights and that this film is relevant in a different way than Fragments and A Weekend in Tehran. However, I refuse to reduce my work to only such topics. Like in the lyrics of Shervin Hajipours Baraaye, I share the longing after and ordinary life. By this, I do not mean a life stripped of atrocities and absurdities - rather, I mean the life that continues despite all of this and under the shadow of both the Islamic regime, the border regimes and all other political and social restrains. To portray the ordinary is thus not necessarily less urgent. It is a strategy in order to re-humanize subjects that during hundreds of years have been marginalized through colonial practices and an orientalist gaze.
The discussions I have with my friends are important, not only as an intellectual practice, but as a way to achieve self-reflexive ethical standpoints. We share a similar history, but not identical. Our collective memory work can form a small drop in the sea of the diasporic efforts among Iranians, to create archives and documentation over our past and present experiences. The collectivity of such experiences is crucial, because we all risk becoming that what we criticize, the “expert” or the immigrant film-maker that accepts the premises and produces whatever is expected and acceptable. Furthermore, collectivity is crucial when positioned in diaspora and making claims about Iran. In this ongoing project, I have solved this by working with persons located in Iran - or inside - as Swedish producers often say. This is not in order to access an insiders perspective. As argued above, my ambition is to de-construct the dichotomy of insider-outsider. To include collaborations with Iranian filmmakers and subjects is not because of their uniqe perspective as an alibi or attestation of my work. This choice has to do with privilege. While I, in a Swedish context, can experience discrimination or lack of interest for my projects due to the Swedish gaze and how I am reduced to an “immigrant filmmaker”, in a transnational context I am a privileged with my European freedom of expression, with a Swedish production company providing resources and a contract with a well-established media platform to share the final result. I reached this position because I, as a smuggler of stories, could access “the other side”. It is an ethical question to share this privilege with those who have earned it in terms of experiences - even if it means that I have to back down on behalf of somebody else. The final strategy suggested is hence to work in transnational collaborations, both economically and in terms of ownership over the narrative.