The acclaimed Iranian filmmaker JAFAR PANAHI winner of the VENICE, CANNES and BERLIN film festivals was sentenced to 6 YEAR OF PRISON and banned from directing and producing films for the next 20 YEARS from AHMADINEJAD dictatorship regime.
Panahi, an outspoken supporter of Iran's opposition green movement, was convicted of gathering, colluding and propaganda against the regime, Farideh Gheyrat told the Iranian state news agency ISNA.
"He is therefore sentenced to six years in prison and also he is banned for 20 years from making any films, writing any scripts, travelling abroad and also giving any interviews to the media including foreign and domestic news organisations," she said. Gheyrat said she would appeal against the conviction.
Panahi won the Camera d'Or award at the Cannes film festival in 1995 for his debut feature, The White Balloon, and took the Golden Lion prize at Venice for his 2000 drama, The Circle. His other films include Crimson Gold and Offside. He is highly regarded around the world but his films are banned at home.
Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia university, told the Guardian the sentence showed Iran's leaders could not tolerate the arts. "This is a catastrophe for Iran's cinema," he said. "Panahi is now exactly in the most creative phase of his life and by silencing him at this sensitive time, they are killing his art and talent.
"Iran is sending a clear message by this sentence that they don't have any tolerance and can't bear arts, philosophy or anything like that. This is a sentence against the whole culture of Iran. They want the artists to sit at their houses and stop creating art. This is a catastrophe for a whole nation."
Panahi, 49, was initially arrested in July 2009 after participating in a mourning ceremony for the protesters killed in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election. He was released shortly afterwards but was denied permission to leave the country. In February 2010, he was arrested along with his family and colleagues, and taken to Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
Muhammad Rasoulof, one of the film-makers who was arrested at the same time, was also sentenced to six years in jail today.
Senior Hollywood figures including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Juliette Binoche condemned his arrest. Binoche held up Pahani's name in protest at the Cannes festival.
In May, he was released on $200,000 (£129,000) bail after several days on hunger strike. He has since been denied permission to attend film festivals where he was invited as a judge, including a recent invitation from the Berlin film festival.
In an interview in September, Panahi said: "When a film-maker does not make films it is as if he is jailed. Even when he is freed from the small jail, he finds himself wandering in a larger jail."
Jafar Panahi, a celebrated Iranian filmmaker who was arrested in February and accused of working on an “anti-regime” film, was sentenced to six years in prison on Saturday in Tehran, his lawyer told an Iranian news agency on Monday.
Mr. Panahi, who had expressed support for Iran’s opposition green movement during post-election protests in 2009, “has also been banned from making films, writing any kind of scripts, traveling abroad and talking to local and foreign media for 20 years,” according to his lawyer, Farideh Gheyrat.
The 50-year-old filmmaker was first detained in July 2009, six weeks after Iran’s disputed presidential election, when he attended a mourning ceremony in Tehran for protesters who were killed during the demonstrations. The following month, Mr. Panahi was allowed to travel to the Montreal Film Festival, where he was the president of the jury, and he made a point of wearing a green scarf to the opening ceremony.
His conviction comes despite a high-profile campaign by fellow filmmakers inside Iran and abroad to win his release. In March, Abbas Kiarostami, Iran’s most famous director, wrote an open letter to Iran’s authorities calling for the immediate release of both Mr. Panahi and another detained filmmaker, Mahmoud Rasoulof, who was also sentenced to six years in prison for his work on the same unfinished film. In April, a group of leading American filmmakers — including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola — signed another open letter on Mr. Panahi’s behalf. In May, days after Juliette Binoche was filmed crying as Mr. Panahi’s detention was discussed at the Cannes Film Festival, Mr. Panahi was granted a temporary release on bail.
Among Mr. Panahi’s prize-winning films are“The White Balloon,” “ The Circle,” “ Offside,” and “ Crimson Gold.”
In an interview with Agence France-Presse in August, Mr. Panahi explained that the film he was shooting with Mr. Rasoulof concerned a “family and the postelection developments.” He added: “When a filmmaker does not make films it is as if he is jailed. Even when he is freed from the small jail, he finds himself wandering in a larger jail. The main question is: why should it be a crime to make a movie? A finished film, well, it can get banned but not the director.”
Last month, Mr. Panahi delivered an impassioned defense of his work as a filmmaker to the court in Tehran. Near the end of his statement, he explained that he loved his country and had no desire to make films anywhere else:
All said, despite all the injustice done to me, I, Jafar Panahi, declare once again that I am an Iranian, I am staying in my country and I like to work in my own country. I love my country, I have paid a price for this love too, and I am willing to pay again if necessary. I have yet another declaration to add to the first one. As shown in my films, I declare that I believe in the right of “the other” to be different, I believe in mutual understanding and respect, as well as in tolerance; the tolerance that forbid me from judgment and hatred. I don’t hate anybody, not even my interrogators.
Despite the international acclaim Iranian filmmakers have brought to their nation in the past two decades, the country’s government has banned many films that have won prizes abroad and shown a surprising fear of fiction films that deal with life in Iran. In 2000, one of Iran’s most popular filmmakers, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, explained that his plans to establish a film school in Tehran in 1996 had been rejected by the government at about the same time he had produced a drama based on his own part in the country’s Islamic revolution, “A Moment of Innocence.” Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote:
I informed the Iranian ministry of culture of my plans to accept 100 students of cinema through a selection exam, and to use new methods to train them for 4 years. But the ministry of culture of the time did not accept. They feared the generation of a new wave of young filmmakers making films in favor of democracy, thus officially announced that one dangerous filmmaker like me was enough for one country and that one hundred others like me were not needed.
Filmography
"Crimson Gold" (2003)
The Wounded Heads (Yarali Bashlar, 1988)
Kish (1991)
The Friend (Doust, 1992)
The Last Exam (Akharin Emtehan, 1992)
The White Balloon (Badkonake Sefid, 1995)
Ardekoul (1997)
The Mirror (Ayneh, 1997)
The Circle (Dayereh, 2000)
Crimson Gold (Talaye Sorkh, 2003)
Offside (2006)
Awards and honors
Jafar Panahi has won numerous awards up to now. Here are the most important:
HIVOS Cinema Unlimited Award (2007)
Pudú Award, at the Valdivia International Film Festival 2007 for his life-time artistic accomplishments.
Silver Bear, Berlin Film Festival 2006.
Prix du Jury - Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival 2003.[35]
Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival 2000.
Golden Leopard, Locarno International Film Festival 1997.
Prix de la Camera d'Or, Cannes Film Festival 1995.
Film festival work
Panahi was a jury member at numerous film festivals:
President of the jury of Montreal World Film Festival (2009)
President of the jury of Rotterdam Film Festival (2008)
Chair of the International Film Festival of Kerala Jury (2007)
International Eurasia Film Festival (2007)
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (2001)
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