This Is Not a Film (2011)

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  March 7, 2012

  dunmyer

  It certainly is not a film; it's a rip-off. Charging $13 for "This Is Not a Film," a one-hour short almost devoid of content, is highway robbery. This is one of the few times in my life when I felt the theater owed me a refund. I really resented being charged $13 for this.
  
  I w... read moreas excited when I first heard about this "film," and I love the basic idea for the project. Jafar Panahi, the Iranian filmmaker who has been put under house arrest and prohibited from making films, records the various goings-on in his Teheran apartment using his iPhone. It sounded to me like a great testament to human creativity.
  
  You can steal a filmmaker's camera and lock him up, but he will find a way to create! I also love how 21st-century technology undercuts fascist governments at every turn.
  
  I couldn't wait to see what Panahi would have to say from the confines of his house arrest. What a shock to learn that he has almost nothing to say. If you're going to work so hard to create clandestine footage and smuggle it out of Iran, at least have something to say!
  
  All we see is Panahi puttering about the house, feeding his pet iguana, and answering the phone! We also watch him help the building's superintendent take out the trash. All the while we hear the sound of fireworks going off in the background, as it's some kind of holiday in the country. Initially it sounded like gunfire. But no, just fireworks.
  
  After an hour, it's over. This is hardly a testament to human creativity. It's an attempt to milk cash out of the cinephiles around the world who have championed Panahi's cause. This will probably top my Worst of 2012 List.

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  March 11, 2012

  gator681

  This is as a fascinating bit of minimalism as there has been in quite a long time, not only for its insights into the state of censorship in Iran(from what I can infer, Jafar Panahi's arrest sounds like something out of "Hawaii 5-0,") but for its symbolism in capturing a day in t... read morehe life of Jafar Panahi, trapped inside waiting for loved ones to return on New Year's Day with fireworks going off just outside. So it may come as no surprise that the only identifiable movie on his DVD rack is "Buried" starring Ryan Reynolds.
  
  In all honesty, I don't think 'This is Not a Film' was really meant to be a title in a conventional sense. Rather, it is meant to possibly to work around the Iranian authorities' sentencing Panahi to six years of prison and 20 years without directing, writing a film or giving interviews.(His lawyer thinks there is a chance he could have the prohibitions thrown out and his sentence reduced but he is still going to jail.) All of which he bares up under with humor and fatalism.
  
  So, that only leaves him to talk about his old films in pointing out how little control he has had over his amateur casts in the past. To accentuate this, his pet iguana(which is bigger than most cars, by the way) takes center stage at times. So, he stages scenes from what would have been his latest film about a young woman who wants to attend university in Tehran over her traditional parents' wishes.
  
  This all comes about when Mojtaba Mirtahmasb conceives of a behind the scenes series on banned directors.(Another way of looking at it, is as they put it, when hairdressers get bored, they do each others' hair.) Even though Panahi does not want to appeal to other Iranian directions which might get them in trouble also, Mirtahmasb also is currently in hot water, too. And finally, the real reason for this being made, is as Panahi puts it, to petition for international pressure, or in other words, us.

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• Jafar Panahi as Jafar Panahi
• Mojtaba Mirtahmasb as Mojtaba Mirtahmasb

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