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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 6.01 - APRIL 2001
My Trip To Tehranby Nag Vladermersky
For five days in February I was lucky enough to be in attendance at the second Tehran International Animation Festival, the bustling capital city of Iran. I was there in my role as co-programmer and director of the inaugural Melbourne International Animation Festival and I was especially keen to see some Iranian animation. I had no preconceived ideas about the country let alone the animation. The guidebooks I read on the 19-hour plane trip had left me feeling cautious but inquisitive. In the weeks prior to my trip I had been in email contact with Karimi Saremi the Tehran Festival director to inquire about the festival and he told me that there would be enough animation content to warrant the journey. This turned out to be a very special five days. I got into Tehran at 2 in the afternoon and was whisked through customs. The festival had done a deal with the officials to get all of us foreign guests through quickly. There were ten of us from overseas. The jury consisted of Tiziana Loschi of the Annecy Festival, Sayoko Kinoshita from the Hiroshima Festival, Bretislav Pojar, master Czech animator and teacher at FAMU in Prague, Nelson Shin, President of ASIFA Korea and founder of Animatoon magazine and Hamid Navim, an Iranian animator now making films in Sweden.
I had my own chaperone/taxi-driver for five days who spoke little English but happily pointed out Iranian landmarks on our daily drives to and from the apartment I was staying in and the festival centre. The festival was a big one -- four days from 8:30 in the morning until midnight each night, about 200 films from 18 countries. Outside of the international and national competition screenings, there were retrospectives for Paul Driessen, Caroline Leaf and Co Headman, special sessions for kids, some features, Iranian student films, a world ASIFA retrospective and two sessions of master Iranian animators. Iran's first female animator Nafiseh Riyahi, who sadly passed away a few months before the festival commenced, was commemorated with a session of her films, and Noureddin Zarrinkelk, considered to be the most well known Iranian animator, was also celebrated. Zarrinkelk's films use highly effective humour to portray his warped impressions of the world. This was best illustrated in The Mad Mad World where Sweden swallows Denmark, England eats Northern Ireland, Italy boots Sicily away, USSR and USA peck at each other and Latin America struggles like a fish in a bowl owned by the USA.
The 650-seat auditorium was almost always packed with adults and kids of all ages, being very vocal and enthusiastic about what they were seeing. It was a totally different viewing experience to what I had ever been used to in the Western world...and I loved it because of that. The festival was held at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, a fantastic setup where kids can come and play and try their hands at all sorts of artistic endeavours -- even get a chance to make their own simple cut-out animations. One of the guests of the festival was Erling Ericsson from Sweden who set up a simple animation rostrum-camera, which he called 'The Box,' and held classes for a week with young kids and art teachers where they could see their simple animations come to life very quickly. These classes were a huge success and Erling and his lovely assistant Kamelia were besieged by extremely eager kids wanting to play and make films. During the festival's closing ceremony some of the more successful attempts were put up on the big screen for the capacity audience to see. Over the four days I saw some absolute gems of films and the biggest joy to me was the local content. This is what I had come to discover. I knew hardly anything about Iranian animation except that it was being produced in the film schools. After meeting some of the animators and seeing their films I am very enthusiastic about curating a session just of Iranian work for our own Melbourne International Animation Festival in June. Iranian animation is on the outset very simple and symbolic. The stories are very allegorical and can be read on many levels, and are enjoyed by adults and kids alike. Lots of myths and fairytales are all bound up in a sure grasp of technique. Often meandering, when you release yourself to the pace of these films you can literally get lost in them. I feel privileged to have been able to watch these films in the company of not only an Iranian audience but also the filmmakers themselves.
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