Director just wants to share his reality

When Jafar Panahi returned home from Cannes last May, he was asked to appear before Iranian intelligence.

“They told me there were some difficulties -- that I would have some difficulties,” the director said. “I said I was just trying to tell the truth about my community, to show the reality. They said I wasn’t allowed to show any kind of reality.... “

Panahi laughed -- so did his interpreter, and so did I -- but it was the kind of laugh you have at a funeral.

“Crimson Gold,” the latest by the director of “The Circle” and “The White Balloon,” was one of the best films at the Cannes festival last year; many, including Panahi, wondered why it wasn’t in the main competition (no French money, it was whispered). It is an unblinking portrait of contemporary Iran, of governance by religious fiat, and of disposable humanity. It was guaranteed to make trouble for its director.

“When I finished the film, I gave it to the Ministry of Islamic Culture, and they told me I had to shorten the film. I said it wasn’t possible. So they told me they would not give me the license to export the film.

“But I had already exported the film, before the situation arose.”

He’d sent it to Paris for the sound mix, which is why it was able to be shown at the New York Film Festival in October, why it will be playing at UCLA tonight and why it will be in theatrical release soon. I met up with Panahi while on vacation in November, visiting the International Thessaloniki Film Festival, an important, serious and enthusiastic affair held on the Aegean each year. The smiling Panahi was there to support his film. But he won’t be here for the U.S. release.

In April 2001 -- five months before the Sept. 11 attacks -- Panahi was transiting New York, heading from Hong Kong to South America. Even then, it was U.S. policy to take mug shots and fingerprints of any Iranian male between the ages of 18 and 65 entering the country.

“I am not against anyone,” he said last year. “It also doesn’t mean that I support them. When they have invited me to the United States, I’ve accepted, with the assumption they will treat me like an artist -- not a killer or something. Then I get there and they want my fingerprints; it makes me feel very bad.”

Despite assurances from United Airlines that he would be allowed to change planes peacefully, when he presented his passport to customs, he was stopped.

“They said, ‘If you want to continue, you have to be fingerprinted.’ ... They pushed me to do it, and I wouldn’t accept it. For 17 hours, they kept me there. I had some chains on my hands and chains to my belt, other chains to my feet.”

Panahi eventually was allowed to proceed. But the experience has left him understandably bitter and with a question unanswered: If Panahi’s films criticize the Iranian regime, which the United States has declared an enemy of freedom and a spoke in the “axis of evil,” why is it our policy to interrogate and humiliate, rather than send a limo and roses when he steps off the plane?

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‘Crimson Gold’

What: “Crimson Gold” opens the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s 14th annual Celebration of Iranian Cinema.

Where: James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA campus, Westwood. (310) 206-FILM.

When: 7:30 tonight.

Wellspring will release the film theatrically in Los Angeles on Feb. 6.

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John Anderson is a film critic at Newsday, a Tribune company.