Customer Reviews

Blackboards [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very artistic piece. Not a traditional film with beginning, end and simple plot. It is a weaving of moments, a soundtrack which gives you the chance to experience situations through your senses, and to understand WITHOUT words.

I sat through this film, not understanding, and feeling that I almost didn't like it. It didn't try to convince me.

It IS a powerful cinematic portrayal of hardship among kurds, a portrayal of minorities without representation in any national majority.

I understood that later, slowly, as it unfolded in my head. I can't truly describe it. You must find out for yourself the importance of a film like this.

This is a film by a very young, Iranian filmmaker, Samira Makhmalbaf, who was nineteen years old at the time that she filmed it. She comes from an Iranian family steeped in the filmmaking tradition, as her father, Mosen Makhmalbaf, was a director. Her mother used to act in her husband's films, as did Samira, as a child. In fact, her father was the producer, as well as the co-screenwriter and editor, for this film.

This film, which received the 2000 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize, takes place in the Kurdistan region of Iran and was filmed in Kurdish. None of the performers are professional actors, except for Behnaz Jafari, who is a noted Iranian stage and film actress and plays the only female role in the film. Local village people were used for the other roles, except for the role of one of the teachers, which was played by a Kurdish filmmaker. The film was shot on location in the rugged mountainous terrain in the Kurdistan region of Iran, near the Iranian/Iraqi border.

The film tells the story of the poor people of Kurdistan, which is a region always struggling with problems caused by war. The film first centers on a band of itinerant Iranian school teachers who struggle to bring a modicum of education to the children of this war torn region. They travel with large blackboards on their backs and traipse up and down the steep mountain side, as poor as those whom they seek to teach. Their blackboards serve many functions, as the viewer will soon discover. Early on in the film, two teachers splinter off from the main group. The film proceeds to follow these two teachers on their respective journeys, where they will discover that education cannot find its niche in a land where the young need to work to survive, and adults simply want to return to their homeland to die.

One of the teachers encounters a group of boys who are mules for some contraband that they are paid to carry over the border on their backs. The other teacher encounters a group of Kurds who are seeking to return to their war torn homeland, Halabcheh, which is just over the Iraqi border. It is the actual site where Kurds had been subjected to the chemical warfare of the Iraqi regime. During the war between Iraq and Iran in the nineteen eighties, many Iraqi Kurds took refuge in Iran to escape chemical warfare. Both the children and the wandering Kurds, together with the teachers, face dangers and hardships along their way that most of those who view this film can only imagine.

This film is a visual eye-opener, a stark and shocking depiction of insular lives lived quite primitively. The only intrusion of the outside, modern world into the lives of these people is in the guise of sophisticated weaponry. This is an ambitious film that suffers from some lack of cohesion. It is, however, thematically complex, and its young director holds much promise. This is a film that those with an interest in other cultures will enjoy. If not, deduct one star from my rating.

I was immediately struck by images of Samuel Beckett plays while watching this film. Those who criticize its slow pace and long periods of inaction are missing quite a bit of artistry. The editing is first-rate, especially near the end when Iranian soldiers open fire in two different scenes.

Like Beckett, Ms. Makhmalbaf focuses upon the plight of the poverty-stricken, whose lives spin in circles of nothingness. While "Godot" stayed underneath a tree, "Blackboards" moves along at a resigned pace. I find it a masterful piece of work, no matter what the director's age. Her use of Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi and his actor friend Said Mohammed as two of the teachers was a wise choice.

Fellow Americans who expect fast action and glib speech will not like this film. It is at once realistic and symbolistic. A coworker couldn't get through the first ten minutes, but then again he has different tastes than I.

The most awesome aspect of this movie is its locations & shooting. Blackboards is a slow moving story - a tale that contrasts the hardships of life on the move in the remote outposts of Kurdish Iraq with the deep intent of two human beings. The story has two twin themes running in parallel, both involving nomadic teachers scouting for students who can in turn pay the teachers for their next meal. One teacher joins a bunch of young illiterate boys who work in cross border smuggling outfits for large unseen mafia bosses, while the other joins a group of migrating societal rejects who aim to get back to their land and flee the bombing of Saddam. The movie is extremely slow and laborious in setting the context & you feel much a part of the situation & begin to empathise with the key characters in the movie. And therein lies the charm of this movie - in exposing our television conditioned minds to aspects of life we barely knew existed. Worth a watch, only if slow and offbeat films is your genre of interest.

Blackboards is movie about courage and the persistence of the human spirit. The movie is basically about nomadic teachers who roam the Iranian Kurdistan area with blackboards attached to their backs looking for children to teach in exchange for a pittance. I have never in my life seen such dedication to educate. They climb wild, unforgiving mountains and brave merciless fire from border soldiers rifles using their blackboards as shields.

Two of these teachers are primarily focused on. They part at a junction and one goes up the craggy mountain and runs into desperate young boys who risk their lives at the border smuggling stolen goods and the other runs into a bunch of misplaced Kurdish nomads trying to find their way home and somehow, absurdly marries a wife. They both try to to teach unwilling pupils; it's almost perversely comical to watch.

The movie is realistically shot. You feel like you are in the zone and a major highlight is when one of the teachers pretends to read a letter in a language foreign to him to a father desperate for news.

However, the conclusion is empty. I kind of felt sorry for the director and myself. It would be difficult to hold together and conclude a story with such important and varied themes. It's worth watching to understand what it is like to be an Iranian Kurd and why it is impossible to hold the human spirit down.

Beautifully made. Realistic. Exceptionally powerful. Just, indescribable. Watching this made me realize that the more I think I know about this world, the more I don't.

I'm not overly familiar with Iranian movies--but on a scale of 1 to 5--I would put "Children of Heaven" as an easy 5--"The Cow" and "Leila" as 4's--and "Blackboards"-at best a "3"-

the story starts in an intersting manner with several teachers with blackboards on their backs setting out to find students--but from there on it gradually gives way to a lot of nothing--nomadic wandering for the Iraqi border-but with no agenda--other than getting an old man to urinate and his daughter married--so he can die in peace

The acting is ok--and the "trek" is of some interest--but nothing really happens. The main character marrys, divorces and loses his blackboard-then stays in Iran while his fellow travelers cross the border

Far from being a "bad" movie--it is also far from being a "good" movie--I would recommend the other movies I mentioned-particularly "Children of Heaven" before this exercise in the mundane or "Leila"--though "The Cow"may be a little obscure to be of interest to the typical American film fan!

Released in 2000, BLACKBOARDS was the second film by Samira Makhmalbaf, daughter of acclaimed Iranian auteur Mohsen Makhmalbaf and a precocious director in her own right. As the film opens, a group of itinerant teachers lug blackboards into the mountains of Iranian Kurdistan, seeking to bring education to this illiterate, impoverished region in exchange for some meagre income.

Two the teachers quickly branch off from the group, and the film follows their adventures. Saïd (Saïd Mohamadi) falls in with a group of nomads trying to get back to their native land across the border in Iraqi Kurdistan. Rebwar (Bahman Ghobadi) meets a group of children transporting contraband over the border. The teacher's efforts to help the locals learn read and write are rebuffered time and time again, to the point that the film takes on the quality of a play by Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter. Saïd's attempts to get through to the lone woman in the party (Behnaz Jafari) are the height of absurdism.

Samira Makhmalbaf's visual aesthetic is mainly that of her father's early films, and the film evokes the beauty of this mountainous region, as well as the desolation that causes its poverty. And it's cool that the dialogue is in Kurdish, as there aren't so many films available in the West that highlight this people. However, I must say that I found other aspects disappointing. BLACKBOARDS makes a thought-provoking point that the poor are too busy surviving to worry about ideals like education, but the script doesn't really hang together. The acting is also inconsistent, with a big disconnect between the professional actors and the local Kurds who were brought on.

You might take a chance on BLACKBOARDS. I certainly don't regret seeing it, it's memorable and there's some humour. But I remain unsatisfied.

Let's talk about Iran first. I've never heard any urban myth to the effect that they have 2000 words for sand, but if I did hear such a myth, the visuals in a film such as this would tempt me to believe it.

Okay, the movie itself was excellent. Great acting and a very simple story that shows us a perspective that's probably very unlike our own. There is a continuity error about the blackboard itself, but I'll forgive that because everything else is done so well. There's a reason it won at Cannes, and I'll watch it again.

A few years ago Iranian films were the choice for Guardian columnists telling us that they were the greatest thing you were ever likely to see. Sadly, its just not the case. Granted we don't exactly have a large choice of Iranian cinema in the West and most of it is one dimensional this film is sadly one of these.

The film centers around travelling school teachers, condemned by their peers for choosing a profession they could hardly make a living on (seeing as they have to travel with their blackboards on their backs desperately trying to find students in the mountains on the border between Iran and Iraq where most seem to be more interested in farming or smuggling)

One meets up with Kurdish nomads trying to return to their homeland while another meets up with children smuggling goods across the border. While the film does have some moments of interest much of it really is of the stereotype sell to the western audience variety. The Kurdish lady one of the teachers marries is this almost zombie like character who can barely string a sentence together. I really feel the best gauge of a film is to watch it with people from that geographical area and see what their impression is of it. Friends I know have either had a look of utter bemusement at this character or cracked up laughing a such a one dimensional character that looks more like a parody from an early evening TV comedy show in the middle east.

Then we have the smugglers, mostly children they are shot at by border guards, the teacher is forced to cut up his blackboard in order to use it as a splint but again, while some may see this film as 'an eye opener to an unknown part of the Middle East' its not really an issue unknown to anyone from that area. Everyone in Turkey knows about towns in the south east who have shopping areas with sometimes better electrical goods than you find in Istanbul brought in over the border, everyone in Iraq knows the same goes for Northern Iraq.

The sad thing is, this film does cover some serious issues. The heavy mining on the borders between Middle Eastern countries (Iran, Iraq, Turkey) and the effect on the ordinary people who live on those borders. Pity the film has no depth.