With the withdrawal of U.S. troops, on August 15, the Taliban entered kabul, the Afghan capital, and occupied the presidential palace. In the midst of chaos and panic, the Afghan government's 20 years with the United States in Afghanistan came to an abrupt end.
After the occupation of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan,Chinese in addition to a series of related news, there was also a letter of help from The Director of the Afghan Film Company, Sahraa Karimi, to "all the film practitioners and film lovers in the world". Sahraa Karimi is the current chairman of the Afghan Film Company and has previously filmed documentaries such as "The Afghan Woman Behind the Steering Wheel" and "The Women of Kabul".
Directed by Sahraa Karimi
The filmmaker's voice has focused many people's eyes on Afghan films. Combing through the history of the development of Afghan films, it is not difficult to find that many "first" titles in the history of Afghan film development reflect the vision and exploration of Afghans for national development.
Inside and outside Afghanistan, there are a lot of movies about Afghanistan. Indigenous Afghan films reflect the national character of Afghans, while Afghan films from a world perspective reflect different Afghan images under the other.
In the storm, these films provide space and comfort for the collective imagination of Afghans, and the rescue, reconstruction and meaning of Afghan films are inseparable from the efforts of a group of filmmakers.
Several "firsts" in the history of Afghan cinema
In Afghanistan, early filmmaking mostly revolved around the story of the rulers, more of a real film. In 1927, King Amanora Khan, known as the father of Afghanistan's modernization, hired a private film crew to record his international travels from 1927 to 1928, and the film about his travel records is the earliest trace of Afghan film and television production.
The 1946 musical Love and Friendship was written by Afghan theater pioneer Rashid Ratifi, but was filmed mainly at the famous Shorey Studio in Lahore, Pakistan. The film has the style of an Indian song and dance film. The emotions about Love and Friendship were clearly different from the American and Indian films that flooded Afghanistan at the time, when people had high hopes for the film to become the first film in the film industry in the nascent country.
In 1964, an article titled "The First Afghan Filmmaking: < > Like An Eagle" brought the movie "Like an Eagle" into view. The film tells the story of Shahla, a young girl from the outskirts of Kabul, watching the celebrations of national independence in the capital. Interspersed with real newsreel clips from the 1963 independence celebrations, the film reveals an interesting interpretation of the Afghan national development discourse.
Still, "Like an Eagle" did not seem to succeed, with Kabul Times film critics arguing that the film "has many plots and scenes that are confusing and practically incomprehensible".
The 1970 "Ages" is generally considered to be Afghanistan's first fictional film. This may be related to the milestone event that the "Time Trilogy" established the position of Afghan film companies in Afghanistan and became a milestone. The "trilogy" includes The Suitor, Friday Night, and The Smuggler.
The film was the first to be produced entirely in Afghanistan from filming to post-production. Hashemite, the head of the Afghan film at the time, told reporters in an interview with reporters that the film encountered many difficulties due to insufficient infrastructure and lack of technical personnel.
Poster for the movie "The Times Trilogy"
Although the style and subject matter of the short films in the "Time Trilogy" may seem incongruous, they were the first films produced by the Afghan Film Company at that time, marking the official foothold of the Afghan Film Company in Kabul, which opened in 1968, and truly became a national film organization.
It is not difficult to see that almost all of the early Afghan films are related to the celebration of national independence. "Like an Eagle" shows the heroine's journey to watch the national celebrations, while "Love and Friendship" and the "Times Trilogy" were both premiered on the first day of national independence. Several "firsts" in Afghan cinema seem to be integrated into the celebration of national independence. In 2019, Afghanistan even held a related film festival for the 100th anniversary of independence.
Chihab El Khachab, a scholar at the University of Oxford, argues that screening films on these occasions appears to be another sign of the process of modernity on the country's stage, second only to military parades, folk dances and sporting events. Every innovation in Afghan cinema reflects a new vision of political and national development, and the history of Afghan cinema also implies the journey of Afghans to modernization.
Afghanistan under the lens of "on the ground" and "the other"
Based on the special history and reality of internal and external troubles, Afghan cinema has a rich and profound form of expression. It wasn't until the end of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that Afghan cinema became known to the world. The process of Afghan cinema in the 21st century has been largely driven by a number of local filmmakers and film institutions.
Ousama, directed by Steak Balmac in 2002, the first film to be shot in china after the formation of the Afghan Provisional Government, won a series of awards at the Cannes, London and Busan International Film Festivals, and won the Best Foreign Language Film Award at the 61st Golden Globe Awards in 2004. In order to restore the real living conditions of the Afghan people, Balmak searched for candidates in kabul orphanages and refugee camps, and finally invited "begging girl" Marina to star in this sad and restrained story.
Stills from Osama
Exiled producer Atik Rahimi returned to his homeland in 2002 as a senior creative consultant to The Moby Group, Afghanistan's largest media conglomerate, to train a new generation of filmmakers for Afghanistan. His adaptation of the novel of the same name, Land and Dust, won popularity at major film festivals and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2005. The "land" in the movie refers to the Afghans, the "dust" refers to the war, and the fury of the years is everywhere and has set off countless dust, but the land is always here.
Stills from Land and Dust
From Afghanistan to the world, more than 10 countries in the world have produced movies about Afghanistan, including the United States, Iran, Russia, India, Poland, France, Britain, Denmark, Canada, Spain and so on.
Afghan related movies (Nandu reporter statistics)
Some of these films are based on real events, such as iran's "Buddha Collapses in Shame" around the Taliban bombing of the Bamiyan Buddha, or some are fictional, and war, danger and barbarism are the main ways in which many films present the image of Afghanistan, and in these films, Afghanistan sometimes provides a sufficiently dangerous space for heroes from all over the world to rescue the land. Sometimes Afghanistan is a more grainy presence beyond adjectives such as "danger" and "war", and the lives of ordinary Afghans are fully revealed.
Stills from "The Kite Chaser"
Among these films, it is worth mentioning the film "The Kite Chaser", adapted from the novel of the same name by the Afghan-American writer Husseini, and the phrase "for you, thousands of times" has earned countless tears. Iran's "Buddha Collapses in Shame" recreates the Taliban bombing of the Bamiyan Buddha in 2000 from the world of children, while films such as "Lone Survivor" and "War" in Denmark reflect on the war.
Film in rescue
In the 1990s, before the Taliban regime took over Afghanistan, the course of Afghan cinema was still advancing in the remaining years of the 20th century. Afghan Film Company has worked with other local film and television companies to produce a series of historical epics, psychodrama and nationalist films. Between 1996 and 2001, when the Taliban regime was in power, the Taliban, which enforced strict Sharia law, banned imported music, television, and film.
At this time, the inheritance of the Afghan film industry is not only the creation of a series of filmmakers, but also inseparable from the death of some people. When the Taliban stormed into the Afghan film company in the 1990s, producer Ibrahim. Alifi has a collection of thousands of films showcasing Afghanistan's rich cultural history, including more than 7,000 Afghan films. The story was filmed as a documentary by Pietra Brettkelly, and Film Rescue Mission was eventually selected by New Zealand to compete in the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film.
Stills from Film Rescue Mission
Fearing that the impending presidential election would spark war, Alifi temporarily bid farewell to the Afghan film company in the documentary and returned to Germany, where he had been living in exile. He has repeatedly said he "doesn't have the courage" to stay.
The previous generation of filmmakers risked the risk of protecting the film film, and in his decay, the next generation of filmmakers took over the restoration of the film and passed it on in their own way. So at the end of the documentary, a team of film archivists drive a minivan from a mobile cinema in Afghanistan to a village where the film has never been shown. In schools where boys and girls are segregated, students look at the classic Afghan movies where there is no war and people live and work in peace.
For many Afghans, film is already a "dead" industry in this war-torn country. Due to the deteriorating security situation, crowded places like cinemas are particularly at risk, and few people are willing to go to cinemas. As of 2019, there are only a few cinemas in the country distributed in a few larger cities, and the cinemas are basically Bollywood movies.
In this case, the Afghan film industry seems insignificant in the world, but its special historical reality and filmmakers' persistence also make Afghan films have a rich and profound expressiveness. Afghan cinema, developed in the midst of the suffering of war, chronicles the wars in this land and provides space and comfort for the collective imagination of Afghans.
Author: Intern Lin Wenqi