Protests spark new Iranian filmmakers - Entertainment News, Weekly Smoke and Mirrors, Media - Variety: "Iranian cinema may just have found its next generation of filmmakers.
With the country's hardline authorities cracking down on foreign media outlets in the wake of the disputed June 12 presidential elections, it has largely fallen to Iran's youthful population to chronicle the mass protests on the streets of Tehran and other cities. Social networking sites like Twitter and user-generated content shot on mobile phones have maintained the flow of information and images around the world.
And, reflecting the rapid sweep of these new media tools and the long-simmering hopes of Iran's established filmmakers, the impromptu conversion of hundreds of young Iranians into documentarians is being championed by established helmers.
'This is a cultural revolution and an Internet revolution,' says director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who has been an active opposition voice. 'All the students have become filmmakers now on the streets with their mobile phones.'
During the 1980s and 1990s, Iranian filmmakers such as Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi and Majid Majidi offered viewers outside Iran a valuable window onto life in the country; for their efforts, they were feted at film fests around the world.
Recent years, however, have seen Iranian cinema's star dim on the international"
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