Not only does the Iranian cinema explore feminist issues more boldly than we do, but there are probably more female directors in the Mohsen Makhmalbaf family alone than in most Hollywood studios. The veteran filmmaker's three daughters have been making films since they were teenagers, and 20-year-old Hana Makhmalbaf's second film, Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (2008; November 14 at 6 pm; November 22 at 12:15 pm), draws on the slower, more austere and visually poetic style of filmmaking practiced by her father and Abbas Kiarostami.
Like the latter, she focuses on children — a pre-school-age Afghan girl and boy who live in caves in the cliffside where the Taliban blew up the giant statues of Buddha in 2001. The little girl wants to learn to read, and in her quest to buy a notebook and enter a classroom, she runs afoul of a gang of boys playing war games — alternately as the Taliban and as the Americans. Ranging from simple to simplistic, the film nonetheless underscores the injustice and intolerance that might lie at the heart of Iran's current unrest.
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, Entertainment, Movies, The Taliban, Abbas Kiarostami, Cultural Institutions and Parks, Museums, Museum of Fine Arts, Majid Majidi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Less
