Interview with Samira Makhmalbaf about the 11’ 09” 01 - SEPTEMBER 11 project Where were you on September 11 2001? What did you feel when you learnt about these events? - When I saw those two towers collapsing on TV, at first I didn’t believe it. I thought I was watching a film with special effects but immediately I found out that it was a true image. I started thinking about my friends in New York. I had lived there for a month and had a lot of friends there. A few hours later when I heard that America wanted to attack Afghanistan I started thinking about the children and women I had photographed a month before on the borders of Iran and Afghanistan. I had lived with them for about a month as well. I faced a double anxiety because I had friends in both America and Afghanistan. You are a very busy film-director. Yet you did not hesitate to answer this invitation: joining in a collective work based around the September 11 events in New York by making one of the 11 shorts. Why? - The September 11 incident is a universal event. Of course the incident owes its globalisation to the image that was sent all over the world and to all nations through the satellite in real time. Yet the reality of the death of 2.5 million Afghanis during a 20-year period because of war and famine was forgotten because the images weren’t sent in real time. As a person involved in cinema, after seeing this image I again realised the power of imagery and thought to myself that the process of globalisation is more reliant on the power of image-making than anything else. If the news had been announced on the radio without the existence of an image nobody would have believed it. This image was only a one-dimensional picture, as if someone is talking about it, it was a monologue and not a dialogue. In order for this pictorial monologue to turn into a media dialogue between humans while the same media is in the hands of the superpowers, it was necessary to invite people from different cultures to view the incident from different angles and perspectives. A one-dimensional reality is not comprehensive, and creating such one-way realities only increases human misunderstandings rather than creating human harmony. Reality is not based on the view of the angle of those who see the reality. When we talk about a universal reality we have to see it from the viewpoint of the world. I thought to myself that although this is only a short film and although it practically prevented me from making a feature film, yet participating in a relative pictorial dialogue is a humanitarian act. Had you thought of expressing yourself around the events of September 11 before being asked to participate in '11’09’’01'? - I have attended many international festivals because of my films and seen different countries first-hand. I had previously considered making a film about the distance created by poverty in such countries as Afghanistan and the universal contradiction with the wealth of advanced countries. After September 11 I reached the conclusion that it was time to talk about this global conflict once again. A lot of people talk about September 11 but few attribute these events to the distance that exists between the developed and underdeveloped world. The poor are drowning in their poverty and the fortunate in the depths of their great fortunes. No one thinks that this distance, the distance between this warm climate and that cold climate, might create a heavy storm. What events or personal experiences did you want to bring to light through your short? What personal echo to the events of September 11? - I wanted to express the threats that an eastern girl faces because of an incident that takes place in the West. I wanted to say that an eastern girl might not have seen New York and those towers, might not even have a clue about life in that location. Yet she is forced to be anxious about the globalisation process and such an incident might even change the course of her life. Actually the storm that has been created by the West through globalisation might destroy the easterners. I wanted to show how the destruction of two towers in a western city could cause the destruction of many cities in non-western countries. I wanted to show how people who have had no role in the destruction of those two towers, who did not even know that they existed, could become homeless and bereft of everything as a result of this incident. How did the idea of your film come to you? Immediately or after long consideration? - After seeing the image of destruction of those two towers and when America bombed Afghanistan, I wanted to know if my friends in New York were okay and I wanted to go to Afghanistan to help the Afghan children no matter how insignificant my efforts there. I went to Afghanistan when America was bombing that country and I saw that the local cinemas that were banned for years had started working in a very rudimentary fashion. This made me very happy and I immediately thought about making a film. Has the time constraint of 11 minutes, 9 seconds and one frame, imposed on every short, caused difficulties when constructing your story. How did you deal with it? - Just as no mother can decide the exact weight and height of the child that she is about to give birth to, a film maker can not define the duration of a film before making it. Of course we do observe some standards, for example we consider the duration of 70 to 120 minutes for making a feature film, but it is very difficult for a film maker to decide how many minutes, seconds and frames a film should be beforehand. It is as if we first manufactured a pair of shoes and then fit someone’s feet in them instead of making a pair of shoes that will fit the feet. Two points were specified for this film: the subject of September 11 and the time of 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame. I had to pour my ideas and feelings into these two predetermined containers in such a way that not even one drop would spill out and that the container would not have space for an extra drop to be added. This reminded me of the poets who had to summarise a couplet-poem into a quatrain. But regarding this film and the duration of 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame, it was a metaphor and it had become part of the film’s nature. I was forced to omit a lot of things that I wanted to say and change a lot of details. I was under compulsion to limit my feelings to the specified duration. Obviously this had its own difficulties. How did the actors and the technicians make and experience their contributions to the film? How did the shooting progress? - When the camera starts filming it is as if a machine gun starts shooting towards reality. The more we lessen the importance of the backstage and filming tools, the greater the expectation for the appearance of a golden moment in reality. If you watch the backstage footage of this film, you can see how a little girl, who has no clue about cinema, kept all the technicians and the stage group waiting for hours to get ready for the moment when she could act as naturally as in reality. In fact we can say that the camera and techniques kill reality on stage just as if the camera were shooting 24 bullets per second. These include making efforts to convince the children who are acting that the camera and the other equipment are only toys and insignificant stuff. The director has actually placed the spirit of this film in the hands of a 7-year-old child rather than the people like us who are familiar with the techniques. If the technicians were to dominate the actors, who were chosen from among ordinary people, we would witness only a cinema similar to a factory production rather than a piece of the poem of life. Each director has built up his or her film without having the slightest inkling of what the others would do. Has this been a problem for you? How have you experienced or 'lived' this collective work? - Not having knowledge of the works of the other film makers creates the reinforcement of different sounds in the film. When I am making a film I try to avoid having the actors read the screenplay and finding out about the roles and reactions of the other actors. When they are talking, it is like real life for them and they don’t know what the other person is going to say to them. Many of them even have no idea concerning the next scene they are going to perform. The producer of "11'09'01" actually created a film that 11 directors - in other words, 11 actors - imagined their own, and has tried to achieve an ultimate harmony through the unity of the subject and similar times just like a director. In your view, can the film bring new perspectives to a reflection on our contemporary world? Can cinema function as an instrument for peace? - Given the reality of satellites in the present world, the powers send their own unified ideas and thoughts all over the world. But in this film different ideas are sent through a unified media.. We can witness different voices from all over the world. Although these voices cannot be heard well enough due to the noises that the satellites create, still it is clear the next generation will make efforts to dance to the music of these voices and think deeper in the silent gaps between them. I do not expect a film like '11'09"01' to have an immediate and far-reaching effect like the effect that BBC and CNN have on the world only in one night. Yet I believe that just like Einstein’s theory, which first elucidated the properties of atoms, this film will also affect public opinion over time, slowly but indelibly. If the thought of war is based on an idea unit and a monologue then tools for peace should consist of a variety of human thoughts and dialogue among them. This film is a practice run for this dialogue. We should not forget that where the human mouth is shut to prevent dialogues, the barrel of guns open. Do you think that the events of September 11 will influence your future films? - The creation of each film marks the recreation of its director. Naturally our deep memories are full of our life experiences and each new film is like a novel life experience for me. I think that not only I, but also all the other film makers find the chance to live in the circumstances of another human being through making a new film. It is the same for the audience. When I was making 'The Apple', which took 11 days, it was as if I had experienced the imprisonment of eastern women for 11 whole years. When I was made 'Blackboards' I felt that I had wandered in the mountains for years. Do you think there exists a 'before' and an 'after' September 11, such events constituting a rupture in contemporary history? - Whenever I think about the globalisation issue I think about the meaning of the expansion of communication tools and what these tools are supposed to offer. Does it mean that all the countries will reach the point of living at the same level of standards and with balance and justice? But when I saw the different countries, countries such as Afghanistan and advanced countries, the existing conflict amazed me. When I see that in the present world the image of two collapsing towers could be sent all over the world through satellites at the same time that it is actually happening, I see that create a humanitarian feeling among all the nations at least for a moment and everyone feels as if their own house has been destroyed. I have to ask why does a country like Afghanistan exist on this earth while no one is aware of all the miseries and agonies of its people? We still have countries whose image and voices are not heard as if they have no share in this vast universe. Despite the globalisation of the contemporary world, we still have many unknown places and when you go to these locations with a medium called cinema it seems a surreal world for you. It is as though only the media can transform this surrealism into reality and make it believable for others. It seems that what isn’t shown through satellite does not exist at all. In the present world the advanced countries pay attention to poor countries only when their own profits are endangered. This is when all the countries and media concentrate attention in this direction.

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