West cinema in dead end: Iran director

Mohammad-Reza Eslamlou, director and culture expert, says the west cinema has reached a dead end, but they do not publicly admit the fact.

Eslamlou, who has directed films such as ‘A Meteor Like Light’, pinpointed his long years of residence in the US and then France as indicators of his firsthand experience of the west and its educational system.

He actually did his first degree for long years in the US, as he puts it himself, and feeling dissatisfied with what he got in terms of knowledge. Then he went to France to do a higher degree.

He notes that once he received his admission to a French university, which was easily made due to his being a US graduate, he went to visit Jean Luc Godard, the famous French-Swiss director; after he found Godard’s apartment, he saw his car, behind which the French director’s motto was written ‘Don’t follow me, I’m lost’.

This was, according to Eslamlou, when he began to reconsider the entire thing. He had seen mottos written behind American people’s cars, but coming across Godard’s motto, Eslamlou was shocked and turned around going all the way back.

He started to ponder how truthful the motto was. France, according to him, is the land of Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso; a territory whose artists have always swum against the tide, and a land where challenging the status quo is easy, and that is why its artists have become famous.

All those things made Eslamlou come to believe that the west and the western cinema are lost, and then he decided to go back to his homeland.

This article is to be continued in the second part.

MF/MG