‘EXCLUSIVE SCREENING: Filmed interview of Jafar Panahi by J.M.Frodon’

19:30 Filmed interview of Jafar Panahi by Jean-Michel Frodon
In the presence of J. M. Frodon (tbc)

20:30 Untying The Knot (Ghereh Ghoshaï)  - Jafar Panahi
(IR, 2007, 7’, color, OV, ST FR)

In a phenomenal sequence shot which takes us from the street to the basement of a sales room, Jafar Panahi shows us the distress of a young soldier and his silent sister as they try to negotiate the best price to sell a precious family carpet. This short is an extract from the film Persian Carpet, a joint production by fifteen Iranian filmmakers about handmade Persian carpets. “When they proposed Carpet to me, I refused. I don’t like this kind of materialistic effort. If I wanted to make a film about carpets, it would be about the beauty of the carpet. I really don’t like the concept of marketing the product. When they insisted, I remembered my childhood, when we had a carpet in the house, and my father had a financial problem, so he took the carpet to be sold. The people there looked just like us, ordinary people. So when I accepted to make a short film for the carpet project, I thought, what could I do? I thought that there must be a single unit of time, a single unit of place, and a single character. With one time, one place and one person, it is better to have only one shot.”Peter Rist in conversation with Jafar Panahi, Offscreen, November 2009

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The Friend (Doust)  - Jafar Panahi
(IR, 1992, 42’, OV, st FR)

Two classmates chase each other after an argument in the classroom. One will prevent the other going home. Jafar Panahi produced this film in homage to Abbas Kiarostami’s first short film, The Bread and the Alley, produced in 1970, which was the first of a series of films on childhood, one of the signature traits of Kairostami's filmwork and later that of Panahi. Kiarostami produced this film while at the Kanun, the film department of the Institute for the intellectual development of children, founded in 1969, which he managed for many years. Panahi uses the same characters as in The Bread and the Alley (the cyclist, the old man), but expands the story in order to develop the tension between the two boys. The film is being shown for the first time in Belgium.