By now, you’ve probably seen or at least heard of film Raving Iran. If not, don’t worry: that’s what the rest of this article is for. As an Iranian who loves techno, I’ve had the trailer sent to me by at least 15 different friends. The documentary, directed by Susanne Regina Meures, follows two Iranian techno DJs—Arash Shadram and Anoosh Raki AKA Blade&Beard—as they try to follow their passion in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
As is probably obvious by now, this isn’t easy. Iran’s government is famously oppressive when it comes to public displays of ‘western’ music, with the nation’s youth culture flourishing almost exclusively underground. To summarize: we are shown the young men DJing at private parties, throwing an illegal rave in the desert 1000 miles outside of Tehran, trying to get their music released via official channels and failing, being stopped by police, worrying about their future, and all the other stuff that comes with being a young person in Iran. Eventually, they are invited to play Street Parade—Europe’s biggest techno festival with over a million attendees—in Switzerland, and must decide if they use this opportunity to seek asylum and leave Iran behind for a more “free” life in the West.
The hour-long documentary, filmed largely on mobile phones and in darkness for both safety and privacy reasons, has received rave reviews from the music press and, according to the director, from many Iranians themselves. In London alone, there have been screenings with panels and Q&A sessions at House of Vans, Rio Cinema and Village Underground, and it has been shown internationally at film festivals from Belgrade to Toronto. It is being lauded as a fascinating look at the electronic music scene in Iran, a country that for many is still shrouded in mystery and ignorance. Ultimately, that mystery and ignorance is what makes the documentary possible.
Raving Iran, while presenting itself as a documentary, depicts a narrow narrative of life in Iran that’s rooted in truth but seems to get lost in the director’s own vision. A more realistic portrayal can actually be found in 2009’s No-one Knows About Persian Cats, a semi-fictional film about the difficulty faced by musicians in Iran. The film—directed by Kurdish-Iranian Bahman Ghobadi—follows two young rock musicians as they form a band and prepare to leave Iran shortly after being released from prison, a plot not too far away from that of Raving Iran. But where the gaze in Raving Iran is othering, NOKAPC is more intimate and nuanced in its depiction of life as an Iranian musician. There are realistic scenes depicting busts for alcohol and foreign DVDs, illegal parties that are raided with fatal consequences, and heavy metal sessions in cattle barns, proving again that when the reality is so bizarre there is really no need for sensationalism when covering this topic.
It’s unclear whether the film is a wilful misinterpretation or an unfortunate misunderstanding, but either way the message it presents is problematic. When I ask whether Meures has any regrets about it now, she says no, “especially now that the film has been doing really well, which I’m very grateful about. Of course it could have been a different film but back then this is what I could do with what I had. I think the ‘making of’ of the film would have been even better, because it would have shown in a very humorous way the difficulties and would have maybe told even more about the circumstances of actually living in Iran and making a film in Iran.” In my view, a documentary it definitely is not. Scenes showing illegal parties soundtracked by ~oriental house music~ fading into the call to prayer are trite.
For their part, Arash and Anoosh, the two DJs whose story Raving Iran follows, have spent the two years following the film’s release in a refugee camp in Switzerland, and were recently denied entry into the UK. Enough about their story demonstrates the difficulties faced by Iranian youth with dreams at odds with the regime to remove the need for a sensationalist coating of hysteria. Showing, and not telling, is one of the major components of a music documentary that pulls its weight. And with Raving Iran, that’s just not what you’re left with.
Source » vice