Filmmaker sees lessons in Iranian history

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Iranian artist Shirin Neshat plans to shoot a film about the United States overthrowing a democratically-elected government in Iran to gain control of the nation's vast oil supplies.

Ripped from today's headlines? Not quite.

The project is not based on the West's ongoing standoff over Tehran's nuclear program but rather on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's first overthrow of a foreign government, 53 years ago.

But while the movie is set in the past, Neshat hopes it will reverberate in the present, showing Westerners how their role in history is partly responsible for the current state of affairs.

"I am drawn to this project because I feel so strongly about the need for Westerners to look back in history," she said in an interview with Reuters.

"Most Westerners have amnesia beyond the Islamic revolution. They have very little concept of the foundation of the problems that we have between Islam and America, and Islam and the West."

The movie is set in 1953, the year U.S. and British intelligence services overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh over the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., which eventually became part of BP.

The coup strengthened the position of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran until the Islamic revolution of 1979.

"Iran was the first coup d'etat, then Guatemala, Congo and Chile," she said. "When the Iranians attacked the U.S. embassy (in the 1979 revolution), Americans were at a loss where the anger came from," Neshat said. "If they only understood the history behind that."

"There's an incredible absence of education and knowledge, particularly in America. It's really important that they don't continue to think of themselves as the most rational, most superior and that their values are universal," she said.

The film will either be called "Summer of 1953" or "Women without Men", the title of a book by fellow countrywoman and dissident Shahrnush Parsipur. The book is banned in Iran for its portrayal of women's sexuality and the tumult of post-World War II Iran.

Neshat, a world acclaimed photographer, video, film and performance artist, is emphasizing the political background of the book in her first full feature-length film, due to be shot in February in Casablanca, Morocco, and released early in 2008.

"We (in the Middle East) are not barbaric people who go around killing each other or the Sunnis versus the Shi'ites, which is what President (George W.) Bush claims. This is the most inaccurate representation of history and it is really unjust to erase history."
Suppressing the gap

Born in 1957 in the city of Qazvin, Neshat left before the fall of the Shah.

Subsequent visits to her homeland led to the "Women of Allah" photographic series, depicting militant women with Islamic poetry written on their skin.

She has not returned to Iran since 1996 because she fears reprisals for her work, which examines gender roles in Islamic society.

Neshat said the uproar earlier this year over Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad stemmed from the gap that exists between Islam and the West.

"On a very small scale, my work has always tried to suppress that gap," she said.

Neshat lives in New York, where she received the prestigious Gish Prize for the arts on Oct. 12. Previous recipients include author and playwright Arthur Miller, singer/songwriter Bob Dylan and architect Frank Gehry.

"It's unbelievable that the country that is raising hell about developing nuclear weapons is meanwhile the only one that has exercised it," she said.

"At the same time, it's not fair, as I would rather live here than any place else."

Neshat said the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, and what she called extreme animosity of the United States toward Muslims was to blame for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the corresponding decline in the rights of women and secular Muslims.

"All reform efforts are out of the window," she said. "The effect of the war is the exact reverse of what the U.S. intended to do and it's so obvious who is paying for it. It's all those men and women who are secular Muslims."

Neshat stressed that she is not an activist, but rather, an artist whose job is to inspire people to believe in the good and humanity in every one.

"Perhaps a small film could just infiltrate a small amount of information, without being propaganda, to open up the truth that the Americans were directly responsible for the kind of crisis that we are experiencing today in the Middle East."