Bassira Khatera

Adela Adim

Yasemin Yarmal

Sima Shadan

GLAMOUR IN AFGHAN CINEMA (WOMEN IN AFGHAN CINEMA)

2002: The Taliban have been thrown out. Afghan cinema lives again, as short fiction films. The female characters in them are young children or grandmothers.
2003: Afghan film follows the same trend, but the female children sometimes turn into very young women (Osama). The adult woman is not on the agenda. Censorship or self-censorship?
2004: First visit in Kabul. First impression: there aren't any women in Kabul, at least in daily life, outside, in the streets, in hotels, not even at the film school where I'm told women are enrolled. 70 members of the Afghan film industry attend a meeting. Only three of them are women. One is in her sixties. She says she is an actress, not out of choice but out of necessity, as she is starving because of the pittance she earns at the hospital.
In a (quite bad) short film, a woman is beaten by her husband. Yet reality is outdone by fiction: since then, the actress was killed by her husband for appearing in a film.
In today's Kabul, being an actress is not to be recommended. The Taliban's influence is still very strong. As a consequence, there are very few actresses, and no proper female parts in fiction films, except those played by Iranian or Pakistani actresses. Afghan cinema must wait until exiled Afghan actresses come back (they hastily left, sometimes after burning their stills in case the Taliban got hold of them) or young girls grow up.
Yet there used to be glamour in Afghan films which had seductresses and women to dream of. The beginnings were tough. Female parts used to be played by dressed-up men and, later, by foreigners. With the development of cinema in the late 1960s, there were many parts for women and pretty women weren't missing. The films told impossible love stories with beautiful, inaccessible women who could walk in the streets wearing miniskirts, with their hair blowing in the wind. Siamo and Jalili, The Suitor, Ashker the Joker, Epic of Love, Men Keep Their Promises, etc., are good examples. This lasted for 20 years.
In the late 1980s, during the civil war and under the Taliban regime, glamour was out. In the realistic war films, the woman could only be a victim, a tearful wife or widow or, at best, a nurse.

Philippe Jalladeau

 

 

See more information about:
- A brief history of Afghans and films
- A historic story
- General list of Afghans length fiction films