An angry audience succeeded in stopping the showing of an Iranian movie entitled “At Five in the Afternoon.” The Eastern Province Literary Club had intended to present the film to the public but according to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, 30 people stopped the film from being shown. The club administration decided to show “The March of the Penguins” as an alternative.
I don’t know much about the movie by Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf except what I have read in the newspapers and heard on TV. It is apparently one of the first feature films to emerge from post-Taleban Afghanistan and presents the life of an Afghan woman struggling to redefine her role despite the protestations of her conservative father. The film received the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003.
I am not here to defend the film or discuss its worth — especially now that the club has set up a committee to examine what the club will screen. But what I am condemning are the repeated incidents involving an “angry audience” or members of the public who are on a self-appointed mission to stop and suspend anything cultural or educational that doesn’t conform to their own ideas and opinions. I believe that their attitude is a threat to any cultural and educational movement and restrains its freedom and kills its vitality. Such prohibitions or bans must be done through official channels that are obliged to evaluate the educational and cultural activities and have banning privileges according to logical rules and regulations.
If an angry audience stopped the showing of a movie, only one angry man who works as a manager in a Ministry of Education department was able to shut the doors of a classroom. The classroom belonged to his department and the door was shut to prevent a member of the Human Rights Organization from giving a lecture. The reason for the closed door? The man believes that the organization is spying on whomever it visits and that it generally blows things out of proportion.
If we leave the fate of cultural and intellectual activities to the threat of such actions, they will ultimately be controlled by a certain group who are not known for their creativity or enlightenment or their tolerance of either. For them to be able to exercise any kind of control would be a great loss to both culture and education. At the same time, I believe that literary clubs and educational institutions have a responsibility which they must meet. They should dedicate great efforts to making sure that people with different opinions and ideas are involved in a variety of activities. When there is enough room for everyone to participate in a certain activity, the clubs should then make sure that things continue that way.
