Edmonton International Literary Festival

Edmonton, Saturday, October 14, 2006

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

THERE IS NO SINGLE TRUTH

One day in 1997, Fred Reed returned from Iran full of enthusiasm with a challenge to my pessimism about that country. A new wind of hope had sprung up, he told me, with a tone of vindication in his voice. Seemingly against all odds, Mohammad Khatami had just been elected president on a reform platform. Excitedly, Fred spoke of ‘another revolution,’ a ‘second revolution,’ a ‘quiet revolution’ led by a pacifist reform movement. Bringing to mind Herodotus, I replied: “I do not refuse to believe what I am told...nor do I entirely believe it.” By now, Fred was all but daring me to come and see for myself. So in 2000, we left for Iran, where we stayed for a month. I was now convinced that I could make a film.

A year later, I returned with a technical crew to begin filming what would become Salam Iran, a Persian Letter. The film premiered in Montreal in 2002 and is now circulating surreptitiously in Iran. In January and February 2004, Fred and I returned to Tehran to launch the conversations that make up this book and that would eventually bring us here to LitFest in Edmonton. The book is the continuation of the film, with a different angle of approach, different situations and different characters.

There are two ways for a foreigner to gain insight into Iran. The first is to spend large amounts of money to purchase one’s sources of information and even to appropriate their words. This method, favoured by the major media networks, can easily engender the kind of “professional bias” seen on CNN, whose reports have more often than not strengthened the hand of the mollahs who hold power in Tehran and of their counterparts in Washington.

The second method is to build slowly, patiently on a basis of confidence and friendship, to develop close personal ties, social and family relationships. This was to be our approach; thanks to it, we were able in short order to arrange the meetings that give this book its shape and form.

My film Salam Iran, a Persian Letter ends with the words of Iranian philosopher Abdolkarim Sorouch, who said: “I think, today, in the whole world, like in the Third World, we are going through a singular historical period…To break through the wave, you need courage. To stay mired in tradition is to live in darkness, but to open yourself to modernity is to confront this terrifying wave.”

It was on these words that the film concluded—and the book Conversations in Tehran begins, aspiring to carry us beyond what the film was able to say. Documentary cinema may well reveal and accuse, but it can endanger those who participate in it. The written word, less bound by the rules of caution than are images, offers greater freedom to narrate and to reflect; it draws as well upon our personal and complementary experiences, and our encounters in a land where the dead often seem more alive than the living, where the past is more present than the present, and where the invisible overwhelms the visible.

Documentary film taught me early on that there is no single truth. When it comes to telling the truth, I stop at nothing, the camera and microphone picking up where the writing leaves off, the writing then taking its turn at the helm.

The camera is like a razor blade. It slices into what is real, taking samples to piece together what could be called the language of reality. The camera produces an illusion of what’s real. It depicts what may be true rather than truth itself, all the while revealing the artificiality of the image.

A film can serve as a good conscience. It can speak to the truthfulness of the words heard and things seen, of possible truths but never The Truth. As such, it can alternately be a tool to expose and reveal but also an instrument for intellectual exploration or poetic adventure.

So really, anything goes. There is no categorical imperative dictating the angle or axis, the nature of the frame or its composition. Filming demands a new take on understanding what’s real.

A camera without conscience would be little more than a recording device, fulfilling the mechanical needs of observation, voyeurism, espionage or surveillance. But even without conscience, the device is not without intent. The filmmaker’s job is to create that connection between conscience and intent while clarifying the intent of filming. Which led French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard to remark: "It is no use having a clear picture if the intent is blurred."

For me, the research and script are the written work done before the film, whereas editing is the written work that comes after. My method generally follows this formula: tell a story about what’s real that depicts both reality and its complex truths while stimulating the imagination and engaging the audience.

I believe, as Quebec writer Jacques Ferron once said, that Reality is hidden behind reality. Indeed, the truth is not set in stone; there are often many truths, and it is this complexity that the film must convey at the risk of creating a paradox. But what a risk, given that controversy is a natural dialectic as we construct what is real, because there is no one, single truth, except for those naïve enough to believe in the so-called “media truth.” In the search for truth, confrontation is unavoidable.

The audience is engaged by this connection to reality. It does not have the luxury of remaining on the other side of the screen or the page, like careful observers of the events of history, passively observing the unexpected twists as individuals meet. I do everything I can to ensure they have no choice but to abandon their role as witness-spectators or readers and to enter the playing field.

In my most recent film, The American Fugitive, The Truth about Hassan, shot in both Iran and the United States, the key figure, Hassan, is a political assassin with multiple identities. He first appeared in Salam Iran, and an entire chapter is dedicated to him in Conversations in Tehran. When American Fugitive opens, he is confronted with a question: Where is the truth? Troubled, he responds: "Maybe there is no single truth, maybe there are many Truths." The audience is immediately troubled as well, caught in the flow of the film, which refuses to wrap up a story that involves one of the critical issues currently facing our society. This is necessary to awaken understanding: When the film is over, the book read, the game has barely even begun. Essentially, my work as a filmmaker or writer consists in pushing the audience or readers to take the ball and run with it.

The denouement is a collective process.

At this point, I’m not looking to make others happy. I’m trying to be as real and as fair as possible to the reality of those involved, to the situations and events. I refuse to close the door on multiple truths. I believe it is important to leave the door open, for facts and opinions to be respected, not cancel each other out, just as it is important for me not to yield to trends or self-censorship.

In making my films and books, I follow a philosophical path. I challenge the “media truth,” which rests on the illusion that it is possible to say all there is to say about an event, a person, a situation, a destiny—because I know that it is not possible. Instead, I try to say all that can be known about that event, that person, that situation, that destiny to spark a new awareness that will inspire the audience and society to pause and reflect.