'The Imprisonment of Jafar Panahi'

'The Imprisonment of Jafar Panahi' by Tariq Ali for The London Review Blog, March 18, 2010

It's one of those ironies of history: a by-product of the clerical revolution in Iran was the emergence of a new wave of Iranian cinema. Kiarostami became the most celebrated auteur in the west, but he was part of a much larger creative and critical community. They view each other's work at rough-cut stage, they comment on scripts, they suggest actors: there is a strong sense of solidarity. The...