"Black Boards" (Language - Kurdish) (2000) - Movie Review

Culture plays an important role in all the movies and most of the times, the movie spins on its axis. This make it difficult for certain viewers who are from all together different culture and society structure to completely understand those movies. And if a movie breaks the shield of unawareness and reaches the audience still sticking to its culture, there the director achieves far more than a completion of an art. “Black Boards” directed by then 20 year old Samira Makhmalbaf is a virtual telescope from which the viewers watch the strange yet real world of remote parts of Iran.

The movie follows two characters who carry the black boards and are teachers. The land is dry, the weather is cold and food is a mirage, but they want to educate the few whom they meet on their way. They go to the deserted villages and shout. Not to sell fish or vegetables but to sell education. It is so pathetic and gives the heavy feeling, that the things taken for granted by so many people means so different to others when it is put across in a different place and culture. No one is ready to accept the education even for no cost. Still, it does not let down the two warriors of knowledge and they do the extremes to get the attention. One of them helps a group of elderly people to cross the border of Iran to Iraq while the other pursues his journey with a group of kids smuggling the stolen goods. How close they come to their completion of their destiny is this motion picture.

As stated by the director in her interview, except for few artists, rest of the actors were all recruited at the place they shot the movie. This gives the movie, the feel it demands - being “real”. The camera work would have involved lot of risk, due to the narrow pathways and high cliffs. The risk is worth it and is spectacular. The direction is offbeat and slow when it is compared to the commercial movies and they are totally essential to bring in the substance required.

“Black Boards” shows the lightness on the dark side of the world which has people who are clueless but hunting for their destiny, stubborn still helping each other and blindly cultural still having human values. It shows the way women are treated and how they find solace in their offspring. Even against all the odds, there are few people who are trying to fight for the most valuable treasure of human kind, “knowledge”. “Black Boards” reminds the viewers of the luxury they have got and the things which are taken for granted are so precious while considered useless for various other people.

Samira Makhmalbaf, brings out the questions and irony of the country from her own. She was 18 when she rocked the International Film Festivals with her first movie, “Apple” while the movies depicting the world of Iran, shows how women find it difficult to come up in the society. When there is a deep thought into this irony, it can be realized that the women are fighting and they are coming up in the society and Samira is the best example.

“Black Boards” may be slow as termed by regular commercial movie seekers and even senseless by some others, but one cannot deny the fact of realism attached into this artwork. Regardless of the genre, this movie without any question should be watched by all of them to make their “easy” education, the costliest of all.