from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month wants to help underground artists in Iran, but says he cannot return to his home country if he wants to pursue his passion of filmmaking.
Farbod Khoshtinat, 22, was one of six winners of the US State Department’s Democracy Video Challenge for his video clip entitled “ATTN Mr. Democrat” about democracy in Iran. Khoshtinat’s video, which ran just over 2 minutes, was selected in June as one of six winners of the international competition that began with 700 entries.
Khoshtinat received his award from Clinton during a September 10 ceremony at the State Department; he is now set to go to New York and Los Angeles, with opportunities to make contacts in the international film industry.
Khoshtinat is currently finishing up film school in Malaysia; he left Iran after authorities prevented him from pursuing his career at home. “I am sure now that I cannot go back to Iran, but here I am safe and sound to work and publicize my art,” he said, adding, “I have the connections, both in Europe and Australia, so I’m not worried about that.”
Khoshtinat honed his skills in Tehran’s thriving underground art scene, where he played in a rock band and filmed music videos under the alias “Fred.” He founded Persian’s Underground Cinematic Arts and edited the videos for Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi’s award winning film No One Knows About Persian Cats; a film about Iran’s underground music scene.
He told America.gov, the U.S. State Depart-ment’s news website, that when he finishes school his goal is to develop an online platform where Iran’s underground artists can post their work without censorship for the world to see. “The first time you come out of Iran, you feel the difference, that you were inside a cube. We have Internet, but it’s totally different. You cannot feel it. In Malaysia, I can feel that I’m in a global network,” Khoshtinat said.
“Art creates countries. From the beginning, it’s really important for a culture and for the politics,” he said. “I’m not a politician — I don’t know anything about it — but what I do know is all about art, so that’s the only thing I can do for my country…. I was one in a thousand to have a chance for this exposure. The other 999, they don’t have it.”
But the censorship in Iran has created what Khoshtinat described as a tight-knit community of artists. “We literally all know each other. We are thousands,” he said, adding, “We don’t work for anyone. And we’re just trying to please ourselves and our audience — that is so important to us. We know we’re not going to make any money out of it, so still we are not commercial, and I think that’s a great thing about underground art.”
The video that won the Democracy Video Challenge prize for Khoshtinat was a collaborative video he made with his friends back in Iran following the disputed June 12 election; the script was based on people’s answers to the question “What is democracy?”
“It was [during] the crisis,” Khoshtinat said, “so lots of people were so emotional about it, so poetic about it, and we just selected the best and we summarized them, and it turned out good. It’s a voice of a nation, not me.”
His video states: “Dear Democrat President. I hope that you read this one day…. Democracy is not taking what is others’ for yours, for your own survival. Democracy is not choking the voices so that no harsh word could aggravate your ears. Democracy is not ruling a totalitarian regime under the name of a republic. Democracy is not that minority chains majority. Democracy is not describing the sacred things as your own and charging anyone who says anything against you with heresy. Democracy is not being a caring foster parent for other countries’ people and being an unkind stepmother for your own nation. Democracy is not that whatever we say is not democratic and whatever you say is democratic. Democracy is what my brothers and sisters requested — and you shed their blood because of it. But still, we haven’t given up on our dream.”