Reeling in Iran

Can you imagine the United States government accusing Hollywood filmmakers of using their chosen art form for treasonous purposes? Of course you can! But then even the Hollywood Ten never faced the death penalty for it.

In another shameless bid to outdo our most culturally reactionary tendencies, Tehran's Revolutionary Court has, for the first time, accused a filmmaker of crimes against the state. Tahmineh Milani, who faces execution if convicted, was arrested last August on charges that her new film, The Hidden Half, supports counterrevolutionary groups. The 41-year-old writer-director was held for more than a week and released on bail pending an as yet unspecified trial date. The film, which tells the story of an idealistic young woman who works with a communist group while at university in the years surrounding the tumultuous 1979 revolution, weds a feminist perspective to the resurrection of a political history "hidden" until now, and not just on Iran's movie screens.

Hollywood and the cinema world at large have responded to the persecution of a fellow filmmaker with a petition demanding the charges be dropped; the more than 1,500 signatories include such luminaries as Martin Scorsese, Mike Leigh, and Francis Ford Coppola, among others.

Milani, best known for her films Legend of a Sigh and Two Women, has been a consistently outspoken and popular filmmaker and public speaker. When Milani spoke on her own behalf at a recent appearance at UC Berkeley's Wheeler Auditorium, she was greeted by a packed house and downplayed the threat to her own person while right-wing hecklers were booed down by a supportive audience. Her predicament, which pits the more liberal-minded Ministry of Culture (once headed by Mohammad Khatami, Iran's moderate president) against the hardliners in the judiciary, highlights an ongoing battle between reformist and reactionary forces in Iran. With Kandahar's unanticipated timeliness, not to mention the current controversy surrounding Hassan Tantaï, its amateur star who's rumored to be a real-life assassin, Iranian films are making headlines in the most unexpected ways, but "Most Embattled World Cinema" has yet to be made an Oscar category. The Hidden Half opens at the Rafael Film Center Fri/18. (Robert Avila)

Fighting words

With his family, fans, and a cadre of local martial artists in the house at a special screening of the bizarre and dazzling Brotherhood of the Wolf in December, star Marc Dacascos explained to a rapt audience the problems of filming in France: far too many four-day weekends and lunches with wine, to the point where no one really cared how many months late the project was getting. Not that real work didn't get done – Dacascos had to strip down and perform the fight choreography of Phillip Kwok (Hard-Boiled) in nothing but basic loincloth in freezing, pouring rainstorms, both real and manufactured. The result is a surreal combination of old H.K.-style combat from France's foremost H.K. fan, Christophe Gans, along with the strangest truth-based Euro-history imaginable, and a very ugly, poorly designed Beast from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. From the wild reception that night, it appears Dacascos has rabid fans in the Bay Area, as well as roots here. He talked with me over the phone about the school of martial arts his father originated, Wun Hop Kuen Do, in Oakland. And while the Hawaiian-born, now-L.A.-based actor was working at his mother's Sutter Street martial arts-aerobics studio in the early '80s, he was cast during a lunch-break walk through Chinatown to kiss Joan Chen in Wayne Wang's Dim Sum. Perhaps the only time he might have thought twice about his subsequent decision to actually become an actor was on a extremely long bus ride back from the Toronto International Film Festival this year, where he was stranded after Sept. 11. Universal Studios procured a private bus for the long road trip back to L.A., and provided nonstop entertainment to those trapped inside it: two full seasons of Sex and the City. Brotherhood of the Wolf opens Fri/11 at Bay Area Theaters. See Movie Clock, page 90, for show times. (Susan Gerhard)

Castro: Open for business