Paradise Handbook: Handbuch subversiver Strategien eines Films aus dem Iran

PARADISE HANDBOOK reveals a concise insight into the genesis of the film »Paradise«, which director Sina Ataeian Dena managed to realize in Iran over a period of many years without filming permission and on a very small budget. The resulting footage was eventually brought out of the country and processed and finished in Berlin-Babelsberg. »Paradise« celebrated its ­premiere in 2015 in competition at Locarno Film Festival and was subsequently awarded various ­prizes. The book reveals a fascinating view of how the film crew dealt creatively with the massive ­restrictions on filming in Iran. It breaks down, like a ­manual, the logistical, strategic, and technical ­efforts underlying the images and scenes in ­»Paradise« that the team applied to circumvent the plethora of restrictions. Created as a docu­mentary feature film, »Paradise« presents the viewer with seemingly mundane scenes of life. ­However, to create the impression of a realistic ­representation of everyday life meant that very ­complicated precautions had to be taken. Iranian censorship, especially of feature films, scrupulously regulates everything that could somehow be ­understood as critique, such as the (absolutely ­necessary) concealment of female characters; and to show adolescent girls dancing to pop music in a school bus or during school breaks, is completely unimaginable.

Exhibition:
Hidden / Secret – Strategien des Verborgenen
Villa Merkel Galerien der Stadt Esslingen am Neckar, 25/3–3/6/2018

Sina Ataeian Dena, born in 1983, is an Iranian film director, screenwriter and film producer. Of his recent film, Paradise this Handbook, documents the origin story. In 2015, with a premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, and nominated for the Golden Leopard, Paradise was shown at numerous international film festivals. At the 15th Marrakech International Film Festival, the jury president Francis Ford Coppola decided with his colleagues to award all competing films, so Paradise got also a Special Jury Award. In the filmography of Sina Ataeian Dena are further works: Wind in the Alley (2013), Homo (2013), Third Gender (2006), Freak Out (2004).

Andreas Baur is director of the Städtische Galerie Villa Merkel in Esslingen, edited and wrote critical essays for the monographic catalogs of Darren Almond, Willie Doherty, Hamish Fulton, Alan Kaprow, Manfred Kuttner, Andreas Schulze, and Marcus Weber, as well as for GOOD SPACE (2017) and Better than de Kooning (2015) among others.