About Gozaresh-e Film

Gozaresh-e Film

Overview

Gozaresh-e Film (Persian: گزارش فیلم, "Film Report") was a Persian-language monthly film magazine published in Tehran, Iran. Run in the 1990s and early 2000s by the journalist Nushabeh Amiri and the film critic Houshang Asadi, with the broadcasting executive Karim Zargar as its licence-holder and managing director, it was described in biographical accounts of its editors as a successful and widely read title within Iran's specialised cinema press. Gozaresh-e Film is remembered internationally chiefly for the events of 2002, when it became a central case in a judicial campaign against Iran's film magazines: accused by the head of the Tehran judiciary of harbouring "counter-revolutionaries" and "communists", threatened by a police morality department, suspended in January of that year, and indefinitely suspended the following June. Its fate was documented in detail by Reporters Without Borders and stands as one of the fullest records of how pressure was applied to a cultural publication in Iran at that time.

The magazine belonged to the second rank of Iranian film periodicals that grew up in the shadow of Film, the monthly founded in 1982 which dominated serious film writing in the country. Titles such as Gozaresh-e Film, Donya-ye Tasvir and Cinema Jahan served the large Iranian readership for cinema news, criticism and interviews in the decades when Iranian films were winning the world's major festival prizes.

Editors: Nushabeh Amiri and Houshang Asadi

The moving spirits of Gozaresh-e Film were a married couple. Nushabeh Amiri, recorded as the magazine's editor-in-chief in press-freedom reporting, had been a member of its editorial council since 1369 of the Persian calendar, 1990/91. Her husband, the film critic and journalist Houshang Asadi, wrote for and helped run the magazine; accounts of Amiri's career describe the two of them together as the principal operators of a successful and popular publication. Together with the presenter Behrooz Razavi, Amiri also conducted the magazine's monthly screening sessions, at which films were shown and discussed for its readership — an activity that extended the magazine's role from print into the social life of Tehran's cinema community.

Amiri (born 21 May 1952 in Karaj) brought an unusual breadth of media experience to the magazine. She entered radio as a child announcer at the age of ten, in 1962, and worked professionally in dubbing from 1970, becoming one of the familiar voices of Iranian-dubbed animation. She took a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in sociology, began in journalism in the early 1970s — she was introduced to the newspaper Kayhan as a student by her professor Sadr al-Din Elahi — and worked in the press from 1971/72 onward. She is regarded as the first Iranian woman journalist to have interviewed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, a distinction recorded in both Persian biographical sources and in an interview with her by IranWire published for International Women's Day. From 1986 she also wrote screenplays, and from 1989 she worked in dubbing management.

The licence-holder: Karim Zargar

The licence-holder and managing director of Gozaresh-e Film was Karim Zargar (1953–2018), a figure whose career joined broadcasting, cinema and publishing. Born in Ahvaz, Zargar graduated in law from the University of Tehran and took a doctorate in maritime law from the University of Strasbourg. He rose to senior posts in the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting organisation, serving as director-general of its overseas broadcasting service, as director of broadcasting for Channel One, and as president of the IRIB's university. In cinema he worked as production manager and actor on Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Arousi-ye Khoban (The Marriage of the Blessed), played Captain Charles in Mohammad Bozorgnia's Jang-e Naftkesh-ha (The War of the Oil Tankers), acted in Behrouz Afkhami's Rooz-e Sheytan (The Day of the Devil, 1994), and co-directed the film O Negative in 1989. His ownership of the Gozaresh-e Film licence placed the magazine, unusually, in the hands of a man from the summit of the state broadcasting establishment rather than from the independent press — a fact that did not protect it, or him, when the judiciary turned on the film magazines.

Accusations and threats, 2001–2002

The campaign against Gozaresh-e Film opened with rhetoric. A few months before the magazine's suspension, Abbasali Alizadeh, the head of the Tehran judiciary, publicly accused its publisher, Karim Zargar, of being a "counter-revolutionary". In the fuller account collected by Reporters Without Borders, Alizadeh accused Zargar, the journalist Houshang Asadi and the editor-in-chief Nushabeh Amiri alike of being "counter-revolutionaries" and "communists". Approximately one week before the suspension, Amiri received telephone threats from Adareh Amaken, a Tehran police department dealing with "morality" offences which was close to the intelligence services. The sequence — public denunciation by the chief judicial official of the capital, followed by anonymous pressure from a morality police unit — was recorded by press-freedom organisations as the prelude to formal action.

The January 2002 suspension

On 27 January 2002 the Iranian legal authorities suspended Gozaresh-e Film for publishing "untrue articles" and "obscene photographs". It was the second film magazine to be suspended in four days: the film weekly Cinema Jahan had been suspended on 24 January, after a complaint by Alizadeh, and the film monthly Cinema Theatre followed on 29 January on similar grounds. On 30 January 2002 Reporters Without Borders protested in a letter to the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, its secretary-general Robert Ménard asking him to reconsider the decision. The same day, according to the organisation's annual report, the suspensions of the three film publications were lifted after they wrote to the judiciary and to the deputy culture minister, Mohammad Hassan Pezeshk. Gozaresh-e Film had survived its first suspension by three days — but the reprieve proved temporary, and the pressure on its staff continued.

Summonses and indefinite suspension

In mid-February 2002, a group of liberal intellectuals, including journalists and lawyers of imprisoned journalists, was summoned by Adareh Amaken, the same police department that had threatened Amiri. The reformist member of parliament Ali-Asghar Hadizadeh said that they were interrogated about their past and their political and religious views, and were insulted. Among the journalists summoned were Nushabeh Amiri, Houshang Asadi and Payam Fazlinejad of Gozaresh-e Film, alongside Firooz Guran, publisher of the magazine Jameh-e Salem, and Ali Dehbashi, publisher of Kelk and Bukhara. In June 2002 the monthly was indefinitely suspended — the outcome that its January reprieve had only postponed. With no route back from an indefinite suspension, the magazine's publication history effectively ended there, little more than a decade after Amiri had joined its editorial council.

Aftermath

In 1382 of the Persian calendar, 2003/04, Amiri and Asadi left Iran and settled in France. From Paris, Amiri later became editor of Rooz Online, the Persian-language online newspaper for Iranians in Europe, and a writer for that site; Rooz Online ceased publication at the beginning of 2016, after twelve years and some 2,500 issues, when its funding ended. Zargar remained in Iran and pursued other ventures, founding an institute, Rah-e Marefat, which promoted the Eckankar spiritual movement. He was later convicted in proceedings connected with that institute and with an allegation of rape, and was executed on 30 January 2018 in Rajai Shahr prison in Karaj — an end recorded in Persian biographical sources that also preserve his identity as the former managing director of Gozaresh-e Film.

Legacy

Gozaresh-e Film left no continuing title and no published archive comparable to those of Iran's larger film magazines, and its issues are now difficult to obtain. Its historical significance lies less in a surviving body of criticism than in the completeness with which its suppression was documented. Because Reporters Without Borders recorded each step — the judiciary chief's accusations, the police threats against its editor, the January 2002 suspension and its brief lifting, the February summonses and the indefinite suspension of June 2002 — the magazine's case became one of the standard illustrations, in the press-freedom literature on Iran, of the repertoire of pressures that could be brought against a cultural publication: denunciation, intimidation, suspension and, finally, erasure. In the history of the Iranian cinema press, Gozaresh-e Film stands as the most thoroughly documented casualty of the campaign of 2002.