[MUSIC - THE NORMAL, "WARM LEATHERETTE"]
SHANE SMITH: In Western mainstream media right now,
we're hearing a lot about Islamic fundamentalism,
nuclear proliferation, rogue states.
And public enemy number one is Iran.
BRET BAIER: The Iranians are moving forward with their
nuclear program quicker than expected.
-Iran's President is warning it is too late to stop Iran's
nuclear program.
-Iran basically has a strategy to dominate the region.
DAN GILLERMAN: What I can tell you is that
Iran must be stopped.
SHANE SMITH: Now, it's interesting to us that on one
hand you have footage like this from Fox News saying that
Iran is an imminent threat.
But on the other hand, you have all these films coming
out where critics are saying, hey, these are some of the
best films coming out right now.
They're beautiful, they're amazing, they're great.
So how is it that we have on one side an Islamic
fundamentalist state, but on the other all
these amazing movies?
We had to go to Iran and find out the truth
behind Iranian cinema.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: Now, getting into Iran as a journalist is nearly
impossible.
They have a very bad reputation with journalists.
Many have been arrested, a lot have been tortured, and some
have even been killed.
In fact, there's a World Press Freedom Index, and Iran is
number 166.
Right at the back of the bus with only the worst offenders
like Turkmenistan, North Korea, Eritrea and
Cuba ahead of it.
Now what scared me personally about going into Iran as a
journalist was that I knew two things.
One is that Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian journalist who got
into Iran, was kidnapped, raped, and
beaten to death in 2003.
And that our friend Ben Anderson from the BBC, who did
"Holidays in the Axis of Evil," went in with a handycam
and was kidnapped and tortured for a week before they kicked
him out without his tapes.
So we didn't want to go in with a handycam.
And we didn't want to sneak in like we usually do.
So we tried for about a year and a half to get into the
country legitimately.
And finally, the producers of the Third International Urban
Film Festival got us our visas, arranged for us to be
able to bring in the cameras, and did the impossible and got
us into Iran.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[POLICE HORN]
SHANE SMITH: Uh oh.
What was that?
That was cops.
-No.
No, no, no.
-No, no, no.
Yeah, I know.
SHANE SMITH: I don't know if we got that do-da-lu on thing,
but if the cops see a camera, they can turn
their bloopers on.
We're waiting for permission to shoot outside, so we're
shooting from the car, which we're not
supposed to do either.
-What'd he say?
-Police.
Police.
SHANE SMITH: Why don't they want people shooting?
-With your small camera, you don't have any problem.
It's just the size of the camera that makes it
professional as a journalist.
When you have a big camera, you need to have permission.
SHANE SMITH: Can I shoot with this guy around, or no?
-It's better not to do it now.
SHANE SMITH: We were told from the first day we got there
that we weren't allowed to shoot anything that didn't
have to do with film.
And they warned us that we could be arrested if we shot
anything that had to do with police, military or the
government, which is basically everything in Iran.
The only places we could really shoot freely were when
we were indoors, or things that were directly sponsored
by the Film Festival, and even then it wasn't easy.
We're about to meet the coordinator of the Film
Festival here.
And on the way here, we were told that we're being watched.
And they talk a lot about our beards.
They want to know if we got beards just to come here and
why we're dressed the way we are.
Why we're so dressed up.
But we were told to wear suits.
So there's all kinds of undercurrents that we don't
know anything about.
So we're trying to be good baby boys
and not get in trouble.
So we were nervous.
We were freaked out.
We got there and he had a nice office.
We sat down and it was kind of like talking to a super cool
Omar Sharif or something.
ALI REZA SHOJA-NOORI: Hello.
SHANE SMITH: Hi.
ALI REZA SHOJA-NOORI: How are you?
SHANE SMITH: Good, how are you?
ALI REZA SHOJA-NOORI: Fine.
SHANE SMITH: Good to see you.
ALI REZA SHOJA-NOORI: Thanks for dropping by.
SHANE SMITH: Ali Reza Shoja-Noori was one of the
guys who's responsible for taking Iranian cinema to all
the film festivals during the '80s and '90s.
ALI REZA SHOJA-NOORI: For myself, that I was promoting
the Iranian films abroad.
Then came the big question--
do we have any place in the world?
Is anyone waiting for our cinema?
And the first film that we succeeded was "Frosty Roads."
'86, I think-- '85, '86.
It went to Berlin Film Festival.
And when I saw the response of the audience there, I found
out that yes, it's possible to do that.
And then we went to do other films and other festivals.
At that time we made one objective for us that we are
going for a day that there would be no festival in the
world without an Iranian film.
And we got to that point.
SHANE SMITH: Is there a big culture of
going to the cinema?
ALI REZA SHOJA-NOORI: Yes.
SHANE SMITH: A big culture of going to watch movies?
ALI REZA SHOJA-NOORI: Yes.
The Iranian people like films very much.
Very, very much.
They like the school of their children and they like cinema.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: The next place they took us was to Khaneh
Cinema, or "The House of Iranian Cinema." And there we
walked into kind of a really surreal situation.
Because even though most American films are banned in
Iran, they had invited the American Academy Awards people
over for the first time in 35 years to exchange information
on film and film festivals.
So we walk into the building and the president of the
Academy, Sid Ganis is over here.
Oh, there's Annette Bening, who we had heard in the
Western media before flying to Iran had been arrested.
And forced to apologize to the Iranian people for the
Hollywood propaganda of films like the "300," "The
Wrestler," and "Not Without My Daughter."
Meanwhile, we go to the House of Cinema and there they are.
Everybody's having lunch together.
There's no problems.
Everybody really likes each other.
This is going to get super weird.
They're going to wonder who the hell we are.
We're going to totally crash this lunch.
He wants to ask what the fuck we're doing here.
We just pretend to be Iranian.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: So here they're just shooting around.
And the Americans thought we were Iranian secret police.
And the Iranians thought we just knew each other.
-Let's go.
SHANE SMITH: That was great.
Before leaving the House of Cinema, we went downstairs to
check out their filmmaker's library.
And when we were there, we asked one of the board members
what he thought about this whole apologizing business.
-[SPEAKING PERSIAN]
SHANE SMITH: So who asked them to apologize?
-[SPEAKING PERSIAN]
SHANE SMITH: So that was our first freaky glimpse into how
crazy and how much propaganda there is that surrounds
everything about Iran.
[MUSIC PLAYING]