*POSTPONED* ‘in motion’ film screening: ‘Blackboards’ (Samira Makhmalbaf, 2000)

‘in motion‘ is the MMB film group bringing together students and researchers interested in the subject of migration in film and cinema. It comprises of monthly screenings (NB this one is not, as usual, on the final Tuesday of the month) followed by informal conversations about the issues raised by the films. The film group is part of the MMB research challenge Imagination, Belonging, Futures. Everyone is welcome!

This week’s film is ‘Blackboards’ directed by Samira Makhmalbaf (2000). It follows itinerant Kurdish teachers who, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. One falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes the clan’s lone woman, a widow with a young son, as his wife. Another attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border. The two men try to teach as their potential students keep walking, with armed soldiers all around them, patrolling the skies, the roads and the border.