“… one of the few sites where works from young Iranian film makers are published…”

The Morning Ceremony - A Cultural Snapshot

By Arash Fayyazi

During the past two decades, the Iranian film industry has flourished and become one of the most important emerging artistic cinemas. Names like Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jafar Panahi, Bahman Ghobadi, and Rakhshan Bani-Etemad are internationally well-known thanks to series of successful launches on prestigious festivals such as Cannes, the Venice Film Festival, and Berlin Film Festival. Behind all the success for the big names of the Iranian film industry, there is very little talk about the new generation of film makers. Mooweex, is one of the few sites where works from young Iranian film makers are published. Amongst the limited number of uploaded films on the site, The Morning Ceremony, by Hadi Afarideh, is miles ahead of the others.

The film starts with a short sequence of Tehran, the 15 million crowded capital of Iran. It is 7 in the morning. Although, the heavy traffic of Tehran has been woken since a couple of hours back, the peak has not really reached yet. Not until now! It is 7 in the morning, it is when many schools start in Iran. It is when trains, taxis, school buses, private cars, and motorbikes are all fully engaged. It is when everybody and every single vehicle in the town gets mobilized for one single mission: to transport the hundreds of thousands of the school children to their schools, to their classes, and to their desks.

The story is simple. It is about how a typical day starts in a typical primary school for girls with a typical morning ceremony. Girls are lined up in 5 lines. Their uniform consists of a white scarf and a purple long arm pinafore worn over a pair of trousers of the same color. They are playful as any other children at their age. Little Azin who probably is 7-8, plays with her scarf. She looks to be lost in her thoughts when she is being told by a female voice in the school's loudspeaker to put her scarf back. As the school girls' playful and lively games go on, the voice in the loudspeaker calls them to be quite and to listen.

It continues: "Once in a month we will visit your classes. During these visits we will give you a disciplinary grade!" The voice keeps on going with instructions:

Do not bother each other

Do not run in the school yard

Do not through garbage

...

Afarideh makes a clear statement here. This is a school, a place to learn. This is not a place to play! It is not a place to explore. It is not a place for refining the imagination, the curiosity. It is a place for listening carefully. It is the place to follow the instructions. It is a place to learn by being told how to learn and what to learn.

As the same time as the instructions are being given, half awake children are knitting their eyes, while the others still playing with their scarfs. The voice in the loudspeaker is keep talking: "Those who follow the rules will be rewarded. They might become mobsers!" Mobser is a class monitor in Persian...

As the disciplinary rules and the clear articulation of the consequences goes on, it is difficult to stop thinking about the future of these children. It is difficult to stop thinking on the way they will behave in the society they will live in the future, on their future relationships, and on their children. It is difficult to stop thinking whether the constantly given instructions are meant to stimulate their inner control mechanism or to control and manipulate them, and their lives? To adjust their actions, their deeds to certain pre-specified conditions...

Next scene shows exercising children, waving with their arms and hands. Full of joy, full of happiness, full of energy and full of life! They scream all together: HURRAH . In contrast to the purple colored lively children, the scene switches to the daily traffic of Tehran again. But this time the focus is on the adults. In contrary to the school children, men and women are all in black, the color of sorrow, the color of death. In the radio a woman is pledging for happiness: "Pay attention to this philosopher's saying: Never forget to smile, cause anyone can fall in love with it...". The camera catches 3 short sequences where passengers in the cars are holding their heads in their hands with their elbow supporting on the car doors. In a number of cultures, this is a symbol of sadness. There is strong irony in the sequences of scenes: colors, happiness, rules, childhood and adulthood, black, sadness...

The red traffic light (which everywhere in the world is a sign for STOP) is followed by the voice in the school yard's loudspeaker: "Don't eat in front of the other children who fast. If you want to eat, do it in a way that nobody else sees it...". Children are eating everywhere...

Last scene starts with the sound of running children between cars. At the same time the other children in the school yard start going into their classes. Doors to the school are all shut now. Two children are late to the school. They are behind the doors and are begging to come inside. You can hear the owner of the voice in the loudspeaker talking to them. She refuses to let the late the late children in. A long afflictive sequence of begging continues.

At the end she lets them come in. This last sequence is a painful sequence to watch. It is a sequence when you can hear how the two children's self-esteem and self-respect breaks down into small pieces and fragments which probably will take years to put together again. They are punished for being late in the traffic, for not being accurate enough. They are punished for not following the rules. They are punished and have to stand close to the wall with one foot up each.

In this context the question is if punishment does really teach children to be responsible? Does punishment teach how to take into account the thoughts, needs or experiences of the others? Or does it simply teach the children that if they break the rules they will suffer negative consequences. Isn't punishment a way to impose the power of the ruler on its people?

The Morning Ceremony, captures a lot about Iran, its social norms and its rules. The movie is about country's schools in a nutshell, how the children are treated there, and consequences of this treatment when they grow up. The movie is also about the change everybody has gone through it: from the childhood to adulthood.

Forugh Farrokhzad, Iran's most significant female poet of the twentieth century wrote this beutiful poem:

Age Seven (By Forugh Farrokhzad, translated by Leila Farjami, full poem here)

Ay, age seven

Ay, the magnanimous moment of departure

Whatever happened after you,

happened in a mesh of insanity and ignorance...

After you, where our playground was beneath the desk

we graduated from beneath the desks

to behind the desks

and from behind the desks

to top of the desks

and we played on top of the desks

and lost

we lost your color

Aah, age seven.

After you,

we betrayed each other

after you,

we cleansed your memories

by lead particles and splattered blood-drops

off of the plastered temples of alley walls.