From the Tehran Times Art Desk
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=214864

“Iranian Cookbook” by filmmaker Mohammad Shirvani was warmly received at the Berlinale’s Culinary Cinema section this year. ... Culinary Cinema includes dinner with culinary delights by star chefs. The doc was screened on February 16 and afterwards, audiences were taken to a royal restaurant where a discussion was held while serving food, Shirvani told the Persian service of MNA.

Shrivani continued, “The German chef who prepared the food for the night talked about Iranian cuisine and said that he did his best to prepare the food based on Iranian taste with information he collected from internet sites, and honestly, he did a good job.

“After dinner was served, a question and answer section was held with the participation of film critic Anke Leweke. Part of the discussion centered on the relationship between food and love and that Iranian women spend long hours in the kitchen preparing meals, helping to reunite family members,” he added.

“Differences between Iranian and Western women in cooking and that Iranian women have preserved old cooking traditions were also discussed. Besides that, pointing to the fact that the world is moving toward modernism, people are becoming lonelier and eat their sandwiches in their loneliness,” he explained.

“The session was followed by discussion of fast food and that foods produced by McDonald’s chain restaurants might give instant pleasure to the customers, but are still the product of a machine rather than a human being.

“I must admit that ‘Iranian Cookbook’ is an appreciation of Iranian women. I did not intend to make a feministic movie but I think it was necessary to concentrate on cooking and its related issues at least once. The kitchen is place where my mother spent over 30 years and I never really noticed its details.

“I selected and filmed the women, mostly from my relatives, from a mid-class family in Tehran. But I am sure anybody who watches this would find someone around the house or a relative similar to the female characters in the movie.

“Time is considered a major character in this movie. I also tried to lampoon TV cooking programs in which the characters are ignored and food is what is focus on, while in my film, I centered on the individuals and the family relationship,” he stated.

Shirvani is an old hand at making politically themed films. He previously directed “President Mir Qanbar”, a documentary on Mir Qanbar Heidari, a 75-year-old retired civil servant from a remote part of Iran’s Azerbaijan region, who ran for the presidency of the Islamic Republic. His “444 Days” is also a documentary focusing on U.S. diplomats John W. Limbert and Lowell Bruce Laingen who were detained at the embassy, dubbed the “Den of Spies” by Imam Khomeini.