Discussing afghan cinema and a more in depth look on the film "Osama" directed by Siddiq Barmak. Also discusses the history of Afghanistan and the effect of the taliban rule

1. South Asian Cinema
Afghanistan

2. National Identity
Until 1978, Afghanistan avoided fragmentation through a shared religion and the
relative autonomy of local communities even though the government favored
Pashtun culture and folklore.
Most inhabitants felt they belonged primarily to a local community and secondarily
to the supranational Islamic community

3. National identity was weak, but the state was not considered disruptive. This fragile
equilibrium was destroyed after the coup of 1978. The symbols on which the
legitimacy of the government was based (political independence, historical
continuity, and respect of Islam) vanished.
"Afghan" has been a word historically used to designate the members of an ethnic
group also called the Pashtuns, but Afghanistan is a multicultural and multiethnic
country.
In the middle of the eighteenth century ,the state was formed by the political
expansion of Pashtun tribes but was not unified until the end of the nineteenth
century

4. Persian-speaking (Tajiks, Hazaras, and Aymaqs) and Turkic-speaking (Uzbeks and
Turkmens) populations were also incorporated in the state
Since the Communist coup of 1978 and the ensuing civil war, those groups have sought
for greater political recognition, but the existence of the state has not been seriously
questioned. The experience of exile shared by millions of refugees may have given rise to
a new national feeling
Welcome to the Graveyard of Empires

5. History

6. 1960s
Love and Friendship (1946) Afghan women returning from
high school.
Men gathering for tea.

7. Soviet War on Afghanistan

8. April 1978
Afghanistan’s centrist government, headed by Pres. Mohammad Daud Khan, was
overthrown by left-wing military officers led by Nur Mohammad Taraki. Power was
thereafter shared by two Marxist-Leninist political groups, the People’s (Khalq) Party
and the Banner (Parcham) Party
Late December 1979
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
Soviet Union intervened in support of the Afghan communist government in its
conflict with anticommunist Muslim guerrillas during the Afghan War (1978–92) and
remained in Afghanistan until mid-February 1989

9. Night of Dec. 24, 1979
uprisings, red army seized urban areas,roads and communication lines, Muhammad
Amin himself was captured and executed, his place was then taken over by Babrak
Kamali
Came invasion and intervention where it became a jihad(holy war)
US-contain communism
Mujahaddin-want Afghanistan to be independent
Pakistan-Pan-Islamic cooperation

10. 1982
some 2.8 million Afghans had sought asylum in Pakistan, and another 1.5 million had fled
to Iran
1988
Geneva Accords were signed off
1989
Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. War within Muslim fight here and PDPA continued
1992-1996
Muslim fighters won and overthrew the government. Form a new government(The
Islamic State Government)

11. 2001
...and then the Taliban came in

13. AFGHAN
FILMMAKER
Siddiq Barmak

14. About Siddiq
Born and raised in Panjshir, Afghanistan on Sept 7 1962
MA Degree in cinema direction from Moscow Film Institute (VGIK) in 1987
Served as director of the Afghan Children Education Movement, which promoted literacy and the arts
Manager of the Afghan Film governmental organization from 1992 to 1996
After the establishment of the new government he was once again chosen to manage the Afghan film organization.
All his works were banned during the time of the Taliban.

15. Osama (2003) Opium War (2008) Kabul Cinema
(2003)
The Stranger
(1986)
Famous films

17. Synopsis
A young Afghani girl living during the harsh Taliban rule has to forcefully assume the identity
of a boy in order to support her grandmother and mother. Her hair is cropped and she assumes
the name Osama, and quickly lands a job as an assistant to a store owner. Things take a turn
for the worse when all the boys in her village are herded into a religious school which also
operates as a Taliban bootcamp.

18. Plot
Set during the harsh and cruel rule of the Taliban, oppression of women was heavily
mandated in their regime; no women should be allowed to work, leave the house without
her husband or expose themselves illicitly. This situation becomes difficult for one family
consisting solely of three women, representing three successive generations: a young girl,
her mother, and her grandmother. There are no men left to support the family. The
mother works as a nurse in a hospital but soon after loses her job after the Taliban cut off
all funding to the hospital.

19. The mother and grandmother decide that the only way to continue supporting the family
would be to disguise their preteen daughter as a boy to find work. Osama’s grandmother
tells a story to Osama about a boy who changed to a girl when he went under a rainbow, to
help persuade her to accept the plan. The daughter, feeling powerless, agrees despite
being afraid that the Taliban will kill her if they discover that she’s playing a boy.
The only people outside the family who know of the ruse are the milk vendor who employs
the daughter – he who was a friend of her deceased father – and a local boy named
Espandi, who recognises her despite her outward change in appearance. Espandi is the
one who renames her Osama.

21. Things get harder for Osama when the Taliban began recruiting all the local boys for
religious school, which also doubles as a military bootcamp. At the training school, they
are taught how to fight and conduct ablutions. Osama attempts to avoid joining the
ablution session, and the master grows suspicious of Osama’s gender. Osama realises it
can only be so long before she is found out.
Several of the boys begin to pick on her, and although Espandi is at first able to protect
her, her secret is eventually discovered when one of the “Teachers” in the school hooked
her up and dangle her over a well for a period of time, causing her menstrual blood to flow
down her leg.

24. Osama is arrested and put on trial, along with a Western journalist, and a foreign woman
who was arrested in the hospital where Osama’s mother works. The journalist and the
nurse are both condemned and put to death, but, as Osama is destitute and helpless, her
life is spared; she is instead given in marriage to a much older man, which already has 3
wives.
The husband shows Osama the padlocks he uses on his wives' rooms, reserving the largest
for Osama. The film ends with the new husband conducting an ablution in an outdoor
bath, which the boys were earlier taught to conduct after coming in contact with their
wives.

26. Setting
Small village in Afghanistan.
Dusty, arid and dirty.
Heavy Taliban influence and ruling.
War-torn and battle-scarred.
Communities are tightly compact and living quarters are dense.

30. Characters
Osama (Played by Marina Golbahari)
12 year old girl
All male family members dead or missing
Forced to assume a different sexual identity to survive
Hates being a boy
Despises the Taliban
Trivia: Marina’s an amatuer actor that Siddiq found on the streets, much like the majority of the cast.

31. Marina Golbahari during the filming of
Osama (2003). Marina Golbahari in 2015.

32. Reviews
The heroin of the films a pre-adolescent in a household
without man (rules of Taliban)
Larger context of institutional sadism against women
How risky the life of Osama became
Touches some of the same notes as “Baran” an Iranian
movie about unspoken love affair between a young
Iranian worker and Afghanistan immigrant who is a girl
disguised as a boy
The bravery with which filmmakers are telling this story
in film after film

34. Articles
Beautiful yet extremely tragic story
Was in Pakistan searching within the Afghan community for a
good story, stumbled across an article that described a girl who
went to school during the Taliban period(something that was
forbidden according to Taliban not Islamic)
In Osama children who had lived their whole lives in a country
with no films, no television, could express their inner selves so
naturally-children especially hold a big part of the truth of all
these disasters. They have their own experiences.The Afghan
people love entertainment, dancing, singing, music. It’s part of
our culture

35. “Thoughts on City of God? - Always been filmmakers in every part of the world who discover a new way of
telling a story. For example, Italian neo-realist cinema after 1945, where the filmmakers were looking for
simplicity, wanted to make low-budget films, but could not find professional actors for the kind of film and
story they were searching for...”
“This experience has many lessons for Afghanistan, one that we can combine with our own, old traditions of
dastan, storytelling. We share with Iran, maybe also with Pakistan and India, a tradition where the saddhu
(storyteller) would stand in the middle of the audience and tell a story...”
“The last scene of the film symbolises the way that the women are inside something larger than a jail. They
are inside the history of inequality between women and men…”
“Today in Kabul, you can see that women have their own feminist organisations, offices, their own political
party, a women-only radio station. The door is closed to men. This can become a kind of complex,
unfortunately…”

37. Siddiq Barmak’s Influence on making Osama
“As Siddiq Barmak describes it, his first face-to-face encounter with the Taliban in 1996 was almost
more farcical than frightening, like something out of ''Dr. Strangelove'' or the Three Stooges…”
“Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, had just fallen to the Taliban, and a group of Islamic
fundamentalist soldiers ransacking Mr. Barmak's house came across one of his most treasured
possessions, a battered 8-millimeter movie projector…”
“One soldier, he recalled, cried out: ''We've found it! The radio he is using to send messages to the
enemy.'' Mr. Barmak protested vehemently, telling the soldiers that it was not a radio, just an old
movie projector…”
“''So another of them, he thinks about this,'' Mr. Barmak remembered. ''And he says, 'Even worse.'
''And then he took his rifle, and he shot the projector.''”

38. “The story of his confrontation with the Taliban could almost serve as the paradigm for his life. Since
he saw his first film, ''Lawrence of Arabia,'' at a Kabul theater in 1967, when he was 5, his obsession
was to make movies.”
“He had to flee from, a country in a perpetual state of war, where day-to-day existence was hard
enough.”
“The movie used only amateur actors, including Marina Golbahari, a striking 12-year-old whom Mr.
Barmak first saw begging near the theater where he had seen ''Lawrence of Arabia.'' (''This theater, it
is very important to me obviously,'' he said, smiling.)”

40. “Afghans of several generations can often tell a story of a female relative, friend, neighbor or
co-worker who grew up disguised as a boy...”
“Afghan families have many reasons for pretending their girls are boys, including economic need,
social pressure to have sons, and in some cases, a superstition that doing so can lead to the birth of a
real boy…”
“A bacha posh can also more easily receive an education, work outside the home, even escort her
sisters in public, allowing freedoms that are unheard of for girls in a society that strictly segregates
men and women…”

41. Thank you

42. References
http://www.everyculture.com/A-Bo/Afghanistan.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3404803/Life-Taliban-Fascinating
-photographs-idyllic-Afghanistan-1960s-residents-free-enjoy-outdoor-picnics-colourful-
markets.html
https://www.britannica.com/event/Soviet-invasion-of-Afghanistan