“AFGHAN STAR”

By Jason Guerrasio

If you thought you were crazy about American Idol, imagine if you grew up in an area of the world where singing and dancing were forbidden. Well, that’s what director Havana Marking highlights in her moving documentary which follows four contestants competing in the wildly popular TV show Afghan Star.

Since 1995 the Taliban have made it illegal to sing or dance in Afghanistan. But recently with the Taliban fleeing the country a freedom of expression has surfaced that’s unlike anything the country has seen in a brutal, war-torn 30 years. Starting in 2005 the TV network, Tolo TV, in Kabul capitalized on this liberation by creating the singing contest Afghan Star, which, like American Idol, travels the country searching for the best singers and then eliminates them until they get down to one. But unlike Idol the fandom over the singers is Beatlesesque, leading to the contestants having the loyal support from the regions they are from and dangers they had never contemplated.

Though Marking structures the film in the vein of popular competition docs like Spellbound or Wordplay — highlighting the trained musician (Hameed), controversial songstress (Setara), the heartthrob (Rafi) and the shy siren (Lema) — finding out who wins isn’t necessarily what keeps you in the film, it’s watching the rebirth of culture, the arts and the feel of community to a people who are climbing back to modernity.

When the film begins there are ten contestants left and favorites are beginning to emerge. Rafi often travels with an entourage as he walks the streets of his hometown, but is often cautious of doing interviews for the film in public or taking pictures with fans as the fear of the Taliban is still present, or just someone harming him who is against the “new Afghan.” Danger is also most evident to the two female contestants Marking highlights. Setara is a brash kid who has no fear on stage. This is highlighted when she’s eliminated from Afghan Star and while singing her final song takes off her headdress and begins dancing around the stage. … Read the rest

HAVANA MARKING, “AFGHAN STAR”

By Nick Dawson

TALENT SHOW CONTESTANT LIMA SAHAR IN DIRECTOR HAVANA MARKING’S AFGHAN STAR. COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS.

Following in the footsteps of such filmmakers as James Marsh (Man on Wire), Stephen Walker (Young@Heart) and Parvez Sharma (A Jihad For Love), Havana Marking is the latest director of a British TV-funded documentary to find her film in the theatrical spotlight Stateside. The intrepid director went to school in Dorset, England, before studying Anthropology at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Subsequently, she began working in documentary television, progressing from researcher through to producer, on shows as disparate as Himalaya with Michael Palin, the Gordon Ramsay studio cooking show The F Word, and the environmental investigation What Would Jesus Drive?. She made her debut as a director in 2005 with The Great Relativity Show, a series of animated shorts explaining the Theory of Relativity which won a Pirelli Science Award. In 2007, she directed a half-hour documentary about disabled strippers, The Crippendales, which was made as part of Channel 4′s New Talent program. Marking currently runs the Redstart Media production company, and has also worked as a freelance journalist for the British newspapers The Guardian and The Observer.

Marking’s feature debut sees her capitalizing on her first-hand knowledge of the documentary genre’s populist offshoot, reality TV. Afghan Star focuses on the TV series of the same name, a talent show along the lines of American Idol which aims to find the newest and best singer in a country where – until the Taliban’s rule ended in 2001 – music, dancing and television were all banned. Marking’s movie follows four hopefuls from the final 10: handsome Rafi, a 19-year-old with real pop star charisma; gifted 20-year-old Hameed, a classically trained Hazara musician; Lima, a 25-year-old woman from ultra-conservative Kandahar who has to practice her music in secret; and rebellious 21-year-old Setara, who sees music as a vital part of her self-expression. Afghan Star, which won Best Director and the Audience Award in the World Documentary section at Sundance … Read the rest

“AFGHAN STAR” director, Havana Marking

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 6:15 pm -- Holiday Village Cinema IV, Park City]

Afghan Star is a documentary about a TV show of the same name. It’s a powerful TV format we all know — a version of Pop Idol — but in a country that most of us don’t: Afghanistan. With the backdrop of warfare and Taliban repression (they banned music and used to impale TVs on spikes) you certainly wouldn’t expect to find a TV music talent contest. But Afghan Star: The Series is now one of the most potent forces of change the country has. You can imagine then, with that history, that there are a very different set of forces affecting film and media in Afghanistan.

The narrative structure of my documentary, following the contestants and producers from the regional auditions to the finals in Kabul, was clear from the start, but events unfolded to make it a modern-day thriller. When one woman danced on stage all hell broke loose: both her life and the future of the show was threatened. Their futures in turn came to symbolize that of the fragile nation itself.

Being in Afghanistan for four months affected my filmmaking greatly. Not only was the way we operated completely different (I couldn’t plan anything in advance due to kidnap threat, I couldn’t go anywhere my bodyguard didn’t allow, I couldn’t print anything so no call sheets, and with erratic electricity lighting was darn tricky) but seeing how important a TV music show was to the people of Afghanistan — 11 out of 30 million Afghans watched the final episode while producers and contestants literally risked their lives —made me understand the power of media in an amazing new way. These were forces that we in the West have all but forgotten.

In the UK there have been numerous scandals about documentary, reality and competition TV. Votes have been rigged, “real” people have been actors, and docs have been manipulated completely for high drama. In a film about Annie Leibovitz, footage of the Queen walking into a photo shoot was recut to make … Read the rest