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ASSIGNMENT
COVERSHEET

Student Number 32813747

Surname Thu

Given name Myat Thu

Email myatthu278@gmail.com

Unit Code MCC333

Unit name Documentary

Enrolment mode Internal / external

Date 3rd October 2016

Assessment name Assignment 1 Film Review

Tutor Chap Heng

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Introduction

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 This film review would be emphasizing and elaborating more about Salaam
Cinema. Salaam Cinema was a 1995 Iranian film which was directed by the director
Moshsen Makhmalbaf and was shown in the uncertain regard segment at the 1995
Cannes Film Festival. It was dedicated for the ceremony of the 100 th year (Balaji, 1995)
commemoration of cinematography. The 1995 appealing documentary film was mainly
designed to be a casting call for the ambitious characters. However, when thousands of
people (Soltani, 2014) entered for the inaugural demo, Makhmalbaf determined to
compose a documentary film event out of it.

It was from a young man who pretended to be blind in anxiety for participating in
a film, to a woman who strongly sensed that gaining an actor role would rejoin with her
American lover, and a man who was decisive to get into the film industry; thinking that it
would design improving lives for his sons and was sure that a film part will be the
answer to his family prayers. These are the real life characters presented to us in
Makhmalbaf’s 1995 documentary Salaam Cinema. Apparently spontaneous and with
real life characters, Makhmalbaf declared the documentary film seizing the truthfulness
about Iranian people, power struggling (Teller, 2012) in the community at large and the
Iranian film industry. Furthermore, Salaam Cinema goal is to gain absolute truth and
reality for the audience. The argument is that without gaining truth and reality they may
not be able to achieve success for the film. In this review, the following paragraphs
would be discussing and elaborating mainly about the Salaam Cinema and the reasons
on the methods/ techniques used in this film review.

Methods/ Techniques used in the film (Salaam Cinema)

The methods/ techniques which were used in the film (Salaam Cinema) were the
usage of observations, the usage of voiceover, hand- held camera and the shaky hand
camera work (Nichols 1985: 24). For the observations, this method is reliable and easy
to use as it could seize the societies attention in action, letting the watchers derived to
their own conclusions about them, unaided by comments, actually encodes the specific
political and ideological assumptions symptomatic of the age (Arthur 1993: 123).
Observation is a form of both qualitative and quantitative method. The reasons why
observation was chosen was that the audiences were aware of the presence of the

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cameras (Ebardonr, 2014). This method is good because it tries to give more precise
possibilities. Moreover, also this technique such as the cameras/ crew presence
(Bordwell, 2007) can likely change the situations/ actions, plots and so on. In Salaam
Cinema, the technique of observation was shown when a group of 7 ladies and later a
group of 5 men were asked to perform in order to get their main actor roles. Realism is
an important factor of this part because they use non-professional characters (real
people performing themselves). They never build sets, but instead find existing
buildings or outdoor surroundings. It often deal with social issues to get important
feedback as well as information to give notice to the society what they want and need. It
could be seen that the reality (Gio, 2014) was shifted by an element that had been kept
hidden from the audience.

Voiceover mainly plays an important role in this film review because it provides
necessary context to the audiences (Kelly, 2010). The reasons why it is essential in this
film review is that, it is not happening in reality situation. Generally, it is just about the
characters on the screen and provides insight for the audience as to their thoughts or
emotions. It is essential because it is used for keeping the audience informed (Kelly,
2010). Indeed, the usage of a presenter can personalize an experience, as he or she is
able to speak directly to the audience; hence this can strengthen contact and the
involvement of the viewers. For the voiceover, it serves as the usage of the industrial
mechanism of film to inject an authorial presence on the linguistic side. But sometimes,
the voiceover may be due to that of a correspondent (Jane, 2009) or the presenter, a
reporter, a social actor whose words are going on over different images, or off- camera
dialogue between social actors, or between the presenter and social actors, mainly with
‘cutaway’ images. There are a variety of ways which could change the usage of
voiceover such as the factors: using sound and images could result in a range of
different effects. In Salaam Cinema, the technique of voiceover was used when the
director asked the group of men to make performance and singing in front of him. In
relation to the realism term, it could be seen that there were non-professional characters
and the subject matter reflecting the poor or the working class conditions.

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 For the hand- held camera, hand-held camera technique allows the omission of
certain materials such as an efficient quality tripod. Furthermore, hand-held camera is
much faster and easier to setup, as it is not a time-consuming duty (Walsh, 2012). As
compared to a normal filming technique, hand held is flexible to work. Hand- held filming
technique allows you to make films in small amount of budget (Resources, 2015), if you
are using hand- held filming technique then you can avoid the extra expenses of certain
associated equipments. In Salaam Cinema, this technique could be seen that the
assistant director was filming mostly to the ladies but sometimes including the men. In
terms of realism, the audiences are no longer receiving an establishing shot, enabling
them to come to terms with their surroundings; they’re right in the point of view of the
person in question. Furthermore, the camera almost becomes like a separate person as
the director is a character in question, recording their surroundings which means if
something shocked that character, the camera only selected up the aftermath leaving a
feeling of insecurity as the vision is blurred puzzling the viewer as to what the camera is
recording.

For the shaky camera work, it is a technique utilized by a documentary filmmaker

to allow the viewer to feel that they are on the ground and experiencing what the
filmmaker is experiencing (Powers, 2011). In Salaam Cinema, this technique could be
seen in the beginning of the movie where there were thousands of audiences queuing in
line for participating in the actor role.

The argument for this film review is that the relationship between the identified
methods and the characters are real because they are not acting, in fact in terms of
realism, there are really no actors. Everyone is an actor in a realist film especially when
filming a documentary. The language (ideology) of the film speaks through the reality
and the audiences are not addressed by Makhmalbaf. He is equally as part of this film
as his 'auditioners'. It was also interesting to see that while many had the impression of
film as some kind of entertainment, there were actors with roles to play and directors
made the decisions of what is happening in the film. Many of those who were in that
audition were shocked (like the 'blind' man) that they already part of a film but one that

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was entirely within their expectations. Realism allows anyone to be an actor without
going through this rather morbid dilemma in filmmaking.

Conclusion

All in all, Salaam Cinema is an engaging look into the tradition of cinema and the
approach that film is celebrated and entertained not only in the west but throughout the
entire world. Moreover, with the awareness of the existence of camera and recording,
even normal people would act variously, changing the realness of what could have
been. Thus, it is possible for Salaam Cinema to be either a production or narrative
which was believed to be truthfully representing the condition of Iran, or a systematic
representation of circumstances with real life characters.

References List

Works Cited
Arthur, Paul (1993), 'Jargons of Authenticity: Three American Moments', in M. Renov (ed)., Theorizing
Documentary (New York and London: Routledge).

Balaji. Salaam Cinema: A Film Review by Balaji. 1995. http://www.imdb.com/reviews/40/4008.html

(accessed 1995).

Bordwell, David. Observations on film art. 2007.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/08/17/unsteadicam-chronicles/ (accessed August 17,
2007).

Ebardonr. Camera Presence, Performativity, Kiarostami, and Makhmalbaf. 2014.

https://critsandflicks.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/camera-presence-performativity-kiarostami-
and-makhmalbaf/ (accessed September 09, 2014).

Gio, Wandering. Documentary Modes: Representing the ‘Truth’. 2014.

https://waondering.com/2014/08/25/documentary-modes-representing-the-truth/ (accessed
August 25, 2014).

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Kelly, Laurent. The Importance of Voice Over. 2010. http://whatculture.com/film/the-importance-of-
voice-over (accessed February 22, 2010).

Nichols, Bill (1985), Movies and Methods, Vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Powers, CJ. Shaky Camera Technique. 2011. https://cjpowersonline.com/2011/08/26/shaky-camera-

technique/ (accessed August 26, 2011).

Resources, FMF. Hand Held Cinematography: Four Acceptable Facts that filmmakersfans.com Notices in
This Technique. 2015. http://filmmakersfans.com/hand-held-cinematography-four-acceptable-
facts-that-filmmakersfans-com-notices-in-this-technique/ (accessed May 14, 2015).

Soltani, Amir. Hello Cinema (Salaam Cinema, 1995). 2014. http://www.hello-

cinema.net/home/2014/3/27/salaam-cinema (accessed March 28, 2014).

Teller, Martin. Salaam Cinema. 2012. https://martinteller.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/salaam-cinema/

(accessed September 07, 2012).

Walsh, Rory. 6 Reasons To Go Hand- Held. 2012. https://www.videomaker.com/article/c15/15956-6-

reasons-to-go-hand-held (accessed December 11, 2012).

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