Arquivo

In the wake of bombing in Kurdistan, in Iran, a group of teachers wander through the devastation in the villages, their blackboards strapped to their backs, in search of prospective students. The human aspect is the prime issue in The Blackboards, a second film by Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf. One of the teachers comes upon a group of teenagers who are about to try to cross the borders illegally and smuggle goods between Iran and Iraq. He offers them the chance to learn to read and to write. They turn the offer down - not one shows any interest. Other teachers come across a group of aged people anxious to return to their home land. Young Samira tells real stories, human dramas about war, immigration, the diaspora, and abject poverty: "During the Iran/Iraq war (1980-1987) the Kurds from Iraq found refuge in Kurdistan, in Iran, in their efforts to escape the chemical weapons with which Iraq sought to decimate them. There are mines in the region, even today. The local inhabitants who knew the area were our guides so that we wouldn?t stumble into any."