Throughout history oppression has been paired with the destruction of culture and history.
A well-known example of this was the Nazi book burnings in 1930s Germany, where texts that were seen to go against their extreme ideals were ceremoniously burnt.
The practice continued more recently in Afghanistan, where the Taliban banned film and cinema at the height of its occupation.
Kiwi director and filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly spent two-and-a-half years documenting post-Taliban attempts to restore Afghanistan's film history.
Her documentary, A Flickering Truth, depicts the unfaltering courage of a caretaker as he explains how he built false wall with newspaper to hide film reels from the hostile grip of the Taliban.
Newshub spoke to Ms Brettkelly ahead of the film's first screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival this Sunday, July 17.
How did you come across the idea for this film?
I was in Afghanistan in 2006, and I knew it was a place I wanted to go back to and in early 2012 I went back. I had heard about this slightly mythical place about where the films were stored but nobody knew what was actually in these building and I managed through a lot of persistence to get in there – the guns came out and people said you're not allowed to be here, but I persevered and was lucky that when I got the that a new director had started and he said, "Let's discover them together".
Literally they were rotting away; the conditions in Afghanistan didn't lend themselves to preserving films.
Did you ever think the task was too dangerous or difficult?
You don't go to a place like Afghanistan not thinking that something will happen and it did a number of times, but I had to keep reminding myself that a lot of my Afghanistan friends don't have the privilege I have, which is a foreign passport.
You follow three main characters; tell me about them and how you came to meet them.
When I first got access to the got access to the archive I thought the main guy - Arify- well he is a key character.
There was this beautiful old man Yousif who had lived in the building for 31 years waiting for somebody to come and save these films and he was such a remarkable character and I thought "there's something about him and his life that is like a metaphor for Afghanistan and for these films".
And then the third character is the unlikely hero, he is the gardener at the archive and he stayed through all the Taliban years and he saved most of the films. He created this false wall and hid the films.
…
In the end scene in the film - when they were planning the mobile cinema - I said, "Jake and I do not want to go through Taliban country, we've had enough encounters in Kabul and outside of Kabul, we don't want to go through those areas," and Arify was like, "No no no we'll go through areas that are safe."
Well it wasn't and we didn't, and we ended up in Taliban country. The van broke down and we were stranded in this really exposed area for hours and it got dark and the driver just turned to me and he said, "Put your burqa on and don't get out of the car," and I just had to sit there for hours.
That was a little bit frightening because we were like sitting ducks. I was thinking, "What risk am I putting on these people? – A foreign woman being here." Because the big issue in Afghanistan is kidnapping. When foreigners are kidnapped, they hold them for ransom and it's a fundraising venture.
It's an adventure that's for sure.
How do you think making this film will affect your future work?
I think each of the films that I make adds to how I approach my next film. I hope with openness and an interest in people in another situation. I'm currently making a film in China, I started that a year ago – while it's really different from Afghanistan, [it's] the same level of respect and trust – it's all sort of the same things.
It's that whole thing of never judging, I think people would be really surprised with the films that were uncovered – I mean the Afghans were.
There's this one film where there's this woman, very scantily clad, splashing water on herself beside a river and all the guys were like, "What, this is not Afghanistan, this is not a film from us," but it was - it was a film from I think the 70's.
It was those kinds of daily surprises that were amazing and just enforced for me that I should never ever judge a situation that I read or I hear. For me it's really important for me to experience a place if I want to know more about it.
Newshub.
