The Naked King

Negar Tahsili was born right after the revolution, and grew up in its “founding years”. She says she was deeply influenced by the revolution, despite first becoming aware of it as an adult. She says that being an inventor is her most important profession. She studied industrial design and patented a number of things, including an invention for disinfecting surgical instruments. She later began making documentary art films. Wee-men or Women, which is centred on a taxi driver in Tehran, and Private P.art, which deals with gender and sexuality in the work of female artists. For her latest work, she is researching images that date back to the time of the revolution in Iran.

"I think that people who were over 20 years old at the time decided for themselves: I am going to walk out the door and go to that demonstration and nobody is going to stop me. These people who took part in the protests weren’t children anymore, and they probably have different feelings than I do when they watch that footage. Feelings that I unfortunately cannot have, namely that they’re searching for themselves in those images. But I don’t know how and why, even though I wasn’t born yet and my parents maybe weren’t there and so on… Where were my parents on that day, anyway? I don’t know why I search for myself in those images. There’s something very strange about those images, where you see a huge crowd of people, yet you can still look for yourself among them. It’s a very intimate feeling… and it’s maybe the first time I’ve ever spoken about it… I feel like my mouth tastes like blood."

Parviz Rafie used to be a journalist. During the revolution he met Kapuscinski, who had travelled to Tehran as a correspondent for a Polish press agency. He later read a Persian translation of Kapuscinski’s book “Shah of Shahs”, which was published in the early 2000s. He admired Kapuscinski and his keen observations of the events taking place in Iran at the time.

"I’ve always been afraid that I would be presented as someone who I am not. That I would be forced to represent something that I am not. I have always had this fear and it persists to this day. We will never know what happens inside prison cells, what prisoners go through all over the world. Nowhere. We have no way of knowing. What we hear is coloured by human emotion, and sometimes we exaggerate. The truth remains unknown. I know a prisoner who, after he was executed… His family later told me why he was executed. He had said, “I don’t want to be released because people will think that I collaborated with prison authorities.” It is better if I am executed. I know this person."

Mohsen Rafiqdoost is the man who chauffeured the Ayatollah Khomeini, after his return from exile on 1 February 1979, from the airport to the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, where the Ayatollah gave his first speech and announced that he did not recognize the government of Prime Minister Bakhtiar appointed by the shah, and that he would overthrow it. The speech was the prelude to the seizure of power and the establishment of the Islamic republic. Rafiqdoost became commander and later minister of the Revolutionary Guard. As head of the Mostazafan Foundation, which controls a substantial chunk of the Iranian economy, he would become one of the most powerful men in the Iranian regime.

"In every country the enemy possesses powers called the “fifth column”. I’d like to share with you one example of this from our country. At the beginning of the revolution, the imam has our entire nation board a train, and the destination of this train is happiness. Many people get off the train along the way. They do this for various reasons, including religious constraints. We do not deny that at all. They cannot adapt to the revolution. The train speeds down the track, faster and faster. They run until they reach the end of the train. There they are forced to disembark."

Amir Hassan Cheheltan, trained electrical engineer and writer. In the last 20 years, none of his books could be published in Iran. For his latest book, “The Steadfast Parrot” (“Der standhafte Papagei” German 2018), Cheheltan researched the first year of the revolution. About how, in just a short time, the Islamic leaders around the Ayatollah Khomeini pushed the other groups involved in the revolution – from the left all the way to secular nationalists – out of power. In 1999, after an attempt on his life and following the assassination of a number of authors, Cheheltan went to Italy for two years. He returned to Tehran in 2001 where he has lived ever since.

"I would like to tell you a story of mine. When I was 12 or 13 years old, my father told me that if I heard anyone in the bus, the supermarket or other public places criticizing the shah, I should keep my mouth shut. I asked him: Why? He said it might be a secret service agent trying to root out opponents of the shah, and if I joined in on the criticism, he would arrest me and take me away. That is when I became scared of the secret service. And that was a fear shared by all of society."

Little is known of Stefan Piwowar’s biography. He studied history at the University of Warsaw before being recruited for the secret service of the Polish People’s Republic. Disguised as a diplomatic employee, he carried out various secret service residencies abroad in places such as Bern, Switzerland, where his official job was embassy press attaché. He was in contact with journalists and correspondents who submitted their travel plans and press visa applications to him. After 1990 he was transferred to the secret service of the “Third Republic”.

"I contacted you as an employee at our embassy, and you came to me as an embassy employee.

- That’s true, but I received my secret service files, and it’s clear that you worked for the secret service.

- Mister Editor, can you please ask me the next question?"

Kamal Tabrizi shot the footage of the students who climbed over the fence into the US embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979 and took embassy staff hostage. He was friends with many of the students who took part and sympathized with the operation, which demanded the extradition of the shah (who was in the US). Kamal Tabrizi studied at Tehran University of Art. He would become a well-known film director of critical comedies about Islamic society including Leily is with Me and The Lizard. The scenes of the embassy occupation in my film come from his footage.

"They (the students who occupied the US embassy) didn’t think they’d even be able to enter the embassy building and that the people inside the embassy would put up a fight and kill some of them. Then they would retreat and the dead would be martyrs who had been made martyrs by the people of the embassy… What I’m trying to say is that they thought the whole thing would only last seven, eight or ten hours, from the moment they infiltrated embassy grounds to the end of the operation. The students never dreamed they’d be able to break into the embassy building, stay there for an extended period and take the embassy staff hostage. They found themselves in a situation they hadn’t bargained for. That’s why I’m telling you: The footage I shot… It was plain to see… I was shooting the whole time and concentrating on the details and I could tell they didn’t know how to handle guns. They’d found the guns there. They hadn’t been taught how to use them."