About TARZAN

Tarzan is a 1999 Academy Award-winning animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, and released by Walt Disney Pictures on June 18, 1999. The thirty-seventh film in the Disney animated features canon, it is based upon the Tarzan of the Apes series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and is the only major motion picture version of the Tarzan property to be animated. It is also the last "bona fide" hit before the Disney slump of the early 2000s making $171,091,819 in domestic gross and $448,191,819 worldwide, outgrossing its predecessors Mulan and Hercules. To date, it is the last film based on the fictional character Tarzan to have had a theatrical release, and also currently holds the record for being the most expensive Disney animated film, with a budget of $150 million.

What this movie does well though, it does astoundingly. The character animation is phenomenal; the best I've ever seen. Also amazing is the "Deep Canvas" technology, which allows for a huge amount of camera movement, employed extensively for some absolutely thrilling visuals. Some of the music is perfect; some of it seems more oriented at merely selling the soundtrack CD (featuring Phil Collins). The best images from the film linger long afterwards... the burning ship that Tarzan's family escapes from; two hands pressed together, as Tarzan struggles with his identity; the cabin Tarzan is discovered in; and lush shots of the jungle.

Photographs in CIRCLE

The Circle

The Circle (Persain: Dayereh)) is a 2000 drama film by Iranian independent filmmaker Jafar Panahi that criticizes the treatment of women in Iran. The film has won several awards, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000, but it is banned in Iran.

SYNOPSIS

The film begins in a maternity ward of a hospital, where the mother of Solmaz Gholami is upset to learn that her daughter has just given birth to a girl, even though the ultrasound indicated that the baby would be a boy. Worrying that her in-laws will force their son to divorce her daughter, she tells another daughter to call her uncles.

At the phone booth, she runs into three prisoners, including Arezou and Nargess, who have just been released. They are trying to come up with money so that they can go to Nargess's home village. The third prisoner is immediately arrested, as she tries to pawn a gold chain, leaving just the two women. Arezou eventually finds enough money to get Nargess a bus ticket, and the two of them separate.

At the bus station, however, Nargess can't get on the bus, because it is being searched, and she is afraid that she will be arrested again. Instead she tries to find another prisoner, Pari, who sneaked out of the prison that day. Pari's father will not let her in the house, however, and just as she leaves, Pari's two brothers appear to "talk" to their sister. She manages to escape, and eventually makes her way to a hospital where she finds Elham, another former prisoner who has hidden her past and is now a nurse, married to a doctor.

From her conversation with Elham, we learn that Pari is pregnant, but the father of her baby has been executed, and she has no one to approve her having an abortion. Elham, after being released, became too conservative to do anything to help her, so Pari is left to wander the streets at night. Without ID, she cannot get into a hotel. At a street corner, she finds a mother trying to abandon her little girl, hoping that she will find a better life with a family. She continues wandering the street.

The mother is first caught as a prostitute, but she later manages to escape. Then another woman who was picked up as a prostitute, is taken to prison. She is placed in a cell with other women we met so far in the movie, and the phone rings outside the metal door. A guard answers and comes to the window, calling for Solmaz Gholami, the woman with a girl baby in the first scene. So is the circle closed.

Structure

The film does not have a central protagonist: instead, it is constructed around a sequence of short interconnecting stories that illustrate the everyday challenges women face in Iran. Each story intersects, but none is complete, leaving the viewer to imagine both the background and the ending. All the actors are amateurs, except Fereshteh Sadr Orafai who plays Pari, and Fatemeh Naghavi, who plays the mother abandoning her daughter. Throughout the movie, Panahi focuses on the little rules symbolizing difficulties of life for Iranian women, such as the need to wear a Chador under certain circumstances, or not being allowed to travel alone. He frequently uses contrast to illustrate both happiness and misery in contemporary Tehran: for example, a marriage party, symbolizing a happy ending, takes place in the background while a young girl is abandoned.

Cast

Nargess Mamizadeh as Nargess
Maryiam Palvin Almani as Arezou
Mojgan Faramarzi as Prostitute
Elham Saboktakin as Nurse
Monir Arab as Ticket Seller
Solmaz Panahi as Solmaz
Fereshteh Sadr Orafai as Pari
Fatemeh Naghavi as Mother
Abbas Alizadeh as Father of Pari
Negar Ghadyani
Ataollah Moghadas as Haji
Khadijeh Moradi
Maryam Shayegan as Parveneh
Maedeh Tahmasebi as Maedeh


Directed by
Jafar Panahi
Produced by
Jafar Panahi
Written by
Kambuzia Partovi


Cinematography
Bahram Badakshani
Editing by
Jafar Panahi
Distributed by
Artificial EyeWinStar Cinema
Release date(s)
6 September 2000, Italy (premiere at VFF)
13 April 2001, USA
21 September 2001 , UK
7 March 2002, Australia
Running time
90 min
Country
IranSwitzerlandItaly
Language
Persian
Budget
$10,000 (estimated)