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Interview with Tanaz Eshaghian

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This interview was conducted by a third party on 15th December 2007. It is reproduced here with the permission of the film's publicity team.

Tell us about how you came up with the idea for this film.
I was reading the New York Times some time in 2004 and came across an article about how sex change operations are allowed in Iran. The article described how Ayatollah Khomeini had given a fatwa over 20 years ago, declaring that if someone is diagnosed as a transsexual by a doctor, he/she is allowed under Islamic Law to be helped via a sex change. I was amazed. I simply couldn’t believe it. I kept wondering how this law was interpreted in a traditional society like Iran.

What attracted you particularly to the subject?
What drew me to it was the existence of a world within Iran that I’d never heard about and couldn’t even imagine existing. How is Iranian culture dealing with people whose gender or sexualities don’t fall into the traditional male-female divide? I wanted to see how Iranian culture is dealing with people who don’t fit into its traditional narrative. The way I’ve experienced Iranian identity has been as very conservative and tradition-bound, particularly with issues pertaining to sexuality and gender. The way you behave must always be decent and appropriate according to the cultural belief system.

When did you start working on the film?
A year and a half ago. I wrote a proposal and tried to interest potential funders in a film on transsexuals in Iran but at the time it was just something on paper, and no one had any real interest. Most people I spoke with said, “Oh okay, another transsexual film” and seemed underwhelmed. I tried to get some funding here and there but it didn’t happen, so I just decided to go to Iran and start shooting on my own with my own money.

When did you go to Iran for the first time?
In November of 2006. I asked my aunt, who lives in LA now, to come with me. She is street smart and had only left Iran ten years ago. She knew the country much better than I did and I needed her for peace of mind and assistance in getting things done on the ground there.

Did you make any arrangements before you went there to find out if you were allowed to film? How did you negotiate access to the subjects of your film?
Before I got on the plane, I contacted a reporter based in Iran who writes for a newspaper in the UK. He had written an article about transsexuals and he very graciously gave me the phone numbers of all the people who were mentioned in the piece. I spoke a great deal with the assistant of Dr. Bahram Mir Jalali, who performs most of the sex change operations in Iran. I also spoke quite a bit with Hojatol Islam Kariminiya, the cleric you see in the film, and I spoke with a psychiatrist, among others. A number of these people didn’t make it into the final film. I also spoke with a couple of characters who the doctor’s assistant put me in touch with who also didn’t make it into the film but were very valuable for research purposes. We had long conversations. I was asking a lot of questions and trying to get a foundation. I wanted to make myself familiar to them so that when I showed up, they already felt a connection with me.
What do you remember from the preliminary phone conversations with these people before you went to Iran?
Cleric Kariminiya, who had written his “PhD”—the Islamic version of a PhD that a cleric gets—on applying Islamic law and thinking to transsexual identity, really gave me a sense of another world. He was fantastic. He had also explored such topics as what happens to the inheritance of a male that becomes a female (Under Islam a woman gets half of what a man gets for inheritance). He let me know that because of a sex change, the person is now female—and gets half!

You needed permission to shoot in Iran. Was it difficult to get?
I thought it was a subject that the government would give me permission for because sex change operations have the support and backing of the state. I think they probably also feel that it gives people in the West a sense of Iran as modern—something other than the usual anti-Iranian portrayals of it as an archaic culture or an anti-western one. The government had also previously allowed some short TV pieces on the subject to be made–for the BBC and French television¬–and so I had a feeling they would permit me to film as well. I went to the UN here in New York City and applied for official government permission to shoot. I did not hear anything from them. I’d already been in Iran for a month when my official permission was finally granted. I was allowed to shoot for about 35 days, with the government’s backing and help. I couldn’t believe I was able to film for that long! I thought maybe I’d be granted a week or two at the most. I was even sent letters of encouragement. Wherever I went, I carried my official letters stating that I was permitted to shoot.

When did you start filming?
I started shooting a few days after I got to Iran. I went to the clinic, had some tea, talked to Dr. Mir-Jalali and everybody there, got a sense of things and then just kept on showing up and hanging around from then on. The clinic is open every Tuesday and Wednesday and to go there was by far the best part of this film’s shooting experience. Just sitting in the waiting room of the clinic and observing the guys and the girls who come in and out of there was fascinating. Some were looking for a sex change, others had complications after the operation. Sometimes very depressed parents came in to inquire about the procedure for their son or daughter. The conversations in the waiting room were incredible. I thought that just putting a camera in that waiting room and running it would be a fantastic documentary on its own!

What about the doctor? Was he on board right away?
I knew that the doctor was on board before I went. He had allowed other camera crews to film at the clinic. He is quite okay with what he’s doing because first of all it is legal and state sanctioned, and it also appears to be quite a progressive act. He also knows that he is a ray of light, the source of a solution for his desperate patients.

How did you meet Anoosh, one of your main characters?
I had gone to the north of Iran by the Caspian Sea with the doctor and his whole gang because they were invited to a city there to participate in a conference on transsexuals. Anoosh and her mother and boyfriend had come to the conference. That’s where I found her—and she was great.

Tell us a little about how you met Ali Askar.
I met Ali Askar at the doctor’s clinic. Her operation was coming up so she was constantly coming in to get her paperwork sorted out and her blood tests done and all the little things you need to do before the operation. She had no family with her and had been “adopted” by Vida during this pre-op preparatory period. Vida was her constant companion and fixer—getting all the bureaucratic details taken care of, getting the money together from different government agencies, etc. They were open to talking to me since they did not have family members around them and felt freer in that sense.

A year ago, your plan was to go to Iran, to figure out what the subject is, to capture some footage, but then you just went on filming and filming and you realized, my god, I’m actually making a film.
Well, basically when I showed up, I had not yet received official permission to film. I just went and was hoping for the best and thought maybe I would make a trailer or some sort of teaser and come back and try to get some funding.

When I finally got the permission for just over a month and I started filming, it was just so incredibly compelling that it quickly went from “let’s make a trailer” to, “we’re going to make a film!” And we’re going to do it in the next thirty days. There was just so much going on. I mean I could have just stayed in that waiting room and it would have been enough. I can’t tell you the conversations I heard in there and key aspects of the culture that were revealed within them. These people were trying to figure out what to do when you don’t fit into the norm. All the belief systems were coming out in this really entertaining dialogue. I loved it. I went on filming and filming. When you’re in Iran and you made this huge trip and you have official government permission for 35 days, you would be an idiot not to just keep on filming, because you might never get it again. So I said to myself: you know what, whatever this is, I’m just going to follow my instincts and keep on shooting.

Did you have to work with a fixer (someone on the ground in Iran taking care of practicalities)?
I didn’t have a fixer. I was just given permission and told to go right ahead. I did everything myself, with my aunt, and made phone calls and just formed relationships and contacts. I mean that’s what is so fantastic about Iran—you can just call somebody up and they will speak with you. It’s not in their culture to brush you off. There is a real connectivity which is so refreshing and things just get done.

Was the fact that you’re a foreigner important in your relationship with your characters?
I think that the fact that I came from another country and yet I could relate to the people there with the cultural etiquette that they are used to, was very useful for me. On the one hand they got to see me as an American, which was fun for them and intriguing. Because I was from the “outside” I think they were more open to me. They would take pains to explain things to me if I didn’t understand something, which was great. I think my “Westerner” status made them feel that whatever they said to me didn’t really matter in the same way that it would if they said it to someone who lived in Iran—who would potentially be able to use it against them one day. But on the other hand they also felt a bond with me because I could speak the language and understand from a cultural vantage point where they were coming from. I know for the most part how far you can push something, how much you can’t. I know the semiotics of it and it helped me being both an insider and an outsider. I think it tickled them that someone from America was interested and wanted to get to know them and bond with them. For the most part, I am dealing with people who are looked down upon and treated badly. And no one cares about them. And then someone comes in who really wants to know what they have to say and they were naturally excited. But there were plenty of people who did not want to be filmed or didn’t want anyone to know they were transsexuals, in case it showed up on TV one day.

After your first trip you finished a trailer to get funding and you started editing a rough-cut at the same time?
Yes the funding came in once I had a trailer. It was perfect. I showed the trailer to commissioning editors from public channels, mainly from Europe, and they all loved it.
I was a bit worried that I didn’t have enough material in terms of story development but when I actually looked through the footage and started to look at it in terms of characters and character development, I realized that it was pretty much there. I could then focus on just a few of the folks that I had filmed. I just thought it would be good to go back and see what happened to them a year later. That’s what I needed.

In any documentary you want to get close to your characters. How did you do it? How did you get into these peoples lives and get them to share some of their most private and intimate moments and thoughts?
It happened very naturally. I got to Tehran and went and sat in the doctor’s waiting room. I just started speaking to people with great patience and was able, that way, to form a few relationships that then led to this kind of access. There were many male-to-female patients who would say to me “Go away, I don’t want to be on camera,” or female-to-male patients who felt that way as well. I filmed the characters that I was able to form relationships with. The ones who let me film, interestingly enough, are all people who are not from Tehran. They are from smaller towns and more open to being filmed and more relaxed. The ones from Tehran pretty much said, “Go away.”

Obviously, knowing the language helped tremendously. Do you think a purely western filmmaker could have done this story?
Maybe, though I don’t know if they would have followed the same procedures I followed, because I understand both cultures. I could understand the logic that was working in that society as to what was motivating the sex change, but I was also able to pull back and get a sense of what is so contrary to how we comprehend freedom and sexuality in the West. So I would follow things that only a Westerner would follow while simultaneously trying to understand the thinking that makes sense in Iranian society.

What about from their perspective, did you see them getting more attached to you and the project as time passed?
One of my characters told me: “You know, you don’t see us the way other people here see us. You don’t look down on us and I can feel that.” And I believe that really helped because I think since I have been raised in the west I don’t think of looking down on them, it doesn’t cross my mind. But in that context, people look down on these individuals because in that world view if you are not behaving in a “decent” way, if you are not behaving the way that is expected for a man or woman, then you are morally corrupt. If you are a male with female tendencies, they don’t see that as something natural or genetic. They see it instead as someone who is consciously acting dirty. Why would you do it?

Where did you rank their transsexuality in their identity? Where do you think they ranked it? Are they Iranian first? Muslim first?
Well, because these boys are so highly feminine, they are always perceived first and foremost in terms of their sexuality and in terms of their body movement and their gender. They all said to me that they are like a “tabloh” which is a Persian expression meaning they are like a walking advertisement. They say everyone takes notice because of the way they move, that they stick out like sore thumbs. Before the operation even more so, since they are in male clothes but have female mannerisms. You are not allowed to wear a head scarf until you get the paperwork from the official government doctor that states you have been diagnosed a transsexual and are going to have an operation. It’s only right before the operation that you are allowed to cross-dress. And then of course after the operation you must wear your new gender-appropriate clothes. When they-cross dress they stick out much less because they are hidden under a scarf and a loose female coat. Their body movement matches their female appearance. But before that, when they are physically male and have to be in male clothes, they are walking on the streets and yet they don’t move their bodies like the other men. They really are like what they call “billboards” walking around, and subject to much harassment. A number of different types of ‘police’ pull them over for ‘dirtying’ or corrupting the environment. I think it’s really interesting for us in the West that there is a very set definition of what kind of identity is socially allowed there. It’s very clear what is decent—a masculine male and a feminine female. Not much else. And if you play with that basic foundation and organizing principle of the societal order it creates a lot of anxiety in the society. They think “What rules do we have?” Where do we go from here? What’s next: Total chaos?”

How is the experience for these women who want to change their sex different from that of the male-to-females portrayed in the film?
What I kept noticing was that it was not as shameful an experience for the women who wanted to become men. It isn’t as difficult for families—and society as a whole—to accept them. After all, there’s greater social standing in being male. And they’re less identifiable as having undergone a sex change once they’ve gone through the operation and are back out in society. They’re more likely to just look like small men whereas so many of the male-to-females still stick out because of various physical attributes.

This is obviously an intimate portrait of an extraordinary subculture. But to a western audience it’s also an extraordinary glimpse into a culture we don’t know and don’t see very often.
My idea going into it wasn’t so much to make a film about a subculture. My thinking, my belief was and is that you can really understand the logic of any culture at its margins, through those who don’t fit it. At its fringes you can understand what everybody else is upholding and taking to be “common sense.” In other words these “outsiders” are playing with their boundaries and I wanted to see if I could make a portrait of how gender is understood in traditional Iranian society today via the very people who are not fitting in. That was my interest—what is “common sense” here with regards to understanding gender and gender roles and expectations.

How has the recent visit by President Ahmadinejad and his comment that “in Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country” had an impact as you were making the film? And during post-production when you were thinking about distributing it and marketing it?
This comment made such noise in the West. Everyone, even if you barely watch TV, heard him say it. It’s helpful for my film because my documentary deals with alternative sexualities and people who don’t fit in.

I thought it was absurd in a way but I understood what he meant. I think what he really meant, which people didn’t understand here, is that in Iran there doesn’t exist a culture of homosexuality that exists in the West. Though far from universally accepted, we do have a homosexual culture here in America, with gay pride and gay clubs, bars, neighborhoods, a gay rights movement, etc.. But there, there is no gay culture, and no acceptance of that identity. That fact fits into the same idea that I was interested in exploring which is the logic of a society in which there is a very limited range of what social identities you’re allowed to have. And anything outside of that, you’re disrupting the social order. And when that’s the most important thing, what you want, and who you want to sleep with, and who you like, is secondary. If you want to be a part of a culture that’s communal, that’s connected, where people take care of each other, where you never feel alone, you feel bonded… Well, the price you pay is that you can’t go against the grain, you have to be like others.

Your last film was about your family trying to marry you off and I sense a common theme of societal pressure on an individual…
Yes! I’m really interested in how powerful culture is in terms of dictating one’s decisions. And when you are not fully from one culture like me, when you’ve lived in an Iranian home while surrounded by America, you get this strange ability to step back and watch each culture from the other’s perspective. You consciously notice each culture’s expectations. As an Iranian I was expected to behave as a traditional Iranian girl does and get married young to someone ethnically and religiously appropriate. As an American I have the side that says “No one tells me what to do—I have choice!” I think that because I have this battle within my own identity, it’s what compelled me to pursue this film’s subject, to look at Iranians in Iran who within their own country were having a similar battle to mine, albeit more extreme. Whether they liked it or not, they were freaks in that context and could not behave in the way society expects them to. Similar to me, because I was in the West, and did not want to behave like a traditional Iranian girl and was a weirdo in the Iranian community here in New York and LA.

So what are you thinking about for a new project?
I’d like to find another interesting world…I found this camp in California for really rich kids who can’t hold on to money very well. The camp helps them learn how to manage their inheritance. It sounds like it’s got real potential for a film.
This film is broadcast on BBC Two on Monday 25th February at 9pm

To find out more about the film, and other screenings, see the website: www.belikeothers.com

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