Ghazaleh, an Iranian New Zealander and multihyphenate filmmaker, came to Aotearoa aged 6. Her Masters in Documentary thesis film, Iran in Transit, premiered at the International Student Film Festival in Tel Aviv after winning the festival’s Alternative Competition and won the Outstanding Student Film award at the Beijing Student Film Festival in 2013.
Ghazaleh then used a Fulbright General Graduate award for further post-graduate studies in film production and screenwriting at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, became an intern for Sundance and was elected as the Women of Cinematic Arts Student Board co-chair. As an emerging filmmaker she was selected for the first Commonwealth Writers Film Lab in Auckland. Her fifth short film, The Waiting Room, has just been selected for the International Exile Film Festival in Sweden.
Four years ago, when I last interviewed her, Ghazaleh’s feature screenplay At the End of the World, a coming of age road trip comedy, had been shortlisted for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, reached the Top 10% in the prestigious Nicholls Fellowship and was selected for the Writers’ Lab Aotearoa run by Script to Screen.
With two other other emerging filmmakers, Nicole Van Heerden and Mojan Javadi, Ghazaleh set up the Waking Dream Collective and a film company, Waking Dream Productions.
@devt Four years ago you were starting your PhD and working hard with the Waking Dream Collective. And now you’ve just received New Zealand On Air (NZOA) funding for your This Is Us, a project to commemorate the March 15 terror attack in Christchurch *and* a Copyright Licensing New Zealand (CLNZ) and New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) Research Grant for a collection called The Shah of Grey Lynn and Other Stories. Congratulations!
Ghazaleh I can’t believe it’s been four years already! Interestingly enough, a lot of things suddenly happened for me this year so it really has been a case of when it rains, it pours.
This is Us was originally the brainchild of Shuchi Kothari and myself. Shuchi was definitely the reason I applied for the grant to begin with as she, like myself, is passionate about inclusivity, that is representation from diverse communities not only onscreen but behind the screen as well. If we want to tell truly authentic stories then we need to tell them ourselves.
The project is a series of micro documentary films profiling various Muslim New Zealanders on what they love the most. The series will be part of Radio New Zealand’s (RNZ) ongoing coverage of the Christchurch attacks, particularly in the lead up to the one year commemorations. We are all go with the project now and I’m very excited and humbled to have such an important project selected. There are definitely challenges with it but overall it is very much a passion project for everyone involved and anyone we discuss this with agrees about its importance.
@devt I loved the Waking Dream Collective’s recent Facebook post about the funding announcement: ‘Proud to have a project by Ghazaleh Gol be one of these selected. Proud to have an all WoC crew too.’ Is it still unusual?
Ghazaleh I think RNZ and NZOA appreciated the idea of communities telling stories about their own communities, so they were really supportive with our project particularly with the team we have. Shuchi is our EP (and one of my own personal mentors) and Anahera Parata is our producer. We also have a young fellow Iranian-Kiwi Sara Shirazi as our lead researcher and the fantastic Amie Bentall as our editor. I am always keen to encourage women, particularly WoC, to be in my teams. Again, it goes back to my mantra of having representation in as many important places as possible. It’s funny you ask if its unusual. I actually had some backlash from someone in the industry about this.
They believe that women are suddenly on equal par with men so we should stop this nonsense of pushing for more women in leadership roles like producers. I stopped being in contact with this person. There are definitely some faux-woke men out there who really don’t get what this is all about. It should not be an unusual thing to have an all-women crew. In fact, I hope for the day when gender does not come into it but until that day we need to still make a blatant point of pushing for more women and PoC and other minorities to take on roles in the industry.
@devt What difference is it making to the work, to have an all WoC crew?
Ghazaleh I feel that sometimes depending on the story or context, or even the people (such as the talent) involved, it can help if there are more women in the crew. For example, I remember getting feedback on my feature about a specific male character. Nearly every man who read it, didn’t believe this guy would exist. Nearly every woman who read it, said they knew a guy just like that. So I think it can help. For me, it’s more of a political reason as I think we still need far more WoC in the industry, in front and behind the screen.
@devt You’ve almost finished your PhD now, Monsters, rebels, slackers: Exploring duality in Iranian diasporic cinema 2007–2017, which includes the At the End of the World screenplay as its creative component, alongside an exegesis. How has it developed?
Ghazaleh In the early 2000s there was a ‘mini-boom’ of women’s memoirs from Iranians in the diaspora. Books like Reading Lolita in Tehran did phenomenally well worldwide. From here we got a number of films made by namely women directors in the diaspora that looked at Iranian stories, with the predecessor being Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Much of this is because of and in some cases a reaction to world events such as 9/11, the war on terror and the ongoing media focus on Iran as an ‘axis of evil’. Many of the filmmakers wanted to present their own stories of what it means to be Iranian, but one who lives outside of Iran. This spoke to me directly as most of my work also looks at this. My screenplay is a love/hate letter to New Zealand — there are times I hated being ‘different’ here and yet it is because of that, that I learned to tell stories so I now love that I am ‘different’.
As immigrants, particularly 1.5 and 2nd generation, we are living almost in an in-between. We are neither solely Iranian nor Kiwi but we are both and that is OK. Many of these films and my own screenplay are a celebration of this hybridity.
The challenges have been the back and forth between academic writing and the more creative writing of the screenplay. It’s also difficult when you’ve been working on the same story for so long to not get a bit lost in it so it’s great that I’ve had some amazing people to help with getting it back on track. It’s being produced by Ainsley Gardiner and Georgina Conder, as part of their company Miss Conception, which made The Breaker Upperers and is now shooting Cousins. And alongside Shuchi and Ainsley, script editor Emily Anderton has helped me go back to the basics of story. We’ve been lucky to have been supported by the New Zealand Film Commission with development funding.
@devt I was surprised recently to understand from an academic that they believed that post-graduate work by filmmakers, with a creative component, isn’t as serious and citable as academic-academic work. What do you think?
Ghazaleh I’m not surprised to see this to be honest. Even when I first applied for my PhD, the university was a bit sceptical, citing reasons such as not finding relevant examiners etc as reasons. I think it’s still seen as a relatively new discipline though it has been a staple in universities in the UK and Australia so I don’t know why we are so slow to adapt it.
I think it’s the way of the future — which is cheesy but I believe that much of academia is desperately outdated and we need to fight to upgrade it to fit in with what is going on in the world, particularly with its links to industry. I did a leadership course through the Uni and the NZ Leadership Institute and one of the major concerns for many of the participants (all doctoral students from various schools and disciplines) was how to get a job in the ‘real world’. Many didn’t want to stay in academia but felt that this link to industry was really challenging. The creative component for me is such a link and it just makes sense.
I definitely benefitted from having that luxury of a scholarship and time to really work on things I liked as opposed to working a dead end job just to make ends meet. I also benefitted in that sense of security — I admire people like Shuchi and my former supervisor Annie Goldson in that they work within both academia and industry. It’s a great place to mentor people too.
@devt I enjoyed your great Diversity vs representation: Why Hollywoodstill needs to learn article around Oscar time this year. Do you see/experience similar problems here in New Zealand? Some positive changes?
Ghazaleh Thanks, I always get angry around awards season as I find them ludicrous. Yes, the answer is definitely yes. We still have a way to go in terms of gaining more representation behind the scenes, particularly in television, but I think NZ is at least trying. I do like what the UK is doing, in that they have actual programmes, funds and even quotas and it would be great to have that. One of the biggest challenges I noticed was that people from certain backgrounds just never think about this industry as a viable option. So that’s why it becomes important to have people from their community in places of leadership. Visually if you can see someone like you in that position then you’re more likely to envision yourself there.
@devt Are there Waking Dream Collective projects you’d like to write about? Your own plans?
Ghazaleh I do have some exciting things that will hopefully pan out soon but I’m not at liberty to mention them just yet. Waking Dream is on a bit of a hiatus as the three of us are very busy with our own individual works at the moment but we are keen to really get back into it soon. I’m also really happy that the Pan-Asian Collective is now up and running — it’s such a valuable organisation and one that was much needed, with some excellent people running it. I have high hopes for them and can count myself as a proud member.
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