all me irrational but it seems to me that governments should allow their residents to do anything that does not harm others: “Your freedom ends where my nose begins.” If smoking in a closed space causes a problem for non-smokers, then smokers are hurting others, thus regulation is needed in restaurants. If drinking harms only the person who is imbibing, then alcohol should be legal for adults, who are presumably mature enough to do what they want with their own bodies.
But when activities that we in the West believe OK conflict with ideologies that leaders in the East deplore, then leaders in the East may support repressive laws. For example, forget about what you like or dislike in music. As a Westerner, can you see any harm in allowing people who like rock music or hip-hop to attend concerts of musicians who can appeal to these audiences? I’m still grooving on Bach’s Toccata and Fugue and hear little of interest in most pop music (Beyoncé excepted), but if millions of others dig 50 Cent, Run DMC, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, why should I care if their music is played and enjoyed on their iPODs?

Such reasonable liberties, strangely enough, were banned in Afghanistan where all music was once prohibited under the Taliban, and rock music is verboten in Iran though seventy percent of the country is under thirty. In this lies madness. Bahman Ghobadi, whose latest film, “No One Knows About Persian Cats,” is best known for “Turtles Can Fly,” set in the director’s native Kurdistan, involving a 13-year-old boy who installs an antenna for villagers keen to hear of Saddam’s fall but is disturbed by his girlfriend’s brother who was left armless after he stepped on a landmine. Ghobadi, who now lives in Berlin and directed this unauthorized “Cats” on the fly with high-speed cameras, is appalled that a country swarming with energetic youths has a government that may allow religious songs but bans indie rock as a violation of the Koran. Government ideology trumps money, it seems. (Except that, not mentioned in the film is the strange fact that Supreme Leader Ali Khameni, who preaches fundamentalist Islam, has personal assets of $30 billion, owning 8 planes, 5 helicopters and twelve times as many cars as Jay Leno, from corrupt money siphoned off largely from oil sales.)

Done in docu-drama style as “Cats” is based on a true story documented in part by recently imprisoned Iranian-American co-scripter Roxana Saberi, the film hones in particularly on one youthful group making plans to perform concerts in London and other European cities who raise funds for both eight return tickets to London and for acquiring false passports and visas. Negar (Negar Shaghaghi), a quiet-spoken woman with large eyeglasses who has performed as a duo with Ashkan (Ashkan Koshanejad), is determined to play at least once more in her native country, despite the lack of permits. The two conspire with DVD bootlegger Nader (Hamed Behdad), a man with contacts who for a stiff price can prepare the illegal documents. While they wait, they zip around Tehran on a motocycle (he without a helmet), hooking up with other performers of indie, or underground, rock, the bands rehearsing literally underground in soundproof basements.

During the course of the film, we in the audience are made privy to segments of their music, the most impressive being a song performed off stage by one Rana Farhan. Most of the singing is understandably in their native Farsi, but some are sung in English, a tactic designed to win them approval in their upcoming trip. All groups, including those named Hichkas and Mirza, are illegal.

While the director is on record as loving music-eating, sleeping, listening to it throughout the day-his principal objective in making this film is to underscore the unreasonable repressions of the regime, led by the stolen election of Mahmoud I’minneedofjihad. While driving through in Tehran’s traffic jams, the duo are stopped by the police who confiscate their dog, as dogs and cats may not legally be taken outdoors. “Filthy,” says the policeman off-screen, as he seizes the dog through an open window and speeds away. The most humorous scenes find motormouth Nader pleading with a judge who wants to sentence him to a stiff fine and 75 lashes, and one in which a rock band sorrowfully admits that a few cows on one singer’s small farm refuse to eat or give milk while the band rehearses. We actually see a pair of bovines looking at each other as if to say “What’s with these guys?”

Photographer Turaj Aslani takes us on a tour of Tehran but appears to have avoided any place that might be of touristic interest. The lenses underscore a city with no visible personality. The title comes from the law forbidding cats to be taken outside, symbolizing these ambitious music-makers’ mandate to perform what they know best indoors in soundproof basements. For better or worse, the film will surprise those who believe that Iranians are obsessed with making movies about children such as Jafar Panahi’s less prosaic “The White Balloon,” about people who try to con a child into giving up the money her mother gave her to buy a goldfish. “No One Knows About Persian Cats” is of importance to those interested in both politics and music though it lacks the elegance of the outputs of filmmakers of imaginative fiction like Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Majid Majidi and Abbas Kiarostami.

NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS (Kasi az gorbehayeh irani khabar nadareh)
(IFC Films)
Unrated. 101 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online