ACMI in Melbourne is running a retrospective of the films of Mohammad Rasoulof, an Iranian director who has made some of my favourite films (Manuscripts Don’t Burn, A Man of Integrity, There is No Evil).

Head Wind is one from his back catalogue that I’ve never had the opportunity to see before and so I went in without much pre-knowledge, just drawn by his reputation as a filmmaker. This is an early one and is a pretty straight documentary about the censorship of film, communication and media in post revolutionary Iran.

It at first focuses on the banning of satellite television by showing us all of the satellite installations, from cities to nomadic villages, and the people who work clandestinely to install and maintain them. There are sporadic attempts by the government to confiscate the dishes because of the immortal content of foreign TV, which seems mainly to be films and music video that show inappropriate dress for women and couples doing anything more than kissing. It is a temporary blip in people’s ability to access the content though, and it is the same with bans on DVDs and VHS and Internet content.

I think the overarching message is that censorship is like a headwind that you battle but keep persisting against. We see elders and religious leaders swearing that there are no satellites in their village and then we see all the satellite dishes. We see the people who take pirated DVDs and dub or subtitle them into Farsi, sometimes editing out immoral scenes and sometimes not. There is a particularly amusing moment where someone orders Paolini’s Salo and we wonder what would be left once it was edited.

What seemed most remarkable is how openly everyone on screen was talking about what they were doing. Understanding the power of the religious police, it seems surprising that censorship could be talked about so openly. Then again, two years after this film was made Rasoulof was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison.