Kabul:
Afghans proved a tough audience for the world premiere of "The Black Tulip" at the Ariana Cinema on Thursday afternoon (an evening showing was deemed too dangerous). It was meant to be a serious film about Afghanistan, by an Afghan-born director, set in present-day Kabul and even filmed on location here, but many of the Afghans who saw it said they did not recognize the society they knew.
The movie tells the story of an Afghan woman who starts a family-run Bohemian cafe in Kabul, where they serve wine in teapots and have poetry readings, which angers the Taliban. They soon begin kidnapping and assassinating the woman's family members.
Some of the film's most dramatic moments involved things never before seen on Afghan screens -- let alone on Afghan streets -- like public kissing, touching between members of the opposite sex and women swearing. The reaction of the audience ranged from titters through snickers to peals of laughter, which can also be a way of expressing embarrassment. The audience did at least stay until the end, although many people engaged in loud cellphone conversations throughout.
Afterward, Shaheen Darai, an Afghan media company employee, challenged a scene showing high-ranking coalition officers, an American colonel and some NATO colleagues hanging out in the cafe along with assorted Taliban desperadoes.
"The filmmakers were not very familiar with Afghanistan, or its culture and tradition," he said. "None of that would ever happen here." Neither Taliban nor uniformed coalition soldiers are ever seen in Kabul cafes, let alone drink alcohol in them.
Amin Mokhtar, an employee of the Afghan Film Organization, balked at a funeral scene, in which mourners threw handfuls of earth into the graves, not an Afghan practice, he said.
"The director and workers grew up in America and don't know much about Afghan culture, that is the point," Mr. Mokhtar said.
The director was Sonia Nassery Cole, 45, who fled Afghanistan as a teenager after the Soviet invasion in 1979, and now is based in Los Angeles, where she runs a charity, the Afghanistan World Foundation. Its Web site lists projects including "The Black Tulip" and Ms. Cole's other directorial credit, "The Breadwinner," a 2007 documentary short film also set in Afghanistan.
The opening here was financed in part by the American Embassy, which provided money for the film crew to travel to the premiere, according to a spokeswoman for the embassy, Caitlin Hayden. The film had advance screenings at the headquarters of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, and at the embassy, where its strongly anti-Taliban and pro-coalition theme played well.
The political message also resonated with most of the Afghans in the audience, who praised the film's anti-Taliban sentiments, while recoiling at its depiction of social relationships.
"This was wrong, this was not good," said Hamid Mohammed, a tailor. He was shocked at something he said he had never seen in his life, a young man kissing a woman full on the face mask of her head-to-toe, baby blue burqa. (Burqas have a mesh grill over the eyes, but no mouth opening.) He guffawed at the recollection, then apologized for the outburst.
The film is likely to end up as Afghanistan's entry in the foreign language category at the Oscars, according to Latif Ahmadi, head of the Afghan Film Organization, because, "It's the only film produced in Afghanistan this year."
Ms. Cole has drawn some criticism in artistic and political circles here for her assertion that she took over the lead in the movie only at the last minute, when the Taliban cut the feet off her pick for that role, whom she named as Zarifa Jahon.
"I think that's just propaganda for the film," Mr. Ahmadi said. Many others in the film industry here said they had never heard of that actress or such an episode.
Ms. Cole, interviewed as she left the theater on Thursday after introducing the movie (she did not stay for the showing), said the story was true. She said that the woman she knew as Zarifa had acted in Pakistan but was not well known in Afghanistan. Ms. Cole discovered her in a hotel lobby in Kabul in 2008, she said.
Just before production began on "The Black Tulip" in August 2009, the actress disappeared, Ms. Cole said. "Finally, she called me and she said, 'You'll never guess what happened. The Taliban chopped my feet off.' " Ms. Cole said the Taliban were angry about a Pakistani film the actress had appeared in.
Ms. Cole said she did not actually see the actress after the amputations, however, because the woman begged her to leave her alone for her own safety.
Not all of the Afghans felt embarrassed by "The Black Tulip." "It was perfect," said Idris Ludin, a dentist. "If you have to see one film about Afghanistan, see this."
Asked what other films about Afghanistan he had seen, he thought for a moment and then laughed. "None."