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The Counterview

The Counterview bridges the gap between technology and the human condition, with a focus on ways to hold on to our humanity while reaping the benefits of technological advances.

How to use Technology to Tell a Human Story

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“No Bears” by Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi’s movie “No Bears” is — amongst other things — a master class in the use of technology. The director/writer/leading man — who is barred from leaving Iran and making a movie there — uses a cell phone and a laptop to direct a documentary in Turkey from an Iranian village near the border. This way, he defies the regime without technically breaking its rules, as unjust as they may be.

Later in the movie, he deletes a picture of the villagers he has taken using his digital camera to avoid bloodshed. All along, he uses modern devices not to razzle dazzle — as many American movies do — but to tell a compelling story, shed light on issues local and global, and touch on the timeless themes of human decency and love, all in a mere 106 minutes.

Cinema started as a technology to capture and recreate motion. The first publicly shown movie that debuted in Paris in 1895, showcased the capability of this new marvel by playing a collection of episodes of people and objects in motion. But it didn’t take long for creators such as Chaplin, Eisenstein, and Fritz Lang to use the new medium to tell stories and evoke emotions. Soon, movie makers informed, entertained, exposed, and moved us on at a speed and scale that was not available to Homer or Shakespeare. Within months of its production, billions could see the same film, exactly as its creators had conceived, no matter where they were as long as there was a projector. People saw the same pictures whether they were attending a palatial movie house or under a tent.

Over time, innovations in moviemaking have not only added sound and color to movies but also opened up the world — and universe — to us in new ways, and as the filmmaker intended. We can see the Sahara with the eyes of David Lynn, and the rush of the armies from the viewpoint of Kurosawa. It is the vision of these and numerous other artists — and not the techniques behind them — that make the movies the magic they are.

No Bears shows us a new way technology can enable creativity, even under dire conditions. But it is Panahi’s mastery — not his technical prowess –that compels us to see the movie. He shows us the issues that afflict us from the local — the predicament of young lovers fighting old customs in a village — to the universal — the plight of refugees trapped in a transit country that doesn’t really want them.

He, once again, reminds us that to create art, you need to have a heart. The rest is just nuts and bolts.

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The Counterview
The Counterview

Published in The Counterview

The Counterview bridges the gap between technology and the human condition, with a focus on ways to hold on to our humanity while reaping the benefits of technological advances.

Afarin Bellisario
Afarin Bellisario

Written by Afarin Bellisario

I’m Afarin Bellisario, a Boston-based writer, and mentor. I am a bridge between East and West, Past & Future, equally at home with technology and humanity.

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